A cheap pond

First, I dug a hole. It's about 9 by 10 feet and averages a little less than 3 feet deep. I dug for an hour or two every day in early spring. I forget how many days it took.

I built up the downhill side with scavenged concrete block and bricks. Most of the dirt from inside the pond forms a sloping berm on the downhill side. The best clay went to another pile to be used for the bakeoven.

I protected the fish from raccoons by making the inside edges steep. In case a critter falls in, I have a sloping beach, but it also drops off quickly to discourage fishing. About half the fish population died or disappeared in the first year; the survivors have done fine since then. The beach is popular with tadpoles.

The liner is fish-safe EPDM that I got online for about half the local price. I think I got it from Just Liners.

You need to protect the liner from rocks and roots with some sort of padding. So before I installed it, I put old blankets and maybe a comforter in the bottom of the hole and fiberglass batts up the sides.

The pond a few months later. The plants are a lot bigger now.

The edging is scavenged slate roofing tiles, some white oak rounds, local rocks, and half of a log. I bought the pea gravel that's on the beach (on the right). The plants were from a local nursery and are in scavenged black plastic pots. I use heavy garden soil in the pots and don't cover it with gravel, so the frogs have somewhere to burrow.

There is no filter or pump--the pond itself keeps the water healthy. Underwater plants (anacharis) aerate the water, the fish population is small, and the pond is deep.

Looking uphill from the garden the first year. The berm is covered with wood chips. That's the duckhouse on the left. The ducks were gone by the time I dug the pond. You don't want to let ducks in a small pond.

Current plants (the pond gets 5-6 hours of sun):

• yellow flag iris: grows like mad, but few flowers for the first 2 years
• swamp pickerel: purple flowers the bees & hummingbirds love
• leopard's tail: white, sweet-smelling flowers
• some grasses; can't remember which ones
• moneywort: rooted in a pot but spreads on the surface
• parrot feather: mostly underwater, with bits sticking above
• anacharis: underwater aeration, no soil needed
• a big, cheap lily bought as rootstock from a pet store. It's doing much better than a fancy potted one from the garden store.
• water lettuce was disappointing; water hyacinths did only slightly better. This year I just relied on the lily to shade about half the surface.
• outside the pond: daylilies; a fern I transplanted from the woods; tansy that jumped from the garden

Recent critters in and around the pond:

• 10 goldfish (originally 20, most of them 27-cent feeder fish; a couple were born in the pond)
• frogs: green, Southern leopard, Cope's grey tree frog
• toads: American, Fowler's
• Northern water snake (I have no idea how it got here)
• miscellaneous skinks
• birds, butterflies, bees, raccoons, etc.
• a very impressive buck

Maintenance:

• fall: put netting over the pond to keep leaves out
• winter: put a bird bath heater near one edge to keep a small hole open in the ice
• spring: take off the netting; reach in and pull out the bigger globs of rotting plant material; divide potted plants if necessary
• summer: top off the pond as needed; pull out excess anacharis

I feed the fish about twice a day during the warm months.