Cathy, you have a beautiful yard there and quite a talent with the camera, as well as gardening and landscaping, but I'm sure you already know that. I wish the pictures on your website would display larger, though, so I could see a bit more detail as to exactly how you're thinking about going about this two-pond system. First, your current "dry creek bed" looks great, and I see you have it surrounded by a variety of perennials which no-doubt benefit from the water that seeps through those rocks when it does act as a drainage area... As for contamination in your pond system, if you build your lower pond there, you'll likely have to remove all the rocks to start with, in order to keep your liner from being constantly punctured. You could try to do it without a liner, using something like Bentonite clay, or a compound such as gunnite, but those are both beyond my level of experience... Either way, if you build it where it DOES still get some runoff, yes, it will get "polluted," but not necessarily "contaminated." I have a two-pond system with a 55-foot stream between them, and unfortunately my lower pond sits where runoff sometimes overwhelms it when we have heavy downpours (I'm still working on redirecting that after three years -- we had gone MANY years without such heavy rains when I built it, and I had forgotten we got such rivers in our yard until I got to see my liner floating up from water going underneath it firsthand!)... The things you learn the HARD WAY, huh? :) Anyway, even when mine just gets runoff IN IT, and not under the liner, I end up with a brown, muddy-looking pond for a day or two, but it clears -- BUT I don't use any chemicals in my lawn and nothing but some liquid fertilizer on my flower beds... If you have pesticides, herbicides, roof shingles that are leaching chemicals and whatnot UPstream of your drainage, those could all be concerns if you put fish and/or plants in your ponds. My biggest question, however, is exactly where and HOW you plan to implement the larger pond ABOVE the dry creek bed, as from the pictures I could see, your yard appears fairly level on both sides of that dry creek bed, and of course you'd need a few feet of incline for the "upper pond" to be above the "lower pond," unless, perhaps, you're thinking of putting something on the deck that cute cocker spaniel was sitting on. That's a possibility... It would have to be more of a tub-pond, like maybe a converted hot-tub, or possibly a preformed pond fitted into a structure you built, but it can be done IF the deck is sturdy enough to hold the weight (bear in mind that water weighs about 8 pounds per gallon and there's 7.5 gallons per cubic foot, so you can have a ton of water pretty quickly... roughly 250 gallons equals a ton). But if you have the time, the money, the patience and are willing to do your homework ahead of time AND/OR make sure you hire people to do the work who REALLY KNOW WHAT THEY'RE DOING (there are PLENTY of folks doing this who DON'T), I think you can do pretty much anything you want to. Best of luck to you! Jeff

My pond is still a work in progress. I'm filling in with annuals now, but every year I add more perennials. These are last year's pics. I'm going to put a bridge between my drycreek and pond. I'll add a path of rocks and plants right up to the bridge so that it looks like a creek going under the bridge... I hope :-). Here is a link that might be useful: My Pond and Drycreek

Thanks, Jim. I'll definitely look at the weeping Yaupon, it would be great to have something unique and sculptural against the stone there. It needs to be narrow since the path is a given and take sun or shade since the area is in shade for about three seasons of the year and then gets direct hits of summer sun morning and afternoon. The other Yaupons around here seem to do well with either sun or shade. Most of the natives that do well here are listed as slow or moderate growth. We don't mind investing in the right plant. With so much space to fill I do pick up a lot of clearance plants at Lowe's and saving there allows me to spend where it's needed. Melavena, so true. We're retired and the yard and house is our job now. There are are lot of sayings along the lines of "Sometimes you have to mess up to clean up" and that definitely applies here.

I like everything you've done. Having had just a little experience with heavy rains I understand your need for a dry creek. That was a huge undertaking and you brought in some wonderful rocks to use for it. Now you can do some very creative fun landscaping with your dry creek! I googled that subject. Maybe you can get some ideas from some of the photos. Hopefully other readers will have some more specific ideas to pass along. Again, thank you for sharing your photos of the process. Here is a link that might be useful: Landscaping man made dry creek ...