Water Gardening: Need advice on making a small pond, 0 by Carolyn22

Carolyn22 wrote:
We put in shelves with lips of 8" or so on the edges of the shelving so that these ares could be filled with pea gravel and the plants were then planted directly into this shelving. From the edge of these shelves/bogs, the sides of the pond go straight down. This also helps with the filtration in the pond. We are in zone 5 and because the plants are planted directly into the shelves, I cannot/do not put the plants on the bottom of the pond for overwintering. I have water celery, as pictured here, pickerel weed, several different types of arrowhead, creeping jenny, water hibiscus, various water iris, lobelias and a number of other plants and have not had any problems with losing them to the winters.

The sides go directly down to the bottom, with the shallow end at 3 1/2 feet. We also have possums, raccoons, porcupines and a myriad of other creatures wondering around.

With the size of my pond and the fact that I have a number of koi, we have several pumps that we run.