Pond Project...Phase 2

Warning: This post is lengthy, and I apologize. Per my Pond Project...Phase 1 post, we were left with a muddy hole in the ground. Nice. But after a few days, and bailing out some water with a bucket, the muddy hole dried up! 

 The next step was to put a layer of all-purpose sand on the bottom of the hole which provides a foundation for the plastic liner. You can find this sand at any home improvement or garden center.

Once this step was done we could lay down the plastic liner. We purchased the liner at a local garden center for around $1/sq ft. Make sure to buy more than you need, since you lose some square footage due to the depth of your hole.

After some time spend folding and creasing the liner to be as smooth as possible, we started to line the border of the hole with some of the 1,500 lbs of stone we purchased...remember?

Once we arranged and rearranged the stones (sort of like a puzzle), we could trim the excess liner that stuck out beyond the stones. It's ok if you can't cut it all off since it will most likely be covered with dirt or mulch or 

whatever you have planned around the pond.

And as you can see, we couldn't wait and started to fill up the pond with the garden hose. The hose also helped us determine where the pond hose should be placed to create a trickle of water over some of the rocks in the back. 

It finally looks like a pond!

Next up is to connect the pond pump (you will need an electrical outlet near the pond to plug in the pump). We wanted to have a mini-waterfall effect with the pump water cascading over one of the large rocks in the back of the pond and trickling water back into the pond. To do this you need to feed the pond hose up around some of the rocks at the back of the pond. This is all done to your own personal preference.

Since I despised the original shape of the brick lined garden bed, we removed the bricks and created a different shaped garden bed using some of the rock we had leftover. Ahhh, much better.

 We found a few water plants at the garden center to put in the pond. But the hubs was dying to put in some of these...

Hello goldfish! Welcome to your new home. We opted not to buy the fancy Koi pond fish, and rather the $0.27 cent fish from the local pet store. After we acclimated them to their new environment - which is basically floating the bag they come in directly into the pond and let them float for about 20 minutes - the hubs was happy to release them into their new home. 

As you can see from the above photo, we opted to add some small pebbles to the bottom of the pond. This step can be done before you fill the pond with water, but we like to do things backwards! And another note - the pond water will take a few days to balance out and will become clearer. I promise.

Just to recap, here is the area before:

And here is the AFTER:

 We still have some minor landscaping to do and need to work on improving the grass. 

But overall we are very happy with the outcome!