Small Backyard Designs with A DIY Water Garden Pond!Small backyard designs and ideas for your terraced back yard! We had done twice a backyard makeovers last year due to our backyard pond. We discovered that, winter is the best time to view over the whole landscape design and to decide for the changes, if desired. The only advantage for building ponds in the cold days is, the ground is stiff, and so, the shape of the pond is easily be formed. On 23rd January, we laid the 0.5 mm thick backyard pond liners when the shape of the pond was formed. The next day filled with water; and fishes. The water garden liners came with different thickness. Different thickness of liners use in different types of ponds. The small backyard pond liners we used are actually meant for the lowest temperature range to minus 10 °C. However, it was not destroyed when the temperature went down to minus 20. In another words, the 0.5 mm liners are good enough for a small garden pond.
Our backyard garden measurement is about 12 meters (L) x 5 meters (W) or 60 square meters in total. If you take off a store room, a green house, two small flower borders on the left and right edges of the garden, a small vegetable garden plot on the right side, and the nine dwarf fruit trees around the garden, it left nothing much. So, a straight and narrow version of pond is more suitable than those wide designs. A straight line design is best suitable for a small garden. Moreover, we preferred to provide a close to nature like environment, such as a river for the fishes. Never place a big pond into a small garden; unless you have no other organic gardening plan; but only a water garden! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- When you have a fish pond, obviously you will invite dragonflies, mosquitoes, backyard birds and many more colourful creatures from the nature. Most birds are welcome, but not the great fish hunter, the Grey Heron (Reiger in Dutch). He came twelve times within this winter season. Because of this Grey Heron, we have to cover the pond with a net; but the earlier recycled netting was destroyed by the heavy snow and ice blocks; so, he made 3 small ones with wood. These wooden frame wire nettings are much stronger; and we can re-use it as a sweet peas trellis or covers to protect the vegetable crops from the cabbage butterfly. When the pond construction is completed; you may love to decorate your pond edges and the garden surrounds it with your lovely flowers plants and build your simplest organic garden in it. There are many different kinds of water plants, besides those low water plants. You can consider also the annual fresh floated water plants. They are easy to grow and less expensive. Don't worry about the mosquitoes, because the Carnivorous plants, the dragon flies and the garden toads will feed on live mosquitoes and insects. Try our small backyard designs and DIY garden pond? At last we bought searose water-lily, Nymphaea 'Attraction' and Nymphaea 'Marliacea Albida'; both are able to grow in 45cm depth of water. We have added Water Iris (Iris laevigata 'Snowdrijf'), Kaffir lily (Schizostylus coccinea 'Mrs. Hegarty'), Water Lobelia or cardinalis flowers (Lobelia cardinalis), and Monkey musk (Mimulus ringens) today for the pond edges. Let's wait for their lovely blossoms in the coming summer! Water Garden Project Three - Part One
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