Pacific Northwest Gardening: Pond Construction - Assistance Needed, 0 by

wrote:
I built my own pond, so I know it can be done. The water garden forum has many knowlegable. There is a large water garden place up north of Seattle called Russell Water Gardens. http://www.russellwatergardens.com/ You can get ideas there, and I think they build ponds, too, but they are likely to be very pricey. Supposed to be good, though.

I can tell you that raising the pond up, as opposed to digging down into the soil, makes it a little more complicated and may pose a design difficulty unless you can really slope the soil gently around it. On the other hand, if you plan to have fish, the deeper the better in terms of water. Racoons do not like deep water and you can provide better hiding places for them to avoid bird predators. I'll share these things I learned:

The deeper, the better. If you want a shallow pond, don't bother with fish. At least 3 feet deep is required for safety for fish. Otherwise, you'll be feeding your fish to the wildlife all the time.
The bigger, the better and the easier the pond is to keep clean and balanced. Small ponds are like small aquariums: hard to keep clean.
Koi and plants can and do co-exist.
Unless you want to deal with baby fish, don't get comets or goldfish.
You cannot have too much filtration. Don't skimp on it. Have a skimmer, and more than one biofilter.
If your pond is deep, it's nice to have a bottom 'drain' that pulls debris off the pond bottom and dumps it into the skimmer.
If you want plants, you need to have the pond in full sun up here.
I leave my pond running all winter. It keeps the pond from freezing over in the cold snaps. Your biofiltration basically dies in the winter, but at least you get the nice sound and it stays pretty. I think my zone may be warmer than yours, though.

There is no such thing as a pond that doesn't require work, unless you pay someone else to do it. You can get the amount of work down to a minimum with good filtration and enough depth,, especially if you do not overplant or overpopulate with fish.

If you want the sound and beauty of a water feature, but not so much work, have you considered doing a pondless waterfall or fountain? There are some really pretty water features that focus only on the sound and look of cascading water and don't include all the upkeep.

this is my pond and greenhouse area. I think the year this was taken we must have had a good summer. I didn't get this many good plants in the pond this year. In fact, the plants in the pond were really pathetic this year because it was too cold.