Pot your plants!

I cannot overstate the importance of keeping ALL of you plants in pots. Unless you have a truly natural pond or never plan on doing maintenance... keep those guys in a pot.

I just spent 10 hours cleaning out a pond and didn't finish. This pond was probably 15 feet in diameter and roughly round. 2 hours pulling water iris, 2 hours pulling cattail, and the rest of the time trying to clean and pull water lilies from the rock bottom of the ENTIRE pond. Oh, and I had two other guys with me. 10 hours!

I feel for the owner, he didn't want rock in the bottom and didn't like the idea of planting the water plants directly into the pond. Now it's going to cost him hundreds of dollars to get this all cleaned up. This would have been a two hour clean up without these misinformed decisions. