Thanks Mitch, Great question. We are still planing the building design and don't know how much of the backyard will be open .If everything goes as planned there will be about 30 ft between the building and the garage and a maximum area of 35 ft wide to plan a pond and anything else we want to include in the landscaping. I know my wife would prefer not to have any grass and have pavers to have it easier to maintain. I'm not sure if I should hire a professional to design the pond and yard or if I should try to do it myself. I have had a pond for about 7 years and have seen dozens of ponds on the pond tours over the years so I pretty much know what i like.Also there are some great pics of ponds on gpf to get ideas from. I'm guessing a good size pond would be 2000-3000 gallons or more, but have not really spent any time on that. Also some of the design ideas I have seen that I like have a deck partially going over the water or a bridge going over it. I think it might be fun to design some of it myself but i'm not a professional and I have seen some really sharp backyards with ponds integrated into the landscape that would be difficult for me to plan out. I think it would be fun to try to design at least the pond itself and would naturally appreciate any help I can get through GPF if I try to do it. Also we like all the wildlife a pond attracts including frogs and anything else that calls it home so we will be definitely leaning towards keeping it natural looking with plants, rocks, and a waterfall as part of the design. That said we will stay with goldfish as it will be easier to maintain and I'm quite attached to the 30 or so goldfish we currently have. Now building it will be another story. We will have access to heavy equipment during the construction phase at the property so I can see having some of the people i work with do that. I dug out my current pond with hand tools by myself and I really enjoyed that, but it would probably be too big of a job to do do that with everything else going on and might be a little awkward to do while the construction is taking place. I would like to get the new pond up and running before we move so I want it done early enough so it has time to acclimate before I move my fish. It will take several months to find out if we will get the approvals for what we want to build so I still have quite a bit of time yet. Right now my wife won't let me even think about the pond until we plan out our space but she was on board with finding a bigger lot than average which was very hard to find so everthing should work out.
