We have a small pond in the front yard that I made about 10 years ago. I dug a hole about 5 ft wide, 12 ft long and from 4 to 18 inches deep. I contoured it the way I wanted, lined it with sand, then covered that with a felt blanket. I cut a thick plastic pond liner to fit, patching the edges together with waterproof kiddie pond sealant.

At ten years of age, our front yard pond is heavily overgrown and needs thinning.

After adding rocks and placing the pump where I wanted, I filled it with water, planted taro, water iris, water hyacinth, a couple of dwarf rushes–straight and curly–and some pennywort. Or was it penny royal? Can’t remember. But that was a mistake. The pennywhatever escaped the pond and took over the yard.

Orange County Vector Control supplies us with mosquito fish to prevent mosquitoes in the pond. I’ve put goldfish in it on occasion, but the raccoons just eat them. An alternative to the mosquito fish is spraying with Bacillus thuringiensis israelii, a bacterium that specificaly targets mosquitoes and won’t harm butterfly larvae.

We have enjoyed ten years of looking at our pretty pond, seeing all of the wildlife that it attracts. Our native Western Redbud blooms by it in spring, the irises and water hyacinth blaze blue in the summer, and our liquid amber trees drop their yellow and burgandy leaves onto the reflective water in fall. All year long, our pond is alive with visiting birds, butterflies, dragonflies and other wildlife. 

But that’s the front yard pond. I had a small round pond liner that I bought a few years ago to hold water plants while I was transferring them. I decided to make a water garden out of it as part of my backyard makeover.

Hole for the pond liner should be just a bit larger than the liner.

Using a prefabricated pond liner was much easier than building my own pond from scratch. First, I dug a hole a little larger than the liner, putting back a little loose soil until the hole was just the right depth. I added water to make the hole muddy so the liner would get well seated.

After the liner was in place, I added some water to help it get seated.

Normally I would have planted around the pond first, but because my space in back is so limited, I needed to get the flagstones in place as a first step. The plants would just get squeezed into whatever space was left.

I set pavers around the pond liner, leaving space between them for plants.

The next step was adding some pond planting boxes to the pond, then large gravel or small stones to hold the planters in place. The Garden of Perpetual Responsibility in front provided plenty of rocks.

Dirt in the planter boxes provides nutrients for plant growth, as well as holding them in place.

I harvested plants from my front pond, which desperately needed thinning anyway, and set them into gravel in the planting boxes. I also added a pot of a new black taro, Colocasia esculenta “Black Midnight.” Gorgeous plant. I first saw it on the garden tours in Raleigh with the other writers at the Garden Writers Association conference.

I added dirt to within a half inch of the top of the boxes, arranging the plants as I filled. The last step was adding decorative gravel to the boxes and the bottom of the pond. I had a bucket of it in the garage, leftover from the last time I had an aquarium in the house.

The new little water garden is finished.

The final step was planting thyme, chocolate mint, and sword ferns around the pond, and filling it to overflowing with water. The gravel peeks up out of the water, and will provide perching places for bees and butterflies as they drink from the pond. Now it just needs time to grow. See how easy it is to add a water garden to your yard?

Using an above ground sealed container is another way to have a water garden. At Duke Gardens in Raleigh, NC, dwarf water lilies grow in pots.

(To read more of Lou Murray’s environmental writing, see her weekly column, Natural Perspectives, in the Huntington Beach Independent at www.hbindependent.com /blogs_and_columns/)