Water Gardening: Suggstions for new natural pond?, 1 by Terry

Terry wrote:
It looks like in a few weeks, we'll be moving to a new home and one of the most exciting and challenging features will be in our front yard. The picture below is blurry - we took it back in December from inside the house - it's the view from the upstairs.

The dimensions of the pond will rise and fall with the rainfall. (We haven't yet figure out if there's also a spring feeding it but there's another larger pond on the property adjacent to this one, and then a creek beyond that, so my guess is there's some water source besides just rainfall.)

We want to do a few things with the pond starting this summer:

1. Build a small floating or piered fishing dock, in scale with the pond. (Probably no bigger than 8x12 or 8x16.)

2. Add plants. As far as I can tell, there are only cattails in there now. I've got a couple tubs of waterlilies to take with me, plus Louisiana Irises that will be happy on the edge of the pond, and some sedge. But I could use some other suggestions for full sun, clay soil, and mostly boggy conditions - from shrubs to perennials and grasses to groundcovers. :-)

3. Add fish if it appears that it will stay deep enough to support them all summer

4. Put a fountain in it for aeration (and aesthetics) - that will have to wait until we can get an electrician to get electricity run out there.

So, any tips or advice from those who have a natural pond to tend? We've had ponds for several years now, but they've always been rigid or flexible lined ponds, and not nearly this big.