From Dirt To Dream: Pond Build Journey

This pond build happened over two years ago, long before this channel really existed. I uploaded the original parts at the time, but honestly, the editing was rushed, a lot of important parts never made it in and I never really told the full story. This project meant so much more to me than those original videos showed, so I've gone back through everything and put it together the way it should have been told. One full story from start to finish. Fish keeping has always been a massive hobby of mine. I grew up with ponds around my parents' places and when me and my partner finally bought our first house, I couldn't wait to get started on my own. In fact, I started the very next day after we moved in. Most koi ponds here in the UK are very minimal and modern. There's plenty of great ones out there and there's nothing wrong with that style at all, but for me, I wanted something a bit more personal. A hybrid, with elements of a dedicated koi system in terms of clarity, filtration and water quality mixed with a natural ecosystem style look with plants, waterfalls and wildlife corners, but also support wildlife and give the whole garden a grounded, earthy character. With the plan in my head and zero patience, day one began and things got messy fast. So this is the carnage at the moment. Only about 700-800mm deep there. Just piling it all up, hooking it into barrows for Matt to come back through. Classic English weather, it's been tipping it down so it's all slippery. Very muddy as you can see. Matt's loving it. We moved in on the Friday and by the weekend, I was already out there fencing and tearing the garden apart, ready for the digger. On Monday, the machine turned up and wrecked the place even more. The whole road must have thought their new neighbour was completely mad, especially with how much we still had to sort inside the house. Once the digger got going, the scale of it really hit me. I'd planned this pond for months, but seeing the ground opened up properly was something else. The first aim was simple. Get the right depth for koi, shape out the footprint and shift as much soil as possible while the machine was still there. It looked like absolute chaos, but this is the stage where everything starts to take form. To maximise the space of the garden, I dug the pond right up against the fence, something I normally wouldn't recommend. Usually, you'll risk undermining the fence and you lose access to that side for maintenance. But I'm a fencer by trade and built this fence myself, so knowing this, I made the posts and footings much deeper and wider than they need to be. The small gap between the pond and the fence will be lined and covered with rocks and pebbles, so there shouldn't be any maintenance needed. But if there is, I've got waders so I can just access it from the pond. Once I dug the depth to about 1.2 metres and finished digging one side, my dad came over and built the block wall that's going to separate the pond from the filter pit. Another way to maximise the space of the garden was to have the filter pit double up as a usable area, so the filter pit is going underground. The plan is to cover it with decking with a lift-up section so that I could get into the filtration whenever I needed. This meant that the whole system could stay hidden, completely out of the way, and the area above it could still be used as normal. So that's all the digging done on day three we are today. Nope, we've finished day three. As you can probably tell, the weather hasn't done us any favours. Slowed us down quite a bit. The next stage for me is to basically clean it all up a bit, make everything a bit flatter, no bumps. Clearing out all the roots such as there, and then I think we'll be ready for the underlaying pond liner which I bought yesterday. I really enjoy this part of the build because with the liner in place, all the destruction is behind you. From here on, every task is about building and creating, and the pond finally starts to feel like it's taking shape. Once the liner was in place, the next step was rocking the pond. I like to cover every bit of liner with rocks, pebbles and plants to give it a natural feel. Many people do an incredible job using really large boulders and making the ponds look completely natural. And for me, that would be the dream. One day, having the space and the budget to really go all out with them. To attempt to get the best of both worlds, here I used smaller rocks carefully stacked to create a natural, organic look without compromising the koi's swimming space or the garden layout. For the rocks, I really like Cambrian boulders. They look great, are easy to source and are smooth enough to avoid injuring the fish. Even so, they still need careful positioning so nothing jerks out dangerously. Normally, it's smart to carve a small ledge every 30-40cm in height for a new layer of rocks to sit on. It prevents the rock stack from becoming a single straight tower and gives each stone more stability. But here, I've risked vertical walls to maximise swimming space for the koi, so I've had to be extra meticulous. Each stone is flipped, swapped and repositioned until it feels completely solid. Then, I let everything settle before locking gaps with pond foam. It's probably not strictly necessary for every single stone, but it strengthens the structure and stops stagnant pockets from forming. Once the rock work was complete, a friend came in to work on the patio while I focused on what is arguably the most important part of the pond, the suction grid. In a nature-inspired pond, covering the pond floor with pebbles gives a beautiful, natural look. But it can trap debris and silt, meaning tedious manual cleaning over time. The suction grid solves this, offering the best of both worlds. Efficient waste removal from the pond floor while keeping that natural pebble appearance and still requiring virtually no maintenance even years after installation. For whatever reason, I didn't film this on my pond, so this is footage of me installing the same system on my dad's pond. What a suction grid is, is essentially a network of perforated pipes laid across the pond floor, hidden beneath a layer of smooth, round pebbles. These pipes connect to a pump or gravity-fed filter, which creates gentle, negative pressure, drawing water down through the gaps between the stones. As the water passes through, it carries fine debris and fish waste with it, channeling everything into the pipework and off to the filter system. Because the suction grid is spread evenly across the entire pond floor rather than concentrated in one spot, you get gentle, consistent movement that prevents almost all dead spots. And best of all, there's no visible drains or fittings breaking up the natural look. I've been building suction grid systems like this for over a decade now, and in all that time, I've never seen one fail. No blockages, no sludge, no waste building up on the