Building an earth pond for year round enjoyment

Watching your backyard being transformed by spring. Want to create something beautiful to enjoy year round?

Many years ago, in fact to be accurate, almost 30 years ago, I dug my first earth pond at my house. An earth pond is simply a large hole dug into the landscape without using any type of membrane to hold the water from seeping away. Whether or not this large hole in the ground will fill up with water and then retain this water is essentially the “sixty-four dollar question” as my mother used to say. More on that later.

My optimum location for this first pond was a low spot in the terrain which was about one hundred and fifty feet behind the house. I had heard that digging a test hole was a good idea and this made good sense to me. Due to the fact that I had a combination of limited funds and a young family, my test whole consisted of taking a head shovel and hacking out a narrow cylindrical depression that went into the soil to a depth of about three feet. A few days later a torrential rain occurred and I literally ran back to my test location in hopes of finding a mini pond. In consternation I stared down into a whole completely devoid of water. Little did I realize that in drought stricken August even a torrential rain is completely absorbed by surrounding plans and parched soil. Lesson number one.

Later that fall the excavation contractor who had dug out the basement for a home was across the road doing some work for my neighbor. Seizing on this opportunity I asked him how much of these machines would cost me by the hour? Seventy five dollars was his reply. Perfect was my reply. “I’ll take an hour.” Although he tried to tell me that large machines of this nature were not contracted by only one hour I was not to be deterred. People can be very convincing when they are close to their dreams, even if they have mortgage payments and young children to feed. At least I was anyway. So over he comes and one hour later I have a three feet deep rectangle that stretches seventy feet long by twenty wide.

Now here comes the magic! The next day, a miserable, dreary, cold day in late November, a combination of rain, sleet and snow completely filled “the pond.” Hallelujah, a pond man is born. You see in November all plant life is dormant and the ground was already saturated from the fall it rains. Water seeks a path of least resistance so my newly created void filled up. But wait, the magic was only beginning because that night the temperature dropped like a stone and a flash freeze occurred. Imagine the delight of my hockey playing, figure skating family when we realize that we had a gigantic a skating rink where there once was a pond! Is it nature grand?

As I write this I’m looking out across the backyard to the very first section of water. It has never seeped away and has provided all of us with countless hours of pleasure and excitement. Friends, relatives and neighbors have chased frogs in the summer and hockey pucks in the winter. It’s a little longer and wider than its original shape because pond men and beavers share a lot in common, we are never quite satisfied with the overall surface area of our own ponds. That’s also a story for another day…