How to Make A Garden Pond | Cheap and Easy
The Cheapest and Easiest Way to Make a Garden Pond is with a Liner (an overview).
One of the best parts of having a pond is how it brings in all kinds of wildlife to your yard! Birds, mammals, insect life, and more. Having a natural body of water in your yard (especially if you live in a very dry climate like us in Southern California) can tie things together and add an element of active beauty to your property.
But how to make that cool natural pond element? Let’s break down the options.
GETTING A PRO - Having a professional installation can be expensive. That’s why we want to look at doing it ourselves, (DIY). Learning how to do it right—especially when everything you’re doing is likely going to be a permanent fixture in your yard, means a little research and learning is in order. Ponds can be expensive and complicated, but they don’t have to be. There’s a cheap and easy way to make a great looking, long lasting pond in your yard by just doing it yourself with a POND LINER! The photos below show some of my biggest professional jobs ever. But I started really small when I began, (see second series of photos below). :)
Pond liners provide a waterproof barrier to prevent leakage and can be very cheap to purchase even in larger sizes. They’re very useful and economical, in fact the very first job I did to start my contracting career was a liner pond with real rocks, (see photos below). Liners are available many places online that you may like to shop, including Amazon.
The two pictures below show the BEFORE & AFTER of a simple pond. You can buy “pond kits” from various companies that make the process very easy. I made this one using a kit from www.aquascapeinc.com You can see from the photos above that any size project is possible but I started small, learned the process and grew to building ponds for clients. That’s my son Daniel in the photo on the right. :) The build process is the same whether large or small using the same principles as all my professional pond jobs.
I was able to complete this pond in roughly 5 key steps. More or less.
Dig hole
Make the hole with terraces and angled side walls leaning outward. This is so you can stack real rocks, boulders and stones up the sides and/or apply concrete more easily. The deeper the hole the more terraces should be built in.
Place underlayment, place liner, install skimmer, “biofalls”, and water pump (which came as an easy install kit)
While digging the hole, try to remove any jagged-edges of stones or debris and any roots that could puncture the liner, this is where underlayment, (the velvety black fabric in the upper left photo) comes in handy. For a cheap option you can use a weed barrier, or if you like to live life dangerously you can go without one.
A “biofalls”, (the box where the waterfall begins) and water pump keep the water moving, aerate the water to help prevent smelly bacteria from growing, and support healthy wildlife.
Weigh down and conceal the liner with real rocks and stones
This is cheap and easy if you have access to decent looking stones on your property. If you don’t you can buy them and bring them to your working area, but it may be cheaper and easier to use concrete as an alternative to secure the edge of your liner and create a nice aesthetic, (with concrete it’s good to let it cure for a month to allow it to become more inert and safer for fish).
Fill the pond with water!
This step is the most fun. Here’s some tips and tricks:
filling the pond gradually as you install the liner or rocks will show you exactly how the liner is going to shift when the weight of water pushes the liner against the edges of the hole you dug.
You may notice the water is cloudy! Oh no! Don’t worry, the water in a pond that was just filled for the first time is often cloudy. Give it some time to settle.
Before going onto the next steps, test out your water pump and biofalls to make sure they’re set up right and functioning just as intended.
Make sure you’re adding the right kind of water. Water that’s been processed and cleaned can have chemicals in it like chlorine. This keeps the water safe to drink (hopefully) but not so safe for our little buddies: fish, bacteria, and wildlife. There are filters you can attach to your garden hose spigot available online for purchase; some are less than 20 dollars as well as neutralizing liquids for the chlorine.
Add plants and any wildlife
Plants are great, but I hope you haven’t bought any wildlife yet (fish, frogs, turtles, freshwater shrimp) because you want to let the pond balance out as an ecosystem before you put wildlife in.
Start with plants, they will filter and soak up any organic matter or nutrients that could feed algae and bad bacteria, and show you just how beautiful a natural pond can be even without fish or whatever else.
Add the wildlife. I start with feeder goldfish. But whatever it is, it would appreciate being added to an established, healthy body of water. There will be algae, weird amorphous bits of goop, and strange creatures appearing. That’s GOOD (until sometimes it’s not when it isn’t naturally balanced). Healthy biodiversity of microscopic and macroscopic life will keep your pond clearer and cleaner than you’d think!
A few tips and tricks:
Here’s an option to jumpstart the healthy ecosystem of your pond, go to a friend or neighbor with a pond, or even a natural body of water (if you’re allowed to) that doesn’t smell or appear to be down stream from “people places”, i.e. storm run off from towns and cities. Healthy natural ponds are packed full of good bacteria and biodiversity. You do run a risk of transferring any pests or invasive creatures into your pond though, so choose a healthy source. You can also purchase healthy freshwater pond bacteria online, to treat your pond at the beginning or also occasionally after. The little buggers help keep the water clear and pretty. That’s what I’ve always done cuz there really aren’t any good clean sources of “goop” where I live.
Mother nature will send wildlife your way, so if you want to do the cheapest and easiest version of your pond, just be patient. You’ll be surprised what shows up in there. Nature LOVES water!
During the design process of making your pond there are things to consider or keep in mind. I’ve written here a list of a few factors to be aware of before you start construction.
Where does water go when it rains?
If your liner is placed in a way that water and mud can accumulate on the edge and get washed in, you might end up having a big mess on your hands.
Where does water go when the pond overflows?
This is the opposite problem to the previous one. When it rains, or if somehow a “refill” ends up being an “overfill,” make sure you know where the water is going to spill out, and whether you need to build something to prevent erosion or prevent fish and pond-wildlife from going over the edge into no-man’s-land.