floor, they've always just worked. Reliably, quietly, invisibly. In an ideal world, I'd have the whole pond finished before adding water. But winter was closing in, and the koi and my mums had already outgrown their pond, so I didn't want to risk them going through another winter there. As the build dragged on, like they always do, the focus shifted. Instead of perfection, the goal was simply to get this pond ready for the fishing time and save the edges, the waterfall, the wildlife pond and other aesthetic bits for later on. While the pond was filling, we moved straight on to the filtration. The filter pit had its concrete base poured and the walls built, ready to house the system. Two lines feed it, the skimmer line and the suction grid line, each with its own ball valve so the flow can be dialled in perfectly. From there, everything runs through a Burton's BD300 cube with a UV, then into a DIY static K1 biofilter, before then returning to the far end of the pond. Later on, that return will feed through a small bog and wildlife pond, and finally spill back into the main pond as a waterfall. With the fish in and settling nicely, the pressure finally eased. Winter was creeping in, the days were short and I could turn my attention back to the house and pick away at the pond whenever the weather allowed. It was actually a nice change of pace, no deadlines, no rush, just chipping away at the details on those rare, clear winter days. As long as everything was finished by mid-spring, the timing really didn't matter, and for the first time in the whole build, I could finally slow down and just enjoy the process. It was strangely satisfying watching it all take shape in slow motion. Weeks would pass with everything looking the same, then, almost out of nowhere, a whole section would come together in a single day. One of the biggest visual transformations came from adding the edging stones. The pieces that hide those last glimpses of liner and tie the pond seamlessly into the garden. There are plenty of ways to approach it, but my favourite method is simple. Pick stones that naturally suit the space, lift the liner and carve the ground so each rock settles with its top sitting just above the future waterline. The smoother and more consistent the edges, the better it will blend in with the landscape. I always make sure there's enough liner tucked behind, raised slightly above the water level, to allow for any settling. Any bits of liner that peek out later can easily be disguised with pebbles, bark or planting. This stage is always one of the highlights for me, because in just a few hours, the whole project can shift from feeling miles away from finished, to suddenly offering a glimpse of the final picture. It's the moment where everything starts to make sense. Once the edging was in place, the pond finally started to feel grounded, like it actually belonged there, rather than just being built there. With the main shape defined and the waterline framed, my attention shifted to the part I'd been looking forward to from the very start. Bringing the pond to life with movement and atmosphere. That meant turning to the next chapter of the build, the bog and wildlife pond, and also the waterfall that would tie everything together. This was where the pond would stop being just a body of water, and start becoming a proper ecosystem, with flow, filtration and a habitat for wildlife to make it all feel alive. Building the wildlife pond and waterfall felt like creating a miniature world of its own. This process mirrored the main pond, but on a smaller, more delicate scale. I began by shaping a shallow basin, letting the displaced earth naturally form a gentle rise around it. The subtle elevation was all it needed to guide the water back towards the main pond. Because the whole area was built up, I had to account for the inevitable settling of the earth. Months of slow, gradual sinking that would cause havoc if I didn't account for it. The aim was simple, create height without it looking out of place or man-made. Just enough lift for a natural flow, but not enough to feel artificial. The exit stone became the anchor point, the place where the water would spill out of the wildlife pond. By setting that level first, everything else fell into place, with a few inches left in reserve so that nothing ever overflowed the wrong way. Choosing the stones for the waterfall was extremely time consuming by itself. I'd place a slab, walk around the pond, look at it from every angle, then shift it a few centimetres, flip it, or replace it entirely until I was happy, and then start again with the next rock. Slow, repetitive, but strangely satisfying. Like the shape of the waterfall revealed itself a little more with each adjustment. To lock the stones in place and keep the water running over them, instead of sneaking underneath, I used waterfall foam to seal the gaps. It's a small detail most people never notice, but it makes the entire waterfall feel more alive, more deliberate, the kind of detail that gives the whole space its character. The wildlife pond isn't just for looks, it also works as a tiny polishing filter. After the main system, the return pipe runs along the edge of the pond and disappears beneath the pebble and shingle floor of the wildlife pond. Just like the suction grid, the pipe is perforated, but this time it gently pushes water up through the pebbles. It's a subtle, almost invisible process, but it gives the water that final bit of polish before it spills back towards the main pond. Because this area is so small, it's crucial that only clean, filtered water reaches it. A mini wetland like this alone could never keep up with a pond full of hungry, fast-growing koi. It's simply too delicate for that kind of load. Its job isn't to handle the waste, but to refine the water, add clarity and bring a touch of nature into the filtration journey. To help the pond feel like it had always belonged there, we added a curved path that followed its shape. By letting the path hug the edges, it made the whole garden feel cohesive, as if every element had naturally grown around the pond over time. With the path in place, the pond was finally complete. But as with any project like this, complete is never really final. There are always small tweaks, improvements and adjustments to make, little details that keep it evolving and keep the pond feeling alive. It's amazing to see how much the pond has changed over the years. The koi have grown and thrived, the plants and wildlife have settled in, and every corner feels more alive with each season. The waterfall, the pebbled edges, the wildlife pond, they've all matured into a space that feels natural, like it's always been part of the garden. If you want to see how it transformed over the first two years, check out the video on the left. Or, for an even bigger build, check out the rebuild of my dad's dream retirement pond. Bigger, bolder and full of surprises. Thanks for watching.