How to Decide on a Pond Location

Statue Near Swimming Pool

There are many kinds of garden ponds. When you are designing your pond, you must consider your lifestyle. Is it formal and you like sit down dinner parties for sixteen? You'll probably want a formal pond, a rectangle, circle or other regular geometric shape. Your pond will be built from concrete or gunnite and might be covered with masonry or tile both in and out. The formal pond usually holds a fountain or statuary. Sometimes it is a reflecting pool with no fish or vegetation and needs to be treated like a swimming pool. Do you like to barbeque with friends and family with a keg of beer on your patio? You will probably like an informal pond with rocks or boulders placed around the pond. A roaring waterfall or trickling stream might be the moving water feature rather than a formal fountain.

Difficulty:

Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need

• Imagination

Choose your Style

1. Make a formal pond if you like symmetry. Is your existing garden formal with clipped topiaries, straight walkways and square or circular patios? If so, you probably would like a formal pond best.

2. Make an informal pond if your garden is rather wild and tangled with flowers everywhere. Does your garden look like a tropical or temperate rain forest? You will love a wild pond with a roaring waterfall. You might even put the pond in a special 'room' in your garden with comfortable chairs and a table so you can relax with iced tea or a cool glass of wine after work and be shut off from the world.

3. Decide your style if your garden barely started because you have just moved into a new house. Sometimes hiring a landscape architect is a good idea so you have a long term plan to work from as you develop your garden.

Choose your Location

1. Decide where your pond would be best installed. Try to place it where you can see it from the place you do your living in your house. Ponds are expensive and are usually the focal point of a garden. They have water that moves, fish to watch, water lilies that smell great. Don't put your pond back behind the garage just because you have space to fill there.

2. Pick out a sunny spot. Your pond can be in the shade under trees, but you will do more maintenance removing leaves. Water lilies want to have at least 5 hours of sun daily, so if you want water lilies, you must have a pond in the sun.

3. Dig your pond where you will not damage tree roots or underground wires. Know where your pipes and wires are. You can call 811 and find out where live wires are in your yard.

4. Install your pond where you can hear it. It might be next to a bedroom window so you can hear it at night. Or near an outdoor patio where you can see and hear it.

5. Bring your pond in close to your house. Do not build it against your house because waterfalls look funny coming out of house siding. Always leave enough room to put plant material between the house and the pond. Keep plant material away from the house so termites can't use it as a means of getting to the wood of your house and causing much damage.

Tips & Warnings

• Make the style and location decision before you start digging or building. It will cost you much less in time and effort.