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Puddling with Concrete
Safe Ponds for Children
The builder of a clay-puddled pond first made a concave excavation, sloping the sides carefully at an angle of not more than 40 to 45 degrees. He then lined the concavity with a 6- to 8-inch layer of the coarsest straw he could find. On top of the straw he put a 6-inch layer of clay, which he moistened and tamped down into the straw as tightly as possible.
All the clay-puddled ponds I have seen required a constant trickle of water into them to make up for that lost by seepage. Spring or stream water, always 15 to 20 degrees colder than still water warmed by the sun, maintained a pond temperature too cold for good (frequently too cold for any) water-lily growth. A trickle piped into the pond from a household water system would be even colder, and expensive to boot.
The clay linings of these ponds attracted crawfish as spilled molasses attracts flies. After a couple of them had burrowed through the pond's lining, many a pond enthusiast in the old days discovered that overnight his beautiful water garden had become just a mud hole, so to remain until he patched the holes and refilled the pond.
Clay-puddled ponds are now blessedly of the past, and good riddance. Any structure that will enable a couple of crawfish to ruin a man's whole summer just isn't practical enough to bother building.
Natural dew ponds, also known as cloud ponds and mist ponds, are near-miraculous works of nature. They just happen, sometimes, in shady places that remain constantly damp, even in hot, dry weather. The mystery of them is their principal fascination. They have no apparent source of water, and yet they thrive, their cold, clear waters never seeming to diminish.
A few English water gardeners with plenty of time and even more patience have been able to construct them and make them work. An artificial dew pond is built, much as a puddled-clay pond, although on a much smaller scale. The layer of straw that goes into the excavation is much thicker, perhaps a foot or more of it. The clay lining is tamped in upon the straw in the conventional way.
Nature does the rest, sometimes with a little help in the beginning. In time, the pond fills with rain water. The nest of straw serves as insulation, so that the clay shell and the water in it remain somewhat cooler at all times than the surrounding air. Dew condenses nightly on the cool clay banks, runs down into the little pond, and replaces moisture lost by seepage and evaporation.
An amateur should not attempt to build a dew pond, because few of them work out. As only the very hardiest of aquatic growths can be coaxed to live in one, even if it does turn out satisfactorily, the water gardener receives little reward for his labors.