Choosing a Prefabricated Shape for the Garden Pond

There’s a place for a pond in the garden, but what sort of pond will it be? While not everyone has room for a lake, most gardeners have some range of choice when it comes to installing a small pond. Ponds do not need to be round or oval, since ponds are rarely perfectly round or oval in nature.

Pre-Fabricated or Preformed Pond Shapes

Visit a pond supply store, and you will note that pre-fabricated pond forms come in a number of standard but different shapes and sizes. The smallest of them may be simple ovals or circles. While these are easy to maneuver into the corner of a small townhouse lot or a deck, larger ponds with rounded corners provide more of an opportunity to add visual surprises. If you would like to move a chair or a shrub into a nook at the side of the pond, choose one of the L-shaped pre-fabricated ponds. Jellybean-shaped ponds are oval and offer two smaller nooks that are suitable for planting. Some preformed ponds are triangular with small indentations, giving both places to plant and a place for a seat by the pond.

Pond Shapes with an Edge

For those gardeners who are looking for a wetland as well as a pond, a pond with abundant edges is the way to go. Choose a pond whose edges weave in and out to provide the most space for planting wetland plants. These nooks also provide small wetland animals like frogs with places to hide and lay their eggs. By creating small areas of shallow water, this sort of pond allows for fabulous wetland greenery.

Pond Shapes That Create Places for Benches and Shrubs

In a larger pond, it is possible to create areas that naturally fit a fall leaf display, a profusion of spring flowers, or a bench for quiet meditation. Choose a pond that is not quite an oval shape. An oval-shaped pond with a single indent will provide one large place where a gardener can rest and look at the pond. The larger the pond and the more corners there are, the more ability there is to design for those corners, planning beautiful displays of tall reeds or wetland shrubs.

Preformed Ponds That are Easy to Reach

A gardener who wants to be able to easily sweep the top of the pond clean in the fall, check on fish health, or remove algae and overabundant aquatic plants should choose a pond with an edge that weaves in and out. This provides the gardener with many places to move toward the center of the pond to maintain the pond. A small, oval-shaped pond also allows the pond gardener to reach across the width of the pond.

Ponds That Provide Depth

For the pond gardener who is looking for a pre-fabricated pond for koi or other pond fish, choose one with some depth. Shallow ponds get warm in the summer time and may freeze solid in the winter. A pond that gets deep quickly removes many of the places where predators would place themselves to fish for the pond fish.

Whatever pond goes in, make sure that it also suits the surrounding environment before buying it. A pond that forces a gardener to blast through heavy rocks to install is not the best shape for the space. Choose a pond that best fits with your goals for plantings and pond access.