Backyard Pond with a Waterfall

The backyard pond and waterfall is FINISHED!  I think.  I never know what else my husband will come up with.  As seen in the first picture below, the pond before was basically grade level with a small waterfall.  We put it in last year using a small piece of liner cloth.  Tim decided that he wanted a bigger waterfall and extra seating area around it.

We didn’t have a lot of money to invest in this so we tried to reuse as much as possible.  I suggested that he make it out of concrete because the larger pond liners and fabric can get quite expensive.  It also helped that he had extra bags of concrete left over from another job.  He started by building a level footing for the cinder blocks.  The cinder blocks will give us the extra height not only for the pond and waterfall but also the seating.  He hand troweled the cement in the bottom of the pond but that didn’t quite work the way he wanted so he built another form to pour the sides of the pond.  He made the right end of the pond deeper for the pump to go in.  After the concrete was dry, it was painted and sealed with an epoxy concrete paint.

As you can see in the above picture, his idea worked out really good.  We now have additional seating.  The cinderblocks were covered with slate tile and topped with flagstone.  The slate mimics the bar in the outdoor kitchen to the right of this area.  It was my job to arrange all the stone and I made sure that it covered the cinder blocks and the edge of the concrete pond trying to make it look as natural as possible.

It was more difficult to build the waterfall.  We probably tore it down about 4 or 5 times before we got it right.  Unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures of this step but I’ll try to explain what he did. Okay, we didn’t buy anymore rocks or flagstone but we did buy a load of sand that was used to fill in around the pond and mound up in the back.  He submerged a really large bucket, almost the size of a barrel, in the sand up at the very top.  There is a hose that runs from the pump in the pond to this bucket.  This fills the bucket up and causes it to over flow down the rocks.  Originally, he used the old liner fabric for the waterfall but it kept leaking so he tore it back down and used concrete for this part also.  We arranged and rearranged and REARRANGED the rocks and flagstone until we got the right look and sound that we wanted.  The noise level depends a lot on the positioning of the rocks and how far the water falls.

See my concrete bird?  I got him from a yard sale a couple of weeks ago for $5! I’m thinking about painting it to look more realistic.  What do you think? Should I paint or just leave it alone?

We added in a few plants including some Aztec Grass from Home Depot.  Due to the extreme heat of the summer, the plants are not looking as well as what they should.

Hunter put this piece of telephone pole in.  Tim plans on getting some type of rope and wrapping it around the pole.  He wants a pelican to sit on it but it hasn’t found one that works.

Of course, he added in a few tiki torches!  He loves these things.  We probably have about 25 of them!  We purchased them from Home Depot.

I also arranged the flagstones up top to cover the top of the bucket.  I wanted it to look as natural as possible.  We are really enjoying our new pond and especially the waterfall.  I love the sound of the water!  It is so relaxing!

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