Happy Waters Pond Club

Pond Perfect
Create a backyard water retreat
by Barbara K. Iverson

“If there is magic on the planet, it is in the water,” according to educator and nature writer Loren Eisley, who credited part of his interest in nature to spending hours enjoying a natural pond near his childhood home in Nebraska.

But you don’t have to live in the countryside to enjoy the serenity of a pond. More and more urban residents are making their own water magic by creating backyard ponds.

“Technology has changed and made it easier to build and keep a pond,” said Jean Bragdon, who manages Lurvey’s Garden Center in Des Plaines, which has carried kits, supplies, fish and plants for about eight years. However, in the past three years more stores are providing pond essentials, including Menards and a host of local gardening shops, including Wannemaker’s in Downers Grove.

Most pond owners start small, said Bragdon. These pond “newbies” usually start with a pre-formed 200- or 300-gallon pond with a pump and filter, and fountain or waterfall aerator.

Ironically, the bigger a pond is, the easier it is to keep and tend. So small-ponders end up spending more time clearing debris out of the pond and less time enjoying it. Many, such as MaryAnn Janesku, who lives in the Edison Park area on Chicago’s far Northwest Side, graduate to replacing the smaller pond with a larger free-form pond system.

Janesku’s 2 1/2-foot deep pond fills the space between her garage and the yard next door. It began much smaller.

“Bigger ponds are easier to take care of. I haven’t had to clean the new one as much I did the smaller one,” said Janesku, who added, “Moving water means no bugs.”

Janesku was among the three dozen people at a meeting of the Happy Waters Pond Club, which meets the first Thursday of the month at Lurvey’s Garden Center. The meetings are free and open to the public.

At the meetings, you will find pond aficionados such as Chicagoan Robert Kociubinski, who has a 4,000-gallon free form pond in his backyard. And then there’s Jeff Beckman of Northbrook, who installed underwater lighting in his pond that measures 12 by 17 feet and is three feet deep. Marilee and Bill Kulterman say their water garden will “eventually get bigger,” but currently it’s a 200-gallon, two-piece, pre-formed pond with waterfall behind their home in Jefferson Park.

Most club members said they used natural approaches to maintaining their ponds, which is good news to Gary Graber, pond expert and sales representative for VG Supply Co.

“Americans like shortcuts and are tempted to use chemicals to balance their ponds,” he told them at a recent meeting of Happy Waters Pond Club. But Graber suggested water gardeners avoid chemicals and “build an ecosystem and let nature take its course.”

Balance means water clear enough to see through and rocks, plants and fish. But another part of the equation is the ratio of time and effort needed for upkeep to the time left for enjoying the sights and sounds of a pond.

New devices, called bio-falls, combine a strainer and biological filter and work with a bio-filter bacteria colony to kill algae and keep the pond system in balance without chemicals.

A skimmer, or surface filter, captures floating debris before it sinks to the bottom and decays, reducing the work of the natural approach to keeping the pond ecosystem in balance.

Getting Started

Longing to capture your own magic? First, consider available space. Any kit or set of directions for making a pond has to be adapted to its site.

Here are some tips.

Constructed ponds vary in size, but in the Zone 5 climate of the Chicago area 24 inches is deep enough for “over-wintering” hardy plants and goldfish and their close relatives, koi.

Don’t dig your pond in the lowest part of your yard. Flooding and run-off are not good. Consider the kind of soil you’ll be digging: Clay isn’t easy or fun to excavate. For a fuss-less water feature, try a pondless waterfall kit. These are easy to build and don’t present safety concerns that a pond more than two feet deep might present.

Understand the difference between a sump pump and your pond pump. A sump pump moves lots of water quickly. It can empty the pond for cleaning in a hurry. It’s not designed to operate continuously, year after year. The pump that re-circulates pond water moves water more slowly, but can run day and night for years without breaking down.

Most pond-keepers start with a kit for a couple of reasons. The size, volumes, shapes and pressure of all the parts of a kit are matched and for a first-time builder it maximizes the chance of success without trial and error.

There are two basic kinds of kits: smaller pre-formed ponds and free-form kits with liners that come in a variety of sizes. A good kit comes with the pumps, filters, tubing, fittings and other accessories such as an aerator or waterfall, along with the material to line the pool.

For pre-formed ponds, dig a hole the size of the form and put the form into it. Most of these ponds are no deeper than 24 inches. Fill in any airspace around the bottom of pool with dirt or your pond may not be able to over-winter plants and fish.

Set up the pump and aerator, fill the pond and sit back and relax. You don’t use a skimmer on this kind of pond but remember that tap water contains chlorine, and you’ll need to let it sit or treat it to remove the chlorine if you are going to put fish in your pond. Choosing the right plants and fish is a story of its own.

Free-Form Ponds

If you want to build a free-form pond, here’s a general introduction. First, mark out an irregularly shaped area with no sharp corners. Mark it out smaller than the actual size of the liner to account for error.

Lay out where the bio-falls and skimmer sit, keeping in mind that the skimmer circulates the water, while the bio-falls aerates or adds oxygen to the water. Position them so there won’t be any “dead spots” where the water doesn’t move.

Dig a trench for the hoses and put in the plumbing. Next, excavate the pond area by digging out eight inches over the whole pond and then working around to create ledges for a natural look and to accommodate plants. Ledges are a safety feature in case a child or dog should fall in.

Make the deepest part at least 24 inches deep if you want to over-winter fish or plants. If you shorten this depth by just an inch or two, your fish and/or plants probably won’t survive.

Put in the liner and set up the skimmer at the lowest part of the pond. Bury the skimmer for a natural look. Then lay in big and small rocks to hide the liner and fill in the bottom.

Fill the pond and have some lunch when you get to this stage. Build a waterfall and landscape the edges of your pond after it is filled. The bio-falls is useful but unsightly, so most people build an earthen berm to hide it for aesthetic reasons.

Now clean up and add the bacteria. The bacteria are living organisms with a faintly unpleasant odor. In ponds with no bio-filter, sprinkle bacteria (a few teaspoons) around the surface of the water. If the pond has become green with algae, the bacteria will normally clear it up within a day or so, depending on the size of the pond and water temperature.

If you are designing a waterfall, the relationship of the rise, run and weir (spillway) size are critical so that the waterfall won’t be either a fire hose or a trickle. The average waterfall moves 1,200 gallons per hour over one inch and kits are pre-configured so you won’t have to do the math to get your waterfall flowing.

For a detailed step-by-step guide to decreasing time and effort when you are building a free-form pond, use Aquascapedesigns.com and the 20-step method.

Barbara K. Iverson, Ph.D., a journalism faculty member at Columbia College Chicago, spends time outside class near her backyard pond.