7 benefits of constructing a pond, irresistible beauty!

Welcome to this segment of jump in the pond where we address the question “why would anyone want a backyard pond or water garden in their yard?” Good question! In this post we will dive into the many benefits of constructing a pond in your outdoor living space. We will cover the personal benefits, the natural benefits, and the educational benefits.

Benefits of Constructing a Pond. Table of Contents.

• Personal Benefits
  • Benefit 1. The sight of a pond
  • Benefit 2. The sound of a pond
  • Benefit 3. The Touch of a Pond
• The Benefits to Nature
  • Benefit 4. Clean water
  • Benefit 5. Food production from home
  • Benefit 6. Your Pond, food, and fossil fuels
• Educational
  • Benefit 7. Ponds are educational opportunities

Personal Benefits of constructing a pond

Lets start with the personal benefits of constructing a pond. Often we are looking for an escape from the rush of the world. One thing a pond offers is exactly this. It does it in a number of really important ways. Lets talk about it through the senses so you can get a feel for what I mean 🙂

A water Garden is much like a planted garden in that it is alive, however the diversity of life and eco system it creates is much more vast than your conventional planted garden. With the addition of water in your garden you attract many other types of life. Butterflies, dragonflies, birds, and fish that you have never seen before. Lets go over

The sight of a pond

First sense is sight, visually these works of art are stunning. When we design them we make them a focal point. The primary viewing angle should always allow you to see it from areas in your home like kitchen or bay door windows so you always have access to momentary enjoyment of the waterfalls, streams and fish swimming.

The ability to look out a bay door and see a body of water, a stream and waterfalls while eating dinner, reading a book, or any other activity you are doing while at home is one of the priceless benefits of constructing a pond! And its not just in the summer, ponds are seasonally beautiful, in the winter the Ice formations are epic!

Then there is the visual experiance up close. When you sit near them the fish will draw you into a meditational state of mind that pulls you away from stress like nothing else. Koi fish swim is a way that sets the mind at ease, something about their movement set s the mind at ease.

These fish were originally farmed in japan for food, eventually the farmers noticed mutations and realised the typical golden brown koi was actually a colorful fish. They later breed them with German varieties and now they have become internationally know as living art. Some even sell for millions of dollars if you can believe it! So another one of benefits of constructing a pond is that you can grow beautiful friendly pets!

We talked about streams and waterfalls from windows from your house. Water is always moving so one of the benefits of constructing a pond is also in the visuals of the steams and falls up close, they are never the same. The ever changing water allows the mind to both relax but never get board. I have never heard anyone say, “I just spent 2 hours watching my pool” but with a pond its a common every day experiance. Once integrated into a yard the water will feel as though it has been flowing there for generations.

Many people ask us, does the water turn green so you cant see the fish? this is a good question! And the answer is not if its built properly. When the biological filtration nature has set up is built in proportion to the pond size the algae famous for making water green does not have a chance to grow!

Then there is the plant life, water plants are just as numerous in variety as garden plants, some flower at different times of year, other attract wildlife. Visually as these plants move and grow your water garden will change day by day season to season and year by year. It will age, like the old adage, wine!

Then there is the animal life a backyard pond attracts, we already mentioned koi fish. But then there are the birds, butterflies and dragonfly’s. Study’s have shown that birds will change their daily flight patters to make your yard a more regular stop where there is water.

When we installed our pond in our hour after we bought it this was the first thing we noticed. The site of rare birds made us ting they were not a rare as we thought. And the butterflies are epic! if you plant the right plants you will attract all kinds of native butterflies on a regular basis.

Ponds are mailable in their construction, want to make it bigger, you can add to it, smaller thats fine too! unlike many other outdoor living spaces this one can change to your needs as often as you like! I recall my wife saying she did not really want a pond the first time we built one personally, she reluctantly allowed me to put it in after I promised if she did not like it I would fill it in.

The second year I was adding 1500 gallons of more space, a natural spring inspired pool for my young girls to swim in, and more fish, all at the request of my wife. Now If I’m looking for her, I start by looking out towards our water garden. So certainly the visual benefits of constructing a pond in your yard are massive, especially for your spouse!

The sound of a pond!

Second lets cover another of the benefits of constructing a pond, how it sounds! There are a number of sounds that accompany a water garden. People are a good place to start, the one thing a pond does is make people happy, children laugh and comment on all the wonderful aspects, adults say wow this is relaxing, or sigh in relief for the escape it provides. This sets a tone for enjoyment, people are just happy when they are near your water garden.

Then there is the water, the streams and falls can be designed to sound like rivers, falls, brooks or light streams. The main thing this does is hide the ambient sounds of the city or neighbors, once your near it you hear it and nothing else, not because its loud but because its alluring to the focus of the mind!

Then you also have the splashing of feet in the water, people swimming in the water if you build a recreational pond, or fish splashing as they breach the surface gently to grab some food from your hands. And lets not forget, when you open the windows of your house this living space sings a song for you to enjoy!

During restful times open a window or door and invite the sound of a babbling brook into your home. One of the best benefits of constructing a pond is the sound of the the birds these works of art attract.

Did you know the birds in your area will change their flight pattern to include your yard on a regular basis! All of a sudden you will see teh benefits of constructing a pond when the birds every day you may have only been lucky to see a few times a year before. But thats sight, along with that come their songs! You get to listen to them being happy as they bath, drink, and feed off of you water garden.

