Water Gardening: Gave up on the natural bottom pond - concrete!, 0 by Analemma

Analemma wrote:
After trying several times to add enough bentonite to the clay pond, and then dealing with it never, ever clearing up because the dogs love it - we did it in concrete. This pond began as a rain garden, grew into a pond, has a waterfall / stream, but has been a frustration. Not only was it never clear, but was leaking several inches of water a day. Husband and son #4 scraped about four inches of mud / clay from the bottom, and today we got concrete. I drove the tractor with backhoe, delivered concrete to the pond (2 sons were using wheelbarrows) and husband and oldest son troweled it into the bowl of the pond. We made a gentle slope beach for the little grandchildren to walk into, and sprinkled river pebbles into the concrete at the edges.

I now will have to make a rain garden, and I'm planning for the pond overflow to run into that. I'll dig out the clay down to the perforated pipe, fill with gravel, and top with loose soil mix. Working with clay has a LOT of challenges!