How will people interact with this pond
Are people going to be getting into the pond? Best build some steps in and out! Are little kids (or your neighbor “Kathy” who had too much to drink at the barbecue) going to be swimming here, or could they fall in? Check in with online safety resources about how to make a body of water in your yard as safe as possible for children and adults both. Here in Southern California the Building Code requires that all ponds and pools that are deeper than 2’ must have full fencing all around it with self closing gates to protect kids/people from accessing your “attractive nuisance” pond. Without that fencing you could be liable for any injuries or worse that might occur in your pond.
Are pets going to be enjoying your pond? I had a project where I made a pond on the property of a Dog Bordering Company (where people send their dogs when they’re on vacation). I made the pond shallow, covered the liner with concrete to prevent punctures from dog claws, and made sure it was easy for dogs small or large, young and old to get in and out.
That leads me into my next Topic: CONCRETE, (See the project photos above which show a concrete over liner mixed with real rock project). Notice the angled side walls and terraces where boulders are set. This made installing or stacking up all the concrete easy. I started at the bottom and worked my way around and up. The concrete hardened as the day wore on so all the subsequent batches of concrete were easily able to be placed on top of the lower firming up batches.
A cheap but valuable addition to any pond is concrete. It’s easy to come by or purchase and and lasts for years. Concrete can be used to conceal the liner, set natural stones in place, reinforce the floor or walls of the pond, (again, see picture above) or imitate natural rock formations, (see photo below).
Photo above - The rock you see above is an entirely artificial, faux rock made from concrete. To learn how to do this type of thing yourself, get my book "Makin Rocks" here on my online store or here on Amazon.
CONCRETE SUPPORT - If you have loose soil that’s prone to collapse, a high water table in your locale, or trees sending roots to try and tap into a new water source, it might be a good idea to layer some concrete over the hole where your pond is going, and then add in the underlayment before you put in the liner.
CONCRETE SOURCE - Now you can order concrete from a concrete supplier that comes in a “cement truck”. This approach is for large scale projects and should only be utilized by people with experience in concrete construction who have multiple workers who can finishing out all the material as it’s poured and/or pumped to the project site. For our purposes using bagged concrete is easier and less expensive.
So how many bags of concrete will I need you may ask?
The answer is pretty simple. Roughly measure the square footage of the pond floor plus sidewall surfaces added together and then multiply that by 150, (weight of a cubic foot of concrete) then by .25, (one forth of a cubic foot or about 3” thick of concrete you’ll be covering the liner with) then divide that by either 60 or 90 depending on the concrete bag weight you want to use to find out the number of bags you’ll need. Example: say 285 square feet of pond surface x 150 x .25 divided by 60 = About (178) 60lb bags of concrete, (or 119, 90lb bags). Do a rough calculation of what you’ll need, and then add 15% more. Because you always need more concrete than you think. Also, the worst case is you have some bags left over. Throw some plastic over them to keep the weather out, and use ‘em for your next cool project!
Concrete is cheap to buy, but be warned, the real cost is in elbow grease. You have to get the “mud”, load it in your car/truck and take it home, (or have it delivered) unload it and set up your working area, mix your mud, (I bought an electric mixer) apply it, smooth and trowel it starting from the bottom up working in a circle. As it begins to harden you can add more concrete on top of the concrete that’s below already hardening up. Keep your work area clean as you go. It can be a lot for someone who isn’t all that excited to spend their Saturday with a shovel and a trowel in their hand. But you don’t have to do it all in one day!
But you clicked on this article because you want to make a pond CHEAP and EASY. Good news is, you can make a pretty darn cool pond without any concrete as well!
Step 3 I mentioned earlier, was to weigh down and conceal liner with real rocks and stones. If you do this, you don’t need concrete.
You just need some rocks and boulders! Big ones go at the bottom all around with medium and smaller ones stacked on top going up the sides of the angled outward walls of your pond. Making terraces as the pond hole was dug provides support for the rocks and stones, (see photos above). The deeper the pond the more terraces. Angled rocks with flat surfaces make stacking easier.
STREAMS - When making streams or water courses the water will tend to go around and under the boulders and rocks. To help seal the gaps between those stones and get the water to go over and on top of the rocks you can use expanding pond foam. I comes in black so is easily hidden when applied. One can of pond foam can cover a pretty large area but once you start using it the shelf life is shortened so it’s good to figure out where you want to use it. You can get 2 cans if your stream is long or you think you might need more later.
I used this product here. You can also use Great Stuff Pond Foam. Again, the foam helps you direct where you want the water to go. I can also help support, hold and stabilize rocks and stones in your stream and pond.
BUILDING PONDS WITHOUT A LINER - If you’d like to learn about concrete ponds that don’t use a liner as well as faux rock construction you can check out my YouTube Channel and check out FREE how-to downloads and more at davehenderson.podia.com. Also have blogs at www.daverhenderson.com
For examples of some really awesome projects, one using concrete over a liner and other more traditional concrete construction you can follow the links below. These videos will give you a glimpse of a finished pond project. Here are the links: Cool Cat Pond (which I made for a jaguar enclosure), and Bobcat Exhibit Liner Pond (which I did indeed make for bobcats). Those two links are playlists of my videos, but here’s a direct link to a particular video in the Bobcat Exhibit Liner Pond playlist that you may find informative. OR you can watch that video below
Interested in including fake rocks in your DIY pond project? Check out my book, “Makin Rocks,” an all-encompassing guide for fake rock design and construction.
Thanks for readin’
-Mr. Dave