Aquatic features add sights, sounds to your garden

I love water gardening. Whether listening to the sound of gently splashing water or watching colorful fish swim through my pond, I just can’t get enough of it.

And getting to grow interesting aquatic plants satisfies the gardener in me.

It all started with a lined whiskey barrel on our patio that held a few goldfish and three aquatic plants. It was nice but I yearned for more.

I then moved up to a pre-formed, kidney-shaped pond that holds 50 gallons. It has a small plant shelf that holds a pot of ribbon grass and has enough room for a small water lily growing in a pot on the bottom of the pond.

A handful of goldfish earn their keep by eating any mosquito larvae that might hatch in it.

After getting so much enjoyment out of this little pond – you guessed it – I decided an even larger pond would really add to my pleasure.

My husband and I spent a lot of time walking around our yard, trying to pick the perfect location for it. I wanted to grow water lilies so I knew the site needed to get a lot of sunshine.

It also needed to be away from large trees that would drop leaves and branches into it. And I wanted it to be close enough to our house so we could hear the splashing sounds of the waterfall and be able to see and enjoy it.

Once we picked the site, we used a garden hose to outline the shape the pond would be. We decided it would be oval and about 11 feet by 15 feet.

Because we have cold winters here, we chose a depth of 3 feet so the pond would never freeze solid. After a bit of calculating, we determined the pond would hold 3,000 gallons.

Believe it or not, digging the pond wasn’t all that difficult because we have very few rocks on our property. We made sure there would be a plant shelf most of the way around the pond to hold marginal plants like Japanese iris, Floating Heart, reeds and ribbon grass.

The next step was putting the rubber liner in place. I’ve got to tell you that it’s tricky getting a rectangular sheet of rubber into a deep, round hole in the ground, but with a tuck here and a pleat there, we did it.

The edges of the liner – which extended one to two feet beyond the pond edge – were weighted down with flat rocks.

While the pond was being filled with water, we placed large rocks onto the plant shelf. My husband built an external pond filter and hooked it up to a submersible pump. Then he built up an area of rocks for water going through the filter to spill over as it returned to the pond.

We added water lilies and other aquatic plants and let everything settle in for a few days before adding the fish. Watching flashes of orange, red, gold and white as the newly introduced fish cruised through the pond was particularly thrilling for this gardener who, until then, had only dreamed of having such a delightful water garden.

And so it has been for many years now. I don’t regret the effort it took in the least. Seeing birds drinking and bathing in the water, watching dragonflies hovering over the pond like little helicopters and getting to appreciate the beauty of blooming water lilies has made it all very worthwhile.