I have always wanted to have a picturesque small pond in my yard. Unfortunately we have never found a house for sale that matched the rest of our needs and included a small pond. And being on a strict budget, we have never felt that we could purchase one of the pre-made ponds and install it – especially considering that my sister, the landscape designer – told us that it was tricky to get one of these to actually work out as planned. For some reason, these pre-made ponds tend to leak.
One summer, several years ago, we got the proverbial ‘wild hair’ and decided to put some time and effort into creating our own inexpensive backyard pond. What we did was buy – on clearance, of course – a kiddie pool that had the hard plastic sides and the soft plastic bottom. The plastic sides were flexible, so we could get creative with the shape, and we only paid $12.00 for the pool. We got out our shovels and went to work.
We live in New Hampshire – the Granite State – so digging the proper hole took a lot of time and effort. There were rocks everywhere, and some of them were quite large! But we persevered, and soon had a natural shaped 4′ x 6′ hole. We shaped the pool into the hole, and then gave some thought to the plastic bottom. It was a heavy plastic, to be sure, but would it really stand the test of time? Would it even last a week? We decided that it probably would not, so we invested in ten dollars worth of concrete, and covered the bottom of the pool. Not only did this ensure that the bottom of the pool would be leak-proof, but the gray also looked more natural than the bright blue plastic. Before filling the pool with water, we gave the concrete a week to dry, just to be on the safe side.
In the meantime, we then used a bunch of the rocks that we had dug up – and a few more that we found around the yard – and stacked them along the walls of the pool, inside and out, giving it a natural look. So far so good.
The next step was to plant all kinds of perennials around the perimeter.
Once we felt confident that the concrete was really, really dry we took a deep breath and filled the pool. Success! It did not leak. We did try putting a fountain in the pond, but the one that we purchased was too powerful so we gave up on that idea.
The pond is absolutely lovely, now that the flowers and ivies have really taken hold, and we get no end of compliments on our landscaping efforts. We have even added some cheap goldfish that we take in each winter, and put back in the summer, and each year a couple of frogs find the pond and call it home for the summer. All in all – including the plants and the fish – we figure that our lovely backyard pond cost us less than one hundred dollars. We couldn’t be happier with the results.
