Build Your Own Backyard Pond with the Pondlady

Pond Building Instructions 

Step by step pond buiding instructions with photos

Pond Building Instructions

How to build a backyard pond, step by step with photographs. See what materials you need, how to dig the hole, how to measure a liner, how to Install the pond rocks and more.

How to have a crystal clear pond 

How to keep your pond crystal clear.

Keeping your water clear

Read how to keep your pond clear, clean and healthy

Oxygenating Plants 

Oxygenating Plants

Learn what oxygenating plants are best for your pond, why we need them and what they do.

Floating Plants 

Floating Plants

Learn why floating plants are necessary to the balance of your pond and look beautiful at the same time.

Water lilies 

Tropicals and hardies. Which ones are best for you?

Choosing a Water Lily

I see hundreds of water liles. How can I choose the best one for me? Learn about lilies here.

Bog Plants 

Emergent plants add beauty to your pond

Bog Plants for Your Backyard Pond

Use bog plants to add upright plants to your pond.

Louisiana Iris 

A beautiful emergent plant that grows in the water and out.

Louisiana Iris

The Louisiana Iris is an early bloomer that covers Louisiana bayous in the spring. It blooms in water gardens, in bogs and in bayous all over Southern Louisiana.

Pond Maintenance 

Routine Pond Maintenance

Now that I have a backyard pond, what routine pond maintenance is needed? I have heard they are practically maintenance free. Find out how maintenance free a pond can be.

Cleaning the Garden Pond

Step by step instructions for cleaning your garden pond.

Pond Disasters

Pond disasters can happen to any pond or water garden. They are usually simple to find and easy to repair. Often a pond problem develops quickly when the ecosystem gets out of balance. How you can find your pond problems and solve them yourself with quick and easy solutions.

Spring Pond Care

Spring pond care is essential and easy. Follow the the tips below to give your plants and fish an easy transition from winter torpor to spring awakening, so your pond, fish and plants can give you pleasure all summer long.

Pond Algae: Green Pond Blues

You don't have to suffer the pond algae and green pond blues. A green pond is normal and happens easily. Your pond has turned to pea soup overnight. What can you do now? Here are several ways to keep your pond clean and clear.

Ponds Under Trees

Ponds under trees can offer planting opportunities for us that ponds in the sun cannot. Ponds under trees can demand a bit more maintenance but not enough to stop us from building our ponds under trees.

My Pond is Leaking

Learning how to repair your pond liner is the most difficult problem to solve in pond keeping. You must find holes and patch them and very often that is not an easy task.

Summertime Pond Care

Summertime pond care is only a bit different than spring pond care. When summertime weather hits, we must take a few precautions to ensure fish health.

Pond Troubleshooting - a Case Study

Pond troubleshooting is much like any other troubleshooting. Eliminate the easy problems first and then start hunting.

Fall Pond Care

Fall pond care involves a few different approaches to pond care.

Winter pond care: plants and fish

Winter pond care requires some special care, not much, but just a few things to watch. If you have not done all the nasty fall care, you must do it now. Trying to remove debris through the ice is impossible.

Winter pond care: equipment

When temperatures drop, winter pond care is necessary. Algae growth stop, so you can disconnect your filter and UV light if you have one. Remember you only need filters and UV lights if you feed fish. If you make them work for their room and board by eating submerged vegetation and in turn fertilizing it, you have no need for filtration or UV lights.

All kinds of ponds you can build 

Build an Inexpensive Pond

You can build an inexpensive pond easily and in a weekend. It can look as beautiful as any that a professional has done and you will not have spent a fortune.

Small Ponds

Small ponds in limited spaces are very difficult to design and install. When confronted with building a small pond, we pond builders tend to call it a design challenge. See some of the ways to overcome the small pond challenge

Build a Rain Garden

Build a rain garden and conserve water at the same time. Learn a few simple ways to make a rain garden.

How to Build a Koi Pond

Building a koi pond is different than building a goldfish pond or water garden. Let's talk about how to build a koi pond.

How to build a Pondless Waterfall

Pondless waterfalls are another wonderful way to have a water feature in your yard or garden. You can have a waterfall with no pond, no fish, no green water to worry about. A pondless waterfall is also great for a small space.

How to Build a Natural Swimming Pond

Natural swimming ponds are all the rage. Many people in Europe already do have natural swimming ponds and they are catching on quickly in America.

How to Build a Natural Swimming Pond - English Style

How to build a swimming pond that uses no chlorine, no chemicals and looks like a natural pond in your landscape.

Faux Rocks - The Real Deal

Faux rocks are a great substitute for expensive, heavy and unwieldy rocks for pond and waterfall building

How to Build a Bog Garden (Rain Garden)

Building a bog garden, one of many forms of rain gardens is a great way to conserve water and add another element to your garden.

Epoxy pond liners

Epoxy pond liners were around when I started building ponds back in 1987. There was not a market for the epoxy for the small residential contractor or do-it-yourselfer yet because there was not much of a pond market yet.

How to build a waterfall

Learn how to build a waterfall.

