Water Gardening: Advice with rocks, please, 2 by pbtxlady

pbtxlady wrote:
Please help. I have a problem pond, which I'm rebuilding (for the third time).

1) Tiny little pond, about 70 gallons, with two smaller cascade ponds. All were preform, lined with Colorado Red flag, had goldfish and a pretty little water lily. I loved it, but it was too small.

2) In 2008 we rebuilt it using a flex liner for the larger pond. Got it up to about 150 gallons, and reused the flag. It went too close to the window, which posed a problem getting to window and both plants and drip system. I also never liked the way it looked.

3) Rebuilding this year, using sandstone to line it rather than the flag. This was pretty hard to do because this whole area is a 4-foot slope, going diagonally (my house is at a slant on the downside of a hill), the wrong direction. I had to build it up on one side and could not get it raised high enough, so it's 2-3 inches lower. That leaves about 4 inches of exposed liner on two sides when the pond is full.

I also do NOT like the way the rocks look on the small cascade ponds. One thing I have said all along is that I do NOT want "a pile of rocks," and unfortunately, I haven't figured out how to prevent that, with either the flag or the sandstone.

The first two images show the top cascade pool, which is the part I dislike the most. The second two images show the main pool with the exposed liner. Please ignore the pile of rocks in the larger pool--they're only there to help hold the liner in place while I work on this.

Please help. The only solution we've been able to come up with is to plant evergreen things around the top cascade pool, to hide the rocks there. I haven't reached a solution about the exposed liner at all. I'm open to suggestions.