Run-down Neglected Pond to Relaxing Backyard Oasis

When Steph bought her house there was a water feature in the backyard. It wasn't working at the time so she hired someone to fix it. He sort of fixed it, but it truly was never 100 percent. Plus, the electrical situation was a nightmare.

When I discovered THAT situation, I encouraged Steph not to run the pump for safety reasons. We enjoyed the pond but over time, the rocks fell into the water, and with the water no longer moving, it was a haven for mosquito breeding.

Two factors that finally pushed Steph into removing it were 1. her second greyhound, Tosh, really wanted to get in the water and 2. my grandson practiced rock skimming and created a hole in the liner. Overnight the water dropped 12 inches. It was time!

Materials/Tools:

• Shovels
• Leaf skimming net
• (50) 1 cu. ft. Top Soil
• (35) Vigoro 0.5 cu. ft. Bagged Pea Gravel Pebbles
• 3 ft. x 50 ft. WeedBlock Weed Barrier Landscape Fabric
• Vigoro 4 in. Weed Barrier Landscape Fabric Garden Staples (25-Pack)
• Hampton Bay Heathermoore Outdoor Patio 8 ft. x 5 ft. Grill Gazebo
• AMES 2233400 9-Pound Steel Tamper with Hardwood Handle, 48-Inch
• Keter Circa 37 Gallon Round Deck Box, Patio Table for Outdoor Cushion Storage, Brown

The pond was actually quite lovely, but as you can see it had fallen into disrepair. Most of the large rocks had fallen in plus it was very unattractive once Steph added garden blocks to visually deter greyhound, Tosh, from jumping in!

The first step and probably the most tedious was netting the fish and rehoming them. It took a couple of days and about five trips to rehome them.

*The only fish in this pond were mosquitofish. They were returned to their native lake.*

We started by removing all the garden blocks as well as the rocks that lined the pond. Over the course of a few days, we punctured the pond liner with a Pencil Point Digging Bar to slowly lower the water level. As the rocks that had fallen into the pond were exposed, those were removed. We also removed the muck and leaves as those were exposed using a shovel and rake.

We set up a staging area for all the various size rocks and garden blocks so they only had to be moved once. The rocks were organized according to size.

Once all the rocks and muck were removed, we simply pulled up the plastic liner, rolled it up, and set it out to be picked up on trash pickup day.

Once the pond was cleared out, it was time to fill in the hole. We used around 50 bags of topsoil to fill in the area.

We would have preferred to get a load of dirt delivered, but there is no place at Steph's house that was flat and open enough where a load of dirt could be placed.

Many, many trips were made to the Home Depot for dirt. Tip: you can order bags of dirt and pick them up curbside at The Home Depot. The associates will load it into your car for you.

(This has nothing to do with this tutorial, but we posted a video of how the greyhounds "helped" with the dirt. If you're a dog fan, you might enjoy this. Let's just say, that the greyhounds dug out the dirt about as quickly as we added it!)

We used a tamper to help compact the dirt fully into the pond area. A couple of heavy rainstorms also help to compact the dirt into this area.

The backyard is covered in pea gravel as no grass will grow back there due to the tree coverage. Before we started to add the new gravel, we rented a stump grinder to remove a stump near the former pond edge. To prep the area for gravel, we laid down landscape cloth and secured it into place with landscape staples.

We added bags of gravel over the area and leveled it out with a rake.

This was the fun part!

We decided to reuse all the rocks in the new oasis space.

The majority of the rock got placed as shown. We put these in this area to keep anyone from stepping between the patio and plants as well as placing them in a way to keep anyone from using this area to get to the seating area. There is a slope here which we felt was unsafe so putting rocks here deter all humans, but not so much the dogs.

The large flat stones from the spill-over area of the pond were put down to create a designated walkway to the new seating area.

The other rocks were placed near other plantings.

We assembled a small canopy near the fence and moved into two plastic Adirondack chairs. The round storage table was moved into position and we added cushions we already had on hand to the chairs.

This is now a relaxing, chill space to sit and enjoy nature. We also hang dog grooming supplies in the area intended for BBQ tools so we can conveniently brush the dogs while relaxing outside.

Although the pond was a nice feature, this area of the backyard is so much more functional and relaxing.