Some history about my old water garden / fish pond.
At our previous house, a 1/4 acre lot in Baltimore City, I decided I'd like a fish pond, and decided to place it in my veggie garden. The thought was to raise toads in the pond to naturally control garden pests. It worked!
Being frugal, I decided my first effort would use sheet plastic as a liner. That held up for less than two years. I rebuilt the pond to fit a liner of an eight foot pool. This worked better, and the half-moon shape was nice, but it took 2 more years for the algae to grow on the liner to cover the blue color of the pool liner.
Later I added a five foot long 'rock pile', with a small stream that flowed over the rocks and fell into the pond, and a small fountain. The pond was so narrow that a moderate wind would blow the fountain spray out of the pond.
Two years later I decided I wanted a larger pond. I sold our 24' above-ground pool to my neighbor and put a 8 foot by 16 foot water garden in its place. I was still working on the landscaping around the pond when we moved, but I was quite happy with what had been accomplished. I had planned to add a smaller upper pond and a 25 foot stream connecting the two.
Planning has started for the new, larger water garden in our new house.
Below are a couple of pictures of the pond.
Here is a view of my old
water garden. Note the unfinished border on the far left, and the edge of the black
plastic liner where I had planned to add the stream. The leafy background is the forsythia
hedge overgrowing the fence.
There is a pump that usually keeps a steady stream of water flowing out of that watering can.
Just above the grassy looking plant in the foreground you can see a Golden Orfe, a type of fish related to trout. I had two of these and about 50 Shubunkin Goldfish, a multi-colored goldfish.
And I pulled all the flat rocks from an old quarry!
The view from my deck the 1st year of the water garden. The six posts are the remains of the deck around my pool. All those rocks I dug out of the watergarden hole! These posts are now the base of the jungle gym/swing set, and the old swing set can be seen beyond the pond.
The shade in the foreground comes from a large round maple tree (see the leaves hanging over the posts). The planned stream was to start at a smaller pool on that little rise just beyond the old swingset, and run down to meet the pond on the right, just over the orange Tiger Lilies.
