How to build a koi water garden pond. |
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| Written by Bruce Contryman | ||||||
| Tuesday, 22 July 2008 | ||||||
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I designed and built this Koi water garden pond after visiting Japan a number of times and admired their water gardens with Koi. The design has three ponds, the top pond is filtered by water hyacinths that float on the water, the water is crystal clear. The middle pond has a waterfall from the top pond and aerates the water. The bottom pond is the largest and holds about a 2000 gallons of water. We enjoy relaxing beside the pond listening to the water cascades over the waterfall into the pond. Dragon flies dart in and around the shrubs and plants, bees and humming birds are busy flying from flower to flower. We sit for hours lazily in our lounge chairs listening and watching while the Koi swim around in the water garden pond. We have about 6 water lily plants with large pink and red blossoms in the bottom water garden pond. They cover almost all the pond in the summer time but they die off back to their roots in the fall and re-grow in the spring as the days get warm and long. We have over 40 multi colored Koi in the pond. I purchase small Koi that are 2 to 3 inches long to stock the water garden pond where they will grow over 10 inches long. Egrets are the most frequent visitors to our pond. They will fly onto our roof or the neighbors roof then drop down onto our patio and wade into our pond. If we see the egret, we will let our dog chase them off. He hasn't jumped into the pond since he was a pup. We have also had raccoons play in the pond and try to catch the koi. We watched a mother and 3 baby racoons try to catch our Koi. I used stakes and strings to outline the pond design for our do it yourself Koi pond. I placed 3" PVC pipes from the pump in the lower pond to the top pond. I used an asphalt paste on the block wall before I piled dirt against it. I placed 4 railroad ties two layers high in an L shape to make the front edge of the upper pond and the back edge of the middle pond for the waterfall. I then made a 1/4 circle ridge from the ends of the ties to make a small middle pond where water would roll over the full 1/4 circle edge into the bottom pond. I dug the lower pond about 18" deep putting most of the dirt into the retaining walls of the upper two ponds. I covered all the ponds with a PVC liner that I cut and glued to fit. I started with a 1/5 horse power above ground pump with a 2" inlet and outlet. This provided a good flow of water over the waterfall. Sometimes it would lose its suction and I would have to re-priming the pump. I found a submersible pump that is 1/3 horse power and was OK to use in a fish water garden pond. You need to check the fine print as some pumps cannot be used in a fish pond. I found this out the hard way when after about 6 months my pump failed and I tried to get a replacement pump. I have rebuilt our pond about 3 times but we have had good luck with this design and the raccoons and egrets like it too. We've had this pond design for over 15 years.
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Can you construct your own water garden or
Koi water garden pond? Go to Bruce Contryman's web site for directions
on how to design and construct a water garden pond. How to construct a water garden pond How to design a water garden water garden pond
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| Last Updated ( Thursday, 20 August 2009 ) | ||||||
