home made frog pond

 Making a pond is easy, dig a big hole in the ground.  I use mine as an aerated cistern of sorts, it is also a habitat for aquatic life. I fill my watering pale here and lug it around to water my plants. It's a good workout and well worth the effort of installation.

I dug my pond by hand, with a little help from friends. There was no realistic way to get a small backhoe down to the location, it would have ripped up the yard. There was a lot of dirt in this hole, luckily I had a place close by to put it all.

To create my waterfall I started by "cutting steps" into the hillside. To achieve a nice spillway the steps can be cut so that they angle back, water is collected at the posterior and then advances in a nice stream. I laid down a long rubber liner to keep water from simply soaking into the hillside, with a much shorter waterfall I could have created the same effect. For successful waterfall steps you might size some of your stones before hand, with patience an acceptable stacking can be accomplished. Back-filling the stones with gravel or sand gives the water a chance to work its way over the surface of your spillway instead of behind. Water may duck in and out, which is fine, the look is very natural. As time passes the flow of the water has changed direction a few times as an area is filled with sediment. A pond is always evolving. Keeping water in bounds is the trick. I have found the best way to accomplish this is to place rocks under the edge of the liner, account for this when deciding on a width of liner and an amount of stone.

Supplied by friends I began to bring in cement blocks. Zach and I brought a few blocks down the hill at a time on snow sleds even though it was summer. I measured up the hole, calculated for the number of blocks, then after making alterations she was fit and ready for construction. During this process it was important to remove sharp rocks that could later puncture the liner.

I decided that I would dry stack the blocks. There was going to be water on one side and earth on the other. This turned out to be a good decision as it saved time and money in construction and made the pond less permanent. Stacking the blocks was an arduous operation. Lay the blocks so that the row above was centered between the two blocks below. In other words we offset by half a block so that they lock together. The concrete blocks made it possible to have a half raised pond, I do like the style but it has some drawbacks. It can be difficult for animals to get in and out if you do not create an exit ramp.

Next I added some landscaping fabric, then a liner as the blocks were stacked to the intended water height. Along the front side that would not be getting a few more layers of block, I put cap stones atop the rubber liner to hold it in place. Those sides which were to hold back the hillside got another three or four layers of block . They were then capped as well.


The truth is that I don't like the rubber liner one bit. It is an unnecessary solution that has been developed by pond salesmen. A pond can retain its water if the soil is compacted enough and contains enough clay. This is accomplished with a mechanical tamper, or even by hand.  If I had known better I would have never bought the rubber liner, besides it was the biggest expense in making of the pond. In time leaves will fall in your pond and do the same job as the liner.

rain catchment system work in progress

Water will evaporate and leak from any pond, every once in a while it is nice to top it off without resorting to city water. The issue is that a pond without an inlet doesn't continuously gain water as a natural pond does.This 275 gallon rain barrel can raise the water level on my pond a few inches. Barring severe drought or a huge leak I do not anticipate ever having to use municipal water. Water that comes in though pipes has contaminates, a long list of them really. Most water treatment includes chlorine to kill bacteria, but it just so happens that a healthy pond includes bacteria.  Before the rain barrel was added to my system I often had a low water level which one rain event could not raise. I have essentially added the surface area of my garage to the amount of water that can be funneled into the pond.

Raising the barrel up a bit helps the flow of water.  Situated near the downspout saves in costs for extra plumbing. A good start anyway. More on rain-barrels in a later post.

In the beginning I kept skimming the leaves and little particles that fell onto the surface of my pond, by hand, trying to keep it pristine and perfect. In the end it really was a waste of time. You won't catch everything and eventually it will build up on the bottom, like any natural pond. My pond is situated underneath a very large old apple tree that still produces apples. This has been an unintended benefit as apples that fall from great heights into the pond don't get bruised or explode into a million pieces and are fit for eating. The pond acts as a mirror,  reflecting sunlight back up into the tree giving the underside a little extra light.




I have no special filter for debris, and now I think it is unnecessary anyhow. Although there are things like skim filters that you can add to the system, I think they are just another pond industry invention. I have a sustained frog population because in the winter they can hibernate in the bottom of my pond underneath the sludge. The more organic material in your pond the more life it will sustain. An added benefit is that as the water warms up in the early summer I can dredge the pond and get anaerobic compost.

This being said I actually do have a filter for the pond, the waterfall. Water is pumped from the pond basin up to the top of the hill where it first enters a small holding structure filled with lava rocks and water loving (aquatic) plants. The lava rocks with all their craters act as a home for microbial life which converts some of the mineral salts into useable components for the plants. Their roots fan out snatching particles as they flow by. About half way down the waterfall I have another of these biological filters. I have found that the plants love it and my water stays well cleaned. Other than creating a relaxing sound the waterfall also serves to aerate the pond. Perhaps its primary purpose, adding dissolved oxygen into the water.


 I have had this pond for about five years now and I have not added fish. I believe the system has stabilized and with the addition of the rain barrel I have secured water supply. Because of this fact I think it is appropriate that I attempt to add fish. When I do add fish I can tell you that it will be a few at a time and that they won't be Koi, because no one eats fancy carp, except maybe a hawk. Adding too many fish at once destroys the balance in the pond, they will eat more than their share, I don't want to have to add supplementary feed and disrupt the amount of nitrites in the water. It would be ideal to start with some smaller fish for larger fish to prey on. Giving them a place to hide, old roots or crag rocks gives the little guppies a  place to hide. It is stressful when everything is out to eat you. See how they survive then add few larger fish. I might even consider fresh water prawn and crayfish.

Creating a pond that is less artificial is possible, and if at the time I knew how to accomplish this I would have dropped the rubber liner for hard bottom clay. I believe it is possible if planned accordingly.

Pa Storm-water best management practices manual
common Pa aquatic plant species

 If you have a moment here is a great video on how a large scale pond is planned and installed. Geoff Lawton takes you through each step along the way, and includes illustrative animations.