Real Estate Innovation

How to construct a water garden koi pond.

I decided to build this Koi pond after visiting Japan a number of times and admired their water gardens ponds and Koi. Our design has three ponds, the top pond has water hyacinths in it and is the filter for the pond, the water is crystal clear. The middle pond has a waterfall from the top pond where the water gets aerated. The bottom pond holds about a 2000 gallons of water and the koi.

We sit beside our water garden pond listening to soothing and relaxing water rushing down a small water fall. The dragon flies are fluttering in and around shrubs and plants, crickets are tweeting, bees are whizzing and humming birds are dancing around while the Koi swim lackadaisically around in the water garden pond.

We have about 6 water lily plants with large pink and red blossoms in the bottom water garden pond. They cover almost all the pond in the summer time but they die off back to their roots in the fall and re-grow in the spring as the days get warm and long.

We have about 40 Koi in the pond, it is hard to get an correct number as they never stop moving. I buy small Koi that are 2 to 3 inches long. They grow to over 10 inches.

We have had a lot of visitors to our pond. The most frequent ones are egrets. They land on our roof or the neighbors roofs then swoop down to our patio and wade into our pond. If I or the grandchildren see the egret, we let our dog out and he scares the egret off. He won’t jump into the pond.

We have had raccoons play in the pond and sit on the water lily containers. I watched a mother and 3 baby racoons play and try to catch the Koi.

I designed our do it yourself Koi water garden pond, with stakes and string. I installed a 3″ PVC pipe from the lower pond to the top pond to pump water. I painted the block wall with an asphalt paste behind the pond to piled dirt on this wall. I constructed 4 railroad ties in an L shape, two layers high to make the front edge of the upper pond and the waterfall into the middle pond.

I made a 1/4 circle ridge with about an 8 foot radius from the ends of the ties to make a pie shaped middle pond where water would flow over this ridge into the bottom pond. I made the lower pond about 18″ deep and put most of the dirt into the retaining walls of the upper two ponds. I enclose all the ponds with a PVC liner that was cut and glued to fit.

I bought and installed an above ground 1/5 horse power pump with a 2″ inlet and outlet. This was the right amount of water flow over the waterfall. Some times I would have to re-priming the pump when the inlet pipe sucked air.

I found a submersible pump that is 1/3 horse power and was OK to use in a fish water garden pond. You need to check the fine print as some pumps cannot be used in a fish pond. I found this out the hard way when after about 6 months my pump failed and I tried to get a replacement pump.

We’ve had this pond design for about 15 years. We have had good luck with this design and the raccoons and egrets like it too.