Overview
This pond had filled with debris to the point that it reverted to a wandering stream in dry weather. With enough rain it was a pond about a foot deep. Early spring and summer pictures I'm including here show what it looked like, and what it looked like after a lot of work this fall. It was all done by hand. Sorry the pictures didn't show up in the right order. The one with the bridge we built is the way it looked this fall. We built the bridge to our own design. Let me know if you'd like more info on it - cost only $125 for materials.
Planning and Construction
The picture with the bridge installed shows how the pool ended up after a lot of hard hand labor. We decorated with a lot of rock from the hillside, piped water from a small spring to make a falls, installed 140 feet of 4-foot wide walking path, built a bridge of our own design, and landscaped it a little – there is more to do, obviously, but we’re pretty happy with progress so far.
The other pictures show how the work progressed. We raked stone out of the sediment to use as a base for the walking path around the pool where it comes to the water's edge, and used the muck we shoveled out for soil we'll use for plantings.
Landscaping, so far, is mostly stone as shown in the pictures. But plant wise, we have one canna, three ever-blooming azaleas, an Indian hawthorn, some variegated grass and a corkscrew reed as well as native horsetail reeds, ferns, grasses, liverworts, mosses, blue gentian, wild hydrangeas, dogwoods and small cedars that are growing there and we took care to protect as we worked.
Ideas for plants we could install next spring would be appreciated - this is northern Arkansas, but the pool does not go below 50 degrees in the winter because of 30 gallons per minute of spring flow at 56 degrees and two inlet paths: the falls and the original inlet stream that we let half the water flow through to preserve the natural habitat in the stream and shallows at the upper portion of the pool. We've placed muck from cleanout of the pool just above the waterline that I'm sure will not freeze, since it is directly warmed by the 50 degree water.
The other pictures show how the work progressed. We raked stone out of the sediment to use as a base for the walking path around the pool where it comes to the water's edge, and used the muck we shoveled out for soil we'll use for plantings.
Landscaping, so far, is mostly stone as shown in the pictures. But plant wise, we have one canna, three ever-blooming azaleas, an Indian hawthorn, some variegated grass and a corkscrew reed as well as native horsetail reeds, ferns, grasses, liverworts, mosses, blue gentian, wild hydrangeas, dogwoods and small cedars that are growing there and we took care to protect as we worked.
Ideas for plants we could install next spring would be appreciated - this is northern Arkansas, but the pool does not go below 50 degrees in the winter because of 30 gallons per minute of spring flow at 56 degrees and two inlet paths: the falls and the original inlet stream that we let half the water flow through to preserve the natural habitat in the stream and shallows at the upper portion of the pool. We've placed muck from cleanout of the pool just above the waterline that I'm sure will not freeze, since it is directly warmed by the 50 degree water.