How to Build an Above Ground Pond

Occasionally ponds must be built above ground. Either the location is under trees and digging would injure the tree, the pond is to be on concrete, so digging is impossible or the pond builder is a tenant and wants to take the pond along when he moves.

Pumps, filters, skimmers and other gadgets 

Pond Filtration

Figuring out pond filtration can be a chore. I have tried to explain what pond filtration means and some different ways to do it. And choices if you choose not to use pond filtration.

Choosing a Backyard Pond Pump

From initial cost to running cost, what pump is best for your pond? There are hundreds of pond pumps to choose from: Be sure you pick what is right for you.

Pond Filters and Skimmers, Do I Need Them?

Pond filters and skimmers have been sold to the public as necessary equipment for your pond, but are they always?

Pond Gadgets

As we begin our pond keeping hobby, we find that we need certain pond gadgets. Pond gadgets are things we don%uFFFDt use often, but when we need them, we need them now, not tomorrow or on Monday.

Backyard Pond Pumps

Many backyard pond pumps to choose from: Which one is best for me?

Pond plants and fish 

Choosing Goldfish for Your Pond

Choosing goldfish for your pond can be simple if you follow a few tips. When you are choosing goldfish, shop at a pet or fish store, limit your choices, don't buy too many and don't spend much money.

Toads and Frogs in your Backyard Pond

Frogs, toads and backyard ponds go together. We build wildlife resorts in our back yard complete with room service, 400 count sheets and chocolates on the pillows and wonder why we get nightly applause from our invited amphibious residents.

Water Lilies

Water lilies are often the reason we have ponds. Water lilies lend an exotic look to the pond that we treasure, taking little care and offering much enjoyment.

Pond Plants

Pond plants can be submerged, floating or emergent. The submerged plant, usually anacharis is the key to balancing the pond ecosystem. With enough, your pond will stay crystal clear.

Floating pond plants

Floating pond plants are a necessity for the ecologically balanced pond. Like submerged vegetation, they are workhorses in your pond.

Pond Plants: Umbrella and Pitcher

Pond plant choices are many and varied. We want early bloomers, late bloomers, hardy or tropical. For every pond and bog there are plants that will thrive. Two are spotlighted here.

Pond plants: Duckweed and Water Fern

Duckweed and water fern are floating pond plants. They probably the most invasive and noxious of all of the floating plants.

Pond Plants: Arrow Arum

Arrow arum is one of the dozens of marginal or bog plants that do well in the ornamental backyard pond.

Hardy Water Lilies

How to grow hardy water lilies.

Hardy Pond Plants

Hardy pond plants for your pond

Bog Plants - The Rushes

What kinds of rushes are best for my pond?

Pond Book Reviews 

All about the Pond, Book Review-Evan-Moor publishers.

A great book for teachers of small children with many resources in one great book.

The Pond Owner's Problem Solver, a Review

The Pond Problem Solver by John Dawes, Book review, how to build a pond, where to put a pond, fish, fish diseases, pond maintenance, pond plants

Miracle-Gro Water Gardens, a Review

MIracle-Gro has produced one fine pond help book. The very best part of it is that it is spiral bound, so it will lie flat, and waterproof so you can take it outside with you, put it on the ground for reference and clean it up later.

The Curious Gardener's Almanac, a Review

The Curious Gardener's Almanac, centuries of practical garden wisdom, by Niall Edworthy, published by The Penguin Group in New York is not a book about ponds. In fact, it is not a book about gardens either. This book has no pigeon hole in which to be pushed.

The Complete Book of The Water Garden

The Complete Book of the Water Garden, by Philip Swindells and David Mason is arguably the finest, most comprehensive water gardening book ever written.

The Creative Herbal Home

The Creative Herbal Home is certainly not a book you would expect to see in the backyard water garden section of pondlady.com. So why is it here?

Miscellaneous Information 

Water Conservation and Your Backyard Pond

Our water crisis is worsening, but ponds can be a way of water conservation, not waste. Find ways to conserve water by using efficient pumps, statuary and solar power.

Starting a Pond and Water Garden Society?

Pond and water garden societies can be a great educational tool for pond keepers. If you don't have one near you, heres how to start a pond and water garden society.

The Pondkeeper' Glossary

Pondkeepers use words that most do it yourself pond builders have never heard before. What are pond builders talking about when they say GPH or dechlor? What is a spitter? What is a UV light and do I need one?

Attracting Winter Wildlife to Your Backyard Pond

In the winter our ponds lie dormant, or do they? We can keep a water supply open and give our winter garden creatures a drink and something to eat.

Decorate Your Pond for the Holidays

Decorate your pond when you decorate your house for the holidays

Toads and Frogs in your Backyard Pond

Frogs, toads and backyard ponds go together. We build wildlife resorts in our back yard complete with room service, 400 count sheets and chocolates on the pillows and wonder why we get nightly applause from our invited amphibious residents.

Ponds across the Curriculum

Over the years, I have been involved with several schools with ponds and several schools wanting the students to build a pond.