How to Use a Pond As a Drainage Catch

As we become increasingly aware of the importance of water in our environment, we can start incorporating artistic, yet practical ideas into the landscape that will help make the most out of every inch of rainfall. A way to channel extra water into a decorative feature in the landscape is to use a pond as a drainage catch. Using drainage channels and a pond as a water catchment area will help avoid erosion problems, add decoration to the landscape, and keep landscape water clean and filtered while offering a showy focal point to your garden design. Does this Spark an idea?

Things You'll Need

• Spade or shovel
• Drainage pipe
• Aquatic and/or bog plants
• Optional lining material like tiles, stones, pavers or bricks

Instructions

1. Select the lowest point in your landscape to build your pond. Remember that the whole concept relies on the fact that water naturally runs downhill. By conducting excess water to the lowest point in your property, the pond will fill itself.

2. Plan out how the pond area will blend into the general design of the whole landscape. Factor in paths, open channels or dry river beds to make the flow of water to the pond into something artistic as well as practical. Doing a sketch of your landscape is always helpful.

3. Identify the areas in your property where water is most likely to pour off, puddle, or wash off from heavy rain. Dig a depression or shallow trench in this area to collect the water. Line the depressions with ornamental materials like flagstone, brick, pot shards or other materials to make them decorative, if desired. Or hide the areas by planting flowers or foliage around them.

4. Install an underground, perforated drainage pipe to conduct the water away from the collection depressions. You can also build decoratively shaped ditches that will conduct water to the lowest point where the water catchment pond will be located. For an artistic effect, an open channel or ditch can be lined with tiles, ornamental stone work, or any of the same materials used for lining the rain-collecting depressions. Fill the ditches with different-sized stones and rocks to create your own dry riverbed to drain your excess water downhill.

5. Dig a pond area in the lowest part of your garden. Let it fill naturally with the water that rushes downhill in your conduits. It will drain away slowly during drier weather, naturally filtering the water as it drains into the ground.

6. Grow bog plants surrounding the pond edges and in shallow water. Add aquatic plants in areas of deeper water.

7. Reuse the rainwater collected in your drainage pond for spot watering other parts of your garden later. Your drainage catchment will keep heavy rains from damaging your landscape. Use your pond to enhance the overall garden design and as an opportunity to experiment with bog and aquatic plants.