From the category archives:

pond design

Preventing Floods

December 4, 2009

Where a natural pond is subject to a sudden increase in water volume, a water gate connected with an open ditch or culvert of sufficient size to divert the additional column of water must be built to obviate damage from floods. This sort of construction work is often complicated and had best be left to [...]

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Pond Construction

November 20, 2009

Ponds built entirely of brickwork or concrete offer certain serious objections. In the first place, their banks cannot be planted. Besides, where the winters are very cold, projecting brick or concrete walls must be protected, and it is only where the ponds form part of a formal plan, that the grey masonry edges, projecting half [...]

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Bog Gardens and Cut Flowers

November 16, 2009

The bog garden consists merely of very wet ground in which a host of interesting plants flourish. It must, of course, be beside a pond or along a stream. In spring the brown woolly fronds of cinnamon fern will first show themselves, uncoiling as they rise. The swamp rose-mallow (Hibiscus moscheutos) will give a wealth [...]

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Water Loss by Evaporation

November 12, 2009

From a surface of sixteen square feet, about a bucketful of water escapes every day by evaporation and transpiration of the plants. Stagnation is prevented by having a few fish and some submerged plants like Cabomba or Myriophyllum. It is therefore very easy to care for a garden up to six by twelve feet, even [...]

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Using Natural Springs for Ponds

November 8, 2009

It is doubtful whether it is easier to build a pond in a natural waterway, or to make it from the foundation up. Unless the natural water course can be easily diverted it will usually be better not to use it. For every stream at a distance of a hundred feet or more from its [...]

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Pond Edges

November 2, 2009

It is in the treatment of the margin that we make or mar a pond’s natural beauty. There is no one way in which native waters always meet the land, but there are some ways in which they never do. Nature never made broad borders of concrete or brick or hewn stone. Therefore avoid these [...]

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Pond Shapes

October 31, 2009

It does not offend if the small tank takes some conventional shape. A sunken tub is essentially round, and a wooden or iron box will unavoidably be square-cornered. A brick or concrete construction, if not over ten feet long, may be rectangular. But if possible avoid geometry in the garden. A bald circle with a [...]

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Make a Barrel Pond

October 30, 2009

A pond of water-lilies is a possibility for anyone who can give two square feet of water surface in a sunny spot, and it should be near at hand so that you can easily see the flowers when they are at their best. All the hardy water-lilies must be enjoyed in the morning or early [...]

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