Pond Tips – Building Ponds

Building ponds – some tips about the various types of materials you can use for creating ponds and pools.

The commonest means of retaining water for a pond is a flexible liner. This has lots of advantages – it is relatively cheap and will take pretty much any shape that you want. The key thing is to get the best liner you can afford. You should also install an underlay beneath the liner to protect it from stones or sharp objects. If you get a liner that has butyl in it then it will stay flexible at low temperatures. This will make it easier to install.

Another means of creating a pond is to buy a preformed one. This will definitely hold water, but is not as easy to install as you might think. It is not always straightforward to backfill behind a preformed pool once it is in the ground. Once it is full, it tends to settle, so that one end may end up sticking out of the water.

Another way of building a pond or pool, it is to pour concrete. This method can have lots of disadvantages. The main one being, that concrete tends to crack over time, and once this happens it is not easy to seal. Another potential problem is that a certain amount of lime will come out of the concrete. This can affect the pH balance of the water.

At the other end of the scale, some of the best little ponds I have seen, have been in Belfast sinks dug into the ground, with lots of native plants and two or three resident frogs. The main thing is to go ahead and put some water into your garden, and Spring is a great time to do it.

The best liner is Firestone EPDM (shown in the photo) which we get from Gordon Low Products