If you follow along no Instagram or Facebook, then you know we have been sharing about our duck pond progress. We decided right after the holidays that it would be so wonderful to be able to give our ducks a true duck pond to swim in, while us humans, get to enjoy having a water feature in our backyard. As I always talk about here, its about making home an experience We now have one more detail to our yard to enjoy and to watch our little duck friends swim around is already bringing us some joy.

Yesterday I shared some amazing pond inspiration that I’ve been pinning for a while now. I love the feel of an Old World style park pond with a fountain, but I also love a great farm pond too. So my goal was how to accomplish the look of both with the function of having the ducks be able to swim here but also have it kept clean. We chose to have a local pond installer do the project for us. Though we do a ton of DIY ourselves, we know when something is out of our limits and creating a pond that would also require a filter system, we chose would be best to have the pros with this one.

The process was seamless, we chose to do a 35×35 size pond (though I could have gone bigger if money was not something to consider) We knew we wanted something that made an impact in our yard, especially with all the trees around that would easily overwhelm a smaller size pond.

A liner would be best so we could keep the pond clean and we chose to have a filter and UV light installeto help keep it clean from algae and all that duck poop!

With a liner type pool having a rock border is a must. I can’t say it was the most idela look, I really wanted something that would have a grass beach meet the water, but again having a liner and needing it for the function of duck swimming we had to have a rock border. One detail that I knew I wanted for sure, was to have larger slate rocks (we had him switch out some of the small ones because it felt too busy and too “man made”) so it would feel most natural.

As for the shape I was torn between having something very symmetrical like the regal style ponds of my dreams or having something that would go with the backyard “natural” feel. I ended up choosing the more natural and we decided to shape the pond to appear as if it was bending around the trees. I can tell you the ducks certainly love that detail too!

One last detail for the ducks, a rock mosaic beach…our pond builder suggested having this ramp so it would be easy for the ducks to get in and out of the water. They laid out rocks in a mosaic feel with concrete. I love this detail and the ducks use it even if they are just going in for a drink.

What’s left to do?

The process took about 6 days total between digging, plumbing, the liner, rocks, leveling the dirt, and filling the pond. But we have a ways to go to get it to looking how we want. That’s where greenery and plants are going to come in. Of course being only March here in NJ we have to wait two months for this next process, but I dream of having ivy climbing over the rocks, some beautiful flowers, and pretty greenery. I also want to take my two concrete fleur de lis planters and put them on each side of the beach with maybe some cherry blossoms or boxwoods. Lastly, we would love to had some sort of fountain out here. Of course that means some very good thrifting is ahead of me, but that would be a great way to add that European style pond feel to our rural NJ pond.

We are loving it already and so are our sweet ducks! I look forward to warm days out by the pond reading a good book and watching these sweet babies glide across the water.

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Are you a duck mom too? Catch some more of my duck posts HERE, where I share about their DIY Duck run! Or our plans from last spring.