Don’t forget the wind as it lows through your plants, that benefits of constructing a pond sounds awesome! So clearly the benefits of constructing a pond in your to both create sound and block out sound pollution are immeasurable.

The Touch of a Pond!

Last but not least in personal benefits of constructing a pond is touch. Imagine the feeling of fresh water as clean as a northern lake on your feet or whole body available in your yard all the time! This is what a backyard pond construction will bring to you.

Then there is the rocks, they have an awesome warming effect or cooling effect. Some rocks hold the heat from the sun and will hold that heat as the sun goes down and the evening cools. Then there are some rocks that are the opposite, great for outdoor hot areas quartzite and granite rocks actually have a cooling effect as they do not like to hold heat. They pull the cool of the ground up and can be placed strategically for where you might sit with your feet in the water on a hot day!

Of course it also possible to grow food along side you water feature. And nothing feels better than organic food still on the vine as you check it for ripeness!

That give us the bonus sense of taste, if you build one of our harvest tables with your water feature you will taste food like you have never before, low maintenance fruits, vegetables, and salads growing like they would in Eden right in your yard!

2. The Benefits of Constructing a Pond for Nature

Cleaning water

As you read above there are a whole bunch of benefits of constructing a pond for the wild life, lets get into that a little deeper. First is clean water. Often rain runoff will go down a driveway picking up waist and end up in the city runoff system, then it moves out into the rivers and lakes.

This is not what nature intended, our bogs swamps and natural ponds used to be mother natures dirty water reservoirs. They would hold the water and allow the plants native to them clean it up before it ended back out in the rivers and lakes. So how does this happen when you build your backyard water garden?

Well first, one of the major benefits of constructing a pond is you stop the water from entering the runoff system in the city that drains into rivers. Instead the water goes into your yard where it is cleaned by your plants instead. Then when you need to water your lawn or gardens you would normally pull in treated drinking water from the city. It’s filled with chlorine and other chemicals gardens hate and uses even more recourses up in what it takes to make that water.

With a water garden you can keep that rain water, clean it naturally, then use it to water your garden where the rest of your yard will explode in growth from the water! returning your property back to how it was suppose to function naturally before city water was pumped all over our cities.

Food production from home

We have a saying here at pondering paradise, “closer to home”, one way we bring important factors closer to home is in food. The recourses that it takes to farm food and get it brought to your doorstep is mind-blowing! Check out the chart below to see how much water alone is needed from some of our regular food items. So another one of benefits of constructing a pond is growing organic food at arms length.

Food Item	Serving Size	Water Footprint
Steak (beef)	6 ounces	674 gallons
Hamburger	1 (includes bread, meat, lettuce, tomato)	660 gallons
Ham (pork)	3 ounces	135 gallons
Eggs	1 egg	52 gallons
Soda	17 ounces	46 gallons
Coffee	1 cup	34 gallons
Wine	1 glass	34 gallons
Salad	1 (includes tomato, lettuce, cucumbers)	21 gallons

Your Pond, food and fossil fuels

Fossil fuels are gross!. Look at the pie chart we found from the university of Michigan. Our food still relies massively on fossil fuels 19% of fuel used in the US is used for food production. Every time you pick food from your garden you save 61.4 % of the fossil fuels normally consumed to produce that same food if you were to have it brought to your house any other way. Not to mention the pesticides, herbicides and other chemicals used to grow it!

There cant be a more efficient way to both eat healthy and help save nature the headache of having to deal with feeding you the other way then to bring growing your food as close to home as possible. There is an opportunity in the benefits of constructing a pond that is exclusive to Pondering Paradise, the Harvest table. This product will take the rain runoff and the natural biology of your water garden and grow low maintenance food in abundance right at arms length from your kitchen.

Do you kill every plant you look at? Well harvest tables are for you then. No need for a green thumb, just put the plants in and away they grow on their own! Clearly another one benefits of constructing a pond in your yard is preventing more fossil fuel waist from entering nature.

Educational Benefits of Constructing a Pond

Then there is educational benefits of constructing a pond in your backyard, if you have kids and or grandkids, this living space will teach then not only how to respect the blessing of nature but how the life cycle of the earth works from beneficial bacteria all the way to plants and animals. You will have in your yard an eco system the is a it like a miniature earth.

The biological diversity is amazing, there is beneficial bacteria in all natural waters, like probiotics are to food, these bacteria’s are to water. They take any organic debris that end up in the water and break them down into ammonia, then another bacteria converts that to nitrates and nitrite that in turn the plants use to grow. then the plant give back oxygen into the water.

This is just the begin of a host of educational opportunities for all who visit your pond. Birds, plants, and butterflies are other topics we mentioned that come from the benefits of constructing a pond . But also the hidden mechanics that keep the system running.

We always like to remind people that here at Pondering Paradise our first mission is to edify people on the beauty of these works of art! We have a passion for art, nature and wildlife so sharing that passion is what we want to do whenever possible! Another one of the benefits of constructing a pond is belonging to a community of people who love this art form! Subscribe to our newsletter in the side panel for future blogs, sales, and workshops.

We hope that you enjoyed our blog and it has edified you on all the benefits of constructing a pond in your backyard can bring. As length as this post is it only just begins to touch upon all the awesome things to enjoy and learn about these awesome works of art. If you have questions or just want to learn some more feel free to reach out to us anytime!