In the middle of our backyard, there was a giant bare spot where water collected every time it rained. I couldn’t think of a better way to deal with it than to just dig it out and let it be a pond. I wanted a big pond that wrapped around the firepit in a kidney shape. You can see the foundation for my firepit project in the foreground.
Not even a couple of days into the project, we had the worst storm of the season and it filled up the hole with water. That set me back for almost a week.
M
y ideas for the project also proved to be a bit too ambitious and I had to scale it back a bit. Originally, the pond was supposed to be around 18×8′. I bought a 25×10′ epdm liner from Lowe’s for $120.It wasn’t big to get the depth I needed. I returned the first liner to Lowe’s and went looking for a bigger liner. The only places that sold bigger liners were pond supply stores. Unfortunately, their liners were upwards of $300 for the size I needed. I decided to try the ~6×6′ preformed liner sold by Home Depot for $109. 
When I got the preformed liner home, I saw how small it was compared to my original design. So, I returned it to the store too. I noticed that Home Depot had some cut to length epdm liner on rolls. They only had a 19×10′ piece left on the roll. I called around to every Home Depot in a 60 mile radius to see if any other stores had the liner on rolls. I had a lot of trouble finding any stores who knew what I was asking about. Finally, I learned from one of the garden center guys that the rolls had been part of a buyback and were no longer being stocked. In fact, they had already been taken out of the computer inventory. I decided to buy the 19×10′ piece that was left at our Home Depot. When I went to check out, it wouldn’t ring up. When I told one of the assistant managers about the buyback and that it had been taken out of inventory, they just rang it up as one of the cheapest liners they had in stock. I walked out with it for $20.
With a smaller liner in hand, I had to scale my project back to about 10×6′ The only thing harder than digging the bigger hole is making it smaller and keeping the shape. In order to backfill the pond, I drove pipe into the ground and made a makeshift dam out of old 2×6 lumber. With the dam in place, I started shoveling dirt and mud over the dam.
What a muddy mess. It took weeks for that backfill to dry out.
With the hole smaller, I was able to reshape it and install the new liner
You can see the new firepit in the background. I worked on both projects at the same time. After the liner was installed, I drained it and started adding river rock. In the photo below, you can see the GFI receptacle on the short timber post. I ran the circuit from our garage to power the pond pump and lights.
I used leftover Pennsylvania Fieldstone from my firepit project to form the border of the pond. The spillway for the waterfall is set on top of a couple of cinderblocks surrounded by old broken block and bricks that we had laying around. 
We covered the debris around the spillway with dirt and stone to form the hill for the waterfall. The photo below shows the first test of the waterfall. In this picture, the pump is installed in the bottom of the pond. Later, I moved the pump to a skimmer box installed in the upper left corner of the pond.
The next photo shows the landscaping we started around the pond. At this point, we only had a few plants int he ground. It looked pretty sparse and the area around the pond was still a muddy disaster.
After a few more plants and some mulch, the pond really took shape. I added solar landscape lights around the back edge of the pond and rock-shaped solar spotlights focused on the waterfall. There’s also a solar turtle-shaped light on the rocks hiding the skimmer in the lower lefthand corner of the picture. We planted a dogwood tree, azaleas and ornamental grasses on the back side of the pond to frame the area. I added anacharis, water lily and watercress to the pond to help control algae growth. We added about 2 dozen feeder goldfish. They’ve been in there for about two months and have grown to around 3-4 inches. I found some underwater led spotlights on eBay for $30. They look really good at night and the fish seem to like them. You can also see another of my Summer projects in the background, a kid’s clubhouse.
View into the pond
