Designing a Backyard Pond: Part 1

It's noisy inside my brain. I crave quiet. If I don't get time for reflection, my body sets up a chain of responses designed to get my attention.

First, I get hungry for salty snacks. This craving should, after 47-and-a-half years, be a recognizable clue that I need some quiet time. But I blithely go hunting for salty snacks.

After the chips and pretzels I develop an urge for chocolate chips from the jumbo bag that sits permanently open in the cupboard, ever ready to engulf my fat-fingered hand. But where's the joy in chocolate if you don't have coffee to go along with it?

By the end of this predictable sequence of ingestibles, I'm so hopped up that I just rock uncontrollably and experience thoughts of world domination.

Then, finally, I am forced to remember the one thing that always calms me down: beer.

I intend to get my share of beer this summer by helping my friend Andrea build a quiet, reflective backyard pond. We started planning in the sodden drear of March. We thought we'd be farther along by now. We haven't even started digging and I haven't had a single beer.

Here's the reason; Ninety percent of a successful backyard pond is planning and design. So it's actually taken hours of drawing, measuring and re-thinking to come up with a pleasing design that is physically attainable without 4,000 Egyptian slave boys to do all the work.

Design of the Times

Working with Vanessa Strand, owner of Water Arts, a pond specialty store in Etobicoke, Ontario, Andrea answered a series of questions that led her to the final design for her water feature. The first and most important question was this: What is it you like about water?

Some people like the mesmerizing sound of moving water. Other people like the tranquility of a quiet pond. Some like to watch the endless patterns and eddies at the bottom of a waterfall. Andrea likes it all, so her original drawings included lots of stone retaining walls, streams, two waterfalls, a bridge and a large pond. "Okay", said Vanessa, "Anything is possible." But she kept putting her hand over her mouth in a genteel gesture of suppressed emotion, possibly mirth, so I finally said, "It's a bit ambitious, isn't it?"

She then calculated we'd need upwards of 10 tons of rock, for starters. And we'd have to remove about 10 other tons of dirt to make room for the rock and the pond water. We started to scale back our dreams of Versailles and Monet's garden at Giverny.

The second most important question: Do you want plants?

You'll need 18 inches of pond depth to successfully harbour aquatic plants. Do you want water lilies in particular? They don't like turbulent water, so one of your first decisions is whether water lilies or a waterfall are more important to you. Water lilies have a distinctive shape, so allow 2 square feet of water surface per lily.

"By the way," adds Vanessa, "65 percent of my clients make their ponds too small." By the time your water feature is surrounded with rocks and plants, the visual surface of the pond shrinks. A lot. So make the pond at least two feet wider and longer than you think you need.

Do you want fish? Andrea said no to fish, but we talked her into including them because they eat algae and keep the pond clean, plus they create movement, mystery and intrigue. And poop. But I'll get to that.

Fish require some deep water for shade and over-wintering, so at least one section of your water feature should include a pool that is a minimum of 3 to 4 feet deep.

Stream On

Creating a stream can be the trickiest of water features. It can be difficult to pump a large volume of water the right speed and depth (2 to 3 inches) to make babbling sounds. A silent stream is easier; a water depth of one foot is sufficient to create gentle eddies and to support plant growth.

A lot of people choose to fill streambeds with river rock but it's a pain to clean. A smarter choice is pea gravel. It can be raked, where river rocks can't.

Drawn and Dirty

Draw a scale diagram of your yard and play with shapes and placement. Then go outside and outline the shape of your pond with a garden hose. Drizzle flour to mark shapes of pathways. Andrea's dog ate all the flour, so we had to go out and buy a can of spray paint.

Remember, the dirt you dig out of the pond excavation can be used to create berms and mounds to add grade changes and privacy to your yard, so think about where you're going to put all that dirt. (Andrea's oblong pond is going to produce approximately 10 cubic yards of dirt. That's a lot of dirt. Anyone need any dirt?)

If you crave a quiet place to reflect (or drink beer), or you wish you had a cottage but don't, or you have a backyard that lacks personality, you can change your life this summer by building your own backyard sanctuary of water and stone. I'll give instructions as we go through the process so we'll all be in the same mess together.

Next week: The digging begins, plus how to order a pump and liner.