Our house came with a pond in the backyard ... a nice thing for the previous owner and her chickens. We opted not to take the chickens with the house, so the pond has been more of a mosquito factory than a pleasure. It was not well executed and had gotten to where the plastic liner was sliding down into the pond, no longer holding the water. We've been wanting to drain it and do something else, but had yet to come up with a nice alternative.

Enter Dave and his Saturday project to take down a rotting tree not far from the pond. The tree was down and being cut into small sections to put out for city pick up (Gainesville's nice that way!)

I went out to check the progress and noticed how nice and rotten the trunk was ... didn't the stumps just look ideal for planters or side tables? Which got me thinking ...

So I ran into the house, shut down the computer, put on my work clothes and headed out back ... a perfect solution was beginning to form. It was such a beautiful day anyway, it would be downright criminal to waste it sitting at the computer.

I got Dave to leave the bigger chunks and just clean up the ends.

Then I needed to start in on the pond ... soon to become our slightly sunken yard art standing stump garden.

I used a bucket to get most of the water and sludge out.

Then, with some help from Dave, we hauled out the pond liners. They're big and super heavy and going to be really handy for a variety of things I'm planning.

A bunch of lovely mossy chunks of limestone were holding down the edges of the liner ... perfect! Moving and stacking rocks is one of my favorite things ... actually, I'm kind of rock obsessed ... not always a good thing, but it is what it is.

So the pond was now just a hole in the ground. After some leveling out of the edges, Dave and I started muscling the stumps into place to create our sunken garden.

After a lot of jockeying of stumps, turning and shifting and leveling, we landed on a nice 3/1 layout. Then I started in on a, probably temporary, arrangement of the rocks. I've got a fair amount of plants and bulbs from around the pond that I'm going to replant as well as do some cruising around the yard to relocate some of the other oddball plant placements. It's supposed to be very mild this week, so I'll replant the bulbs that came from around the pond. I figure they're already acclimated to the weather and should be okay to transplant.

So here's how it looks so far ... seriously excellent and so much better than the sludge pit/mosquito factory it was.

Stay tuned ... I'll add more pics as the planting progresses!

with deep gratitude - kvk

p.s. the neighbors are taking most of the rest of the wood for fireplaces or fire pits

pond repurposing project