Plants for Backyard Ponds

Keeping your backyard pond in good condition year-round can be made much easier by your initial selection of plants. There are three main types of plants that can be included in backyard ponds. All of these plants will help maintain the health of your backyard pond, as well as provide color and interest.

Floating plants

Floating plants can help with the clarity of your garden pond. However, they also have the tendency to grow quickly and can eventually become an over-growth problem.  Some floating plants like Water Hyacinth are actually classified as weeds in some areas.

Emergent plants

Emergent plants such as Water Lilies can add to not only the color but also the amount of shade available in your pond. Having 50-60% of your pond covered with emergent plants can greatly reduce the amount of algae you must deal with. These plants will not always survive the winter and can either be treated as annuals or taken inside during the colder months. The problem with moving these plants to a warm environment is that parasites can grow.

Submerged plants and marginal bog plants

Submerged plants and marginal bog plants create oxygen during photosynthesis. This can help the levels of toxins in the water.

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Koi in Your Backyard Pond: 3 Important Considerations

Koi (photo flickr-corrieb)

Koi (photo flickr-corrieb)

For some water garden enthusiasts, the best reason for having a backyard pond is to be able to raise koi or other fish such as the common goldfish.  Both koi and goldfish are beautiful fish and relatively easy to care for.  (Be aware, though, that there are different varieties of goldfish, and not all of them are as hardy as the common goldfish. Check before you purchase.)

Koi and common goldfish are indeed easy care backyard pond fish, but that doesn’t mean that they are “no care”. There are three important things to consider before introducing koi or goldfish into your backyard pond:  1) water temperature, 2) oxygen, and 3)  predators.

Backyard Pond Temperature

Depending on your climate, you may or may not need to use a small heater during winter to keep the water in your backyard pond from freezing solid. It’s OK if ice forms at the top of your pond, as long as there is unfrozen water deeper down for the fish to swim in and a hole for oxygen.  Do check to make sure your pond is deep enough to prevent it from freezing right down to the bottom during winter. If in doubt, install a small heater or pond deicer to prevent the water from freezing solid.

Oxygen

You’ll need to use pumps and filters to keep enough oxygen in the water to support fish life in your backyard pond. You may also want to use a pond skimmer to remove the big debris prior to filtering.

Predators

Backyard ponds can attract attention from predators such as (in North America) raccoons, birds (particularly herons), snakes, and domestic cats. These predators can decimate your fish population. Not only is this upsetting, it can also be expensive. You can minimize this problem by designing your backyard pond to have lots of places for fish to hide from predators.

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Planning Garden Water Features

Photo: flickr.com/bbalaj

Serene garden water feature

The first thing you need to do when building garden water features is to do some planning. Decide what you want out of your water feature and what your budget will be.

This might be the hardest part of your project, because it can be hard to visualize what garden water features will eventually look like.

Also, you might not know just what you can and cannot do. This website provides information to help you make those hard decisions in an enjoyable, informed way.

First Things First

Give yourself a consultation. Grab a notebook, a tape measure, and a camera, and go to work. Ask yourself these questions:

  • What do I want to accomplish from my garden water features?
  • What is my budget?
  • Where will I be enjoying the garden water feature?
  • Do I want to do the work myself, or hire someone?
  • What future problems could I have by building garden water features here?

What do you want your water feature to accomplish?

Here are some more questions to ask yourself when planning garden water features:

  • Do you want a formal or informal style?
  • Do you want to grow certain types of water garden plants?
  • Do you want a large number of fish or other wildlife?
  • Do you want a dramatic amount of water falling from great heights, or just a gentle trickle?

What is your budget?

Set a budget for yourself. If you end up spending more for garden water features than originally anticipated you could create unnecessary stress for yourself. When you set a firm budget, a lot of the decision making is almost out of your hands. For example, you can’t buy a $2000 filtration system if your total budget is only $5000.

According to Brandon Vannest, who builds garden water features for a living and is the author of How To Build Your Own Natural Waterfall, the biggest complaint that he gets from past clients is that they wish they had decided to make their home water garden bigger. So keep that in mind as you do your planning.

But as long as you follow some basic principles of good garden water features from the outset, you can always enlarge your water garden in the future.

Where will you enjoy garden water features the most?

The most common mistake people make in planning their garden water features is that they stick it back in the corner of the yard, just because they can’t think of a better place to put it.

You should be thinking of where you spend the most time in your house and in your yard. If you spend most of your time in the kitchen, and there are windows to your yard, direct the most exciting pieces of garden water features toward those windows.

If you spend a lot of time in your garden, you should incorporate part of the garden water feature within that garden. Your home water garden is going to be one of the favorite spots for you and your family so why not integrate it into where you already spend most of your time?

Garden water feature during construction

Garden water feature during construction

Do you want to do the work yourself?

You might want to get estimates from professional water garden installers, because building a garden water feature is an ambitious undertaking. But if you want to do the work yourself, there’s lots of garden water feature books and videos available to help you.

Whichever way you decide to go, the first thing you’ll want to do is to take pictures of your yard and make notes on them. It never fails that as soon as you leave the area where you’ll be building your garden water features, the space seems to either grow in size or shrink. Make notes on the pictures as to how big the area is and where things are to be placed.

Now that you have the basics, you need to use the right side of your brain and come up with a design. This is the best part of building your garden water feature: nothing is out of bounds, no hurdle too big, if you can imagine it – you can probably build it. Use the pictures on this site, or those in the free ebook How To Build Your Own Natural Waterfall.

At this point you don’t know much about rock placement, design ideas or implementation tricks, so don’t get too technical. Especially if you will be using natural stones, you can’t predict what they will look like together until they are set in place.

What future problems could you have?

You need to look at the terrain to answer this question. Consider these questions:

  • Is there a natural slope that would make certain garden water features more difficult to build? If so, could you use this natural slope for a stream or waterfall?
  • Is there a runoff problem from neighboring properties that could dump unwanted water into your garden water feature?
  • Are there any utilities or easements that would make construction impossible?
  • Is there good access to bring in the materials to the site?
  • Is there ground water directly under where the liner will be placed?

While most of these problems can be overcome with additional grading and or retaining walls, they will add to your budget, so it’s wise to select the best location for your garden water features from the start.

And don’t forget about garden water features safety. While you may think you are simply adding some landscaping, your local government may see it differently.

Depending on where you live, there will be different regulations regarding the installation of home water garden features. You may even be required to put a fence or other safety measure around your home water garden. So be sure to check with your local officials when planning your garden water features.

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How to Get Rid of Pond Algae

What is pond algae?
Pond algae is one of the biggest and ickiest problems you can face in your backyard pond. The microscopic plant life loves to live in stagnant water and oftentimes is what gives still ponds that slimy, green, slick coating. There are several different types of pond algae to worry about, from the [...]

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Installing a Pond Skimmer

A pond skimmer is a type of mechanical filter that grabs leaves and other debris off the surface of your pond.
Pond skimmers are designed to work with other types of filters, as a sort of pre-filter that removes the larger elements such as floating leaves. This prevents the large debris from clogging up any other [...]

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Garden Water Features

Fire & Water is a father and son team that specializes in the design and construction of natural, breathtaking garden water features. Their installations include waterfalls, streams, ponds, and rock beds. Due to popular demand, they have now put together a book and video of how to build your own garden water features.

Among [...]

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