Building Ponds and Waterfalls for Your Rock Garden
Impressive rock garden ponds and waterfalls can be built by anyone. These are very cheap to build and do not require much instructions. Your landscape will really stand out in a spectacular fashion when you have a pond or waterfall as the center of your rock garden.
The key point here is that for a beginner, you will have a lot of engineering to put up with since it not a simple task to build a pond which does not leak. The land where the pond or waterfall will be is your first consideration. Waterfalls and ponds take up a huge amount of space so a large space of empty land will be needed. Make sure that this area is free of vegetation or debris. Make very sure that there are no drain pipes or water runoffs nearby. You want your rock garden pond safe from contaminates.
If your pond is built too close to a grove of trees, you will constantly be removing dead leaves and other dead plant matter. If you place your rock garden pond where it will get full sunlight, it will help the plants to grow better. Next, you need to decide what size pond you want to build. Do you want aquatic plants and fish in your pond? If you make your pond too small neither plants nor fish will survive. It would be much better to have a larger pond than a smaller one. Small ponds are very constrictive for vegetation which needs room to grow. Now you will need to rope off the area you have chosen for your rock garden pond.
Trace the area that you want to build the pond in by putting a stake in the ground. Next secure adjacent stakes together with a nylon cord. When the entire pond area has been staked off, dig down about six inches for the first shelf, or coping shelf as it is also called. Next, dig down another foot to establish the second shelf and then another six inches for the actual floor of the pond. Each level of the pond will have different fish and plants. This will stabilize the pond and will be much easier to take care of without worrying about the fish or plants dying off.
Once the hole is dug, fill it with soft sand and compress this sand very tightly. At this point of the construction, you will probably do better to go to a home improvement store to find materials needed for the next step. Now its time for the pond liner and the way to get the measurements for this is to take the largest width and length, then calculate the depth and twice what you have dug. This will give you the correct size of liner that you will need for your pond.
Get barefooted and lay the liner on the bottom of the pond, working it into the shelves you made. Always follow the contours of the pond. Once the liner is placed, its time to fill it with water. Waterfalls come as a kit and you will have to integrate the waterfall with the pond. Most shops which carry these kits have instruction books on how to accomplish this integration.
Once everything is finished you can add the plants and fish. Then just sit back and admire the creation that you have just made. Your rock garden pond and waterfall will be the envy of the neighborhood.