I designed and built this Koi water garden pond after visiting Japan a number of times and admired their water gardens with Koi. The design has three ponds, the top pond is filtered by water hyacinths that float on the water, the water is crystal clear. The middle pond has a waterfall from the top pond and aerates the water. The bottom pond is the largest and holds about a 2000 gallons of water.

We sit beside our water garden pond listening to soothing and relaxing water rushing down a small water fall. The dragon flies are fluttering in and around shrubs and plants, crickets are tweeting, bees are whizzing and humming birds are dancing around while the Koi swim lackadaisically around in the water garden pond.

We have about 6 water lily plants with large pink and red blossoms in the bottom water garden pond. They cover almost all the pond in the summer time but they die off back to their roots in the fall and re-grow in the spring as the days get warm and long.

I have about 40 Koi in the pond, it is hard to get an accurate count as they never stop swimming. I purchase small Koi, 2 to 3 inches long and place them in the pond. They will grow to over 10 inches long.

We have had a lot of visitors to our pond. The most frequent ones are egrets. They land on our roof or the neighbors roofs then swoop down to our patio and wade into our pond. If I or the grandchildren see the egret, we let our dog out and he scares the egret off. He won't jump into the pond.

We have also had raccoons play in the pond and try to catch the koi. We watched a mother and 3 baby racoons try to catch our Koi.

I used stakes and strings to outline the pond design for our do it yourself Koi pond. I placed 3" PVC pipes from the pump in the lower pond to the top pond. I used an asphalt paste on the block wall before I piled dirt against it. I placed 4 railroad ties two layers high in an L shape to make the front edge of the upper pond and the back edge of the middle pond for the waterfall.

I made a 1/4 circle ridge with about an 8 foot radius from the ends of the ties to make a pie shaped middle pond where water would flow over this ridge into the bottom pond. I made the lower pond about 18" deep and put most of the dirt into the retaining walls of the upper two ponds. I enclose all the ponds with a PVC liner that was cut and glued to fit.

I started with a 1/5 horse power above ground pump with a 2" inlet and outlet. This provided a good flow of water over the waterfall. Sometimes it would lose its suction and I would have to re-priming the pump.

I found a submersible pump that is 1/3 horse power and was OK to use in a fish water garden pond. You need to check the fine print as some pumps cannot be used in a fish pond. I found this out the hard way when after about 6 months my pump failed and I tried to get a replacement pump.

We've had this pond design for about 15 years. We have had good luck with this design and the raccoons and egrets like it too.