How to build a lily pond

I’ve always admired water plants, particularly the majestic lily, but as I do not have a pond deep enough to accommodate them, I resolved to build one at some point. That wait got considerably shortened when a friend who owns a foundry got an order from a local church to manufacture a “Christening bowl” which necessitated the making of a mould to pour the aluminium in to create it. He (rightly) thought that as the mould was already done, he might as well make a run of three: one for the original order, and two more one for each of us which we can use for a garden feature; be that a fountain or whatever. I chose to use it to grow my long-awaited lily in.

Here are the steps I have taken to prepare it. I hope that these steps will help you create your own pond or container-pond if you like, to grow this fantastic flower:

Plants need to stick to something to survive and that medium is normally soil. Ponds also have to provide that medium for successful planting. There are special kinds of soil that you can use for ponds depending on the kind of plants you want to use in it as well.

As I intended to plant lilies mainly, they need “clay based” soil, I got the required soil from a local nursery (Jannusan Exotics); for the pot I was using, two bags (80 liters) were enough.

As the soil can make the water murky, I was advised by the garden centre’s keeper to keep a 2 centimeter layer of washed garden sand on top of the soil to lessen the chances of the water becoming murky and cloudy. He was right of course and it seems to have worked so far.

Once that is done, then filling the pot or pond with water is the next step, but be careful! If you just plonk the hose in there and turn it on, you will just mix the sand with the soil and you will create an almighty mess! That water is going to remain murky for weeks if not more. So caution needs to be exercised and simple steps taken to try to keep the water clear:

What you should do is place old newspapers on top of the sand so that they keep the sand from rising, and also reduce the pressure of the water as much as possible and spread its spill on a wider area so that it does not impact the sand too much. This you can do by putting the hose in a plastic bag as you can see from the picture above. The hose now will fill th bag and the bag will gently allow the water to seep out of its top into the pot or pond.

Some murkiness cannot be avoided of course, but at least we have limited it as much as we could.

Now we’re practically done, all that is needed is add the niceties into your pot or pond and let it settle. I chose to put an oxygenator plant in the pot (as I intend to put some fish in it in a few days once everything is settled) and some dog weed which I hope is going to cover the surface to reduce the light going through to control the amount of algae which might grow in it, and to reduce the temperature as the pot will receive the full morning sun and it is made of aluminium.

I’m done now and this is how it looks so far. I’ll most probably post some more pictures of its progress on my Flickr account if you wish to keep track of my successes and failures in gardening.

this article originally appeared on my blog, Mahmood’s Den but moved here on 25 Oct, ‘07 to keep all gardening topics in one place