Water garden (pond) end June 2013

prowicz family water garden (pond) progress
end june 2013

our pond is really looking great. I am amazed how things have progressed since may with relatively little work or effort on our part.

enjoy the photos!

Building our original pond, c. 2003 Des Plaines IL

(we are re-blogging this from our web site; article 

was written in 2003 but recently updated for 2013.)

In the spring of 2002, we had purchased our first home in Des Plaines, IL and quickly discovered some problems with the yard.

The first problem was that it was an overgrown mess that neither of us had any clue how to deal with.

The second problem was that we had a sump outlet that was very busy, due to our close proximity to the Des Plaines River (approximately 300 yards) and thus our property was in a flood plain and "low".

Because of storm water regulations with regard to the city sewers we were required to shut off the house's valve and piping system that had been set up in the 50's to send the sump water from our house into the city sewer. Once that was complete, we did what everyone else did, and just sumped the ground water from under our house out into the back yard.

Soon it became obvious that we had an indentation in the middle of our back yard, as water started to collect there. Michael had optimistically built a fire pit in that very spot and I think we used it once or twice, but meanwhile we had some landscapers come in to clear out the jungle in the yard (old overgrown shrubs, half dead trees, etc.) and he had directed the sump pipe into the fire pit in order to keep the yard dry while the clearing work was ongoing.

When the water started to pool in the fire pit we joked about it being a tiny pond and wasn't that a cute idea. The more we worked in the yard the more interested we got, finally deciding to type "backyard pond" into a search engine on the Internet and finding a whole new world we didn't even know existed.

Water Garden, month #1 (May 2013)

My husband Michael and our three kids, dog, and two horses moved into this house June 2005. We had our fish pond built behind our bedroom window shortly thereafter, planted the plants from our old house and brought our five year old goldfish home to live.

Then, we did nothing. For eight years.

Thank goodness for the best pond builder on the planet: Joe Hoffman (Euroscapes.net) He built us such a great pond that it survived just fine for those eight years ... so fine that it took me only three full days off work the first week of May to pull it into relatively "ready for the season" condition.

BTW: We now have only one child living at home full-time, two children in college, two dogs, two cats and six horses (having acquired and lost several here and there along the way of the feline and equine species.)

We hope you enjoy the photos we took of the pond's first week of maintenance in eight years. All photos taken on May 3, 2013. In the interest of not thoroughly disgusting myself we did not take any "before" photos ;-)

Gargoyle

Veggie filter

Waterfall

Goldfishes

The pond, in its entirety

Pond and barn