Pondless Ponds Built by Rohr’s

We’re constantly changing at the nursery, and we built a brand-new display pond up there at the nursery.

When I say display pond, it’s more of a display pondless. And what that means is significantly less work than an open-water pond. A lot of people want to have that sound of water and the tranquility that it creates in a garden area or around the house. Doing a pondless waterfall allows for that sound without all the maintenance work. 

There is still some maintenance, but it’s very, very, very, low. A pondless waterfall would take less maintenance than if that same place were in grass.

It’s really a cool feature. I mean, and really even just having it, like, as a feature in the foundation outside or in your backyard.  It adds a lot of value to it. We’ve got a pondless at my house I put in quite a few years ago. When the kids were little, I didn’t want open water because I just didn’t want to have to worry about something happening. That’s another good thing.

If there’s open water, you’ve got to keep an eye, and with the pondless waterfalls, it’s important to understand there is no open water. And when people are like, well, then where does the water flow to?

So we basically dig a pond, and then we put large snorkels down inside. They’re like vaults that the pump sits down in. So the gravel that we’re going to put in next doesn’t cave in on the pump, and you have access to the pump any time you want to get to it. And then we fill the basin up. We can either use these crates that will help create more water volume, or we can fill the basin up with cobblestone and then gravel on the surface, or the whole thing can be filled with gravel.

Just like with a glass of ice, if it’s cubed ice, the bigger the gravel you use, the more water is going to be in there. The smaller the gravel you use, the less water is going to be in there. And you want to hold as much water as you can. That way you fill it up as infrequently as possible. But we built one of those at the nursery, and we can show you how we put it together.

It’s like a stone that the water is going through, and it just disappears into the stone below it and just keeps recycling. It just keeps recycling over and over and over again. Maintenance is super, super low on it. You just add a liquid chemical in there once every week or two weeks, and it just kind of keeps that thing clean and clear.

Now, in the fall, as the leaves come down, the nice thing about these is you can walk right out there with a leaf blower, hit any of the leaf debris that blows down in there, and you can blow it right out into the yard, bag it up with a mower, and be done with it. And so it makes maintenance very, very low.

Questions? Email us at [email protected] or call one of our two locations: Portage (330-499-0101) or Everhard (330-492-1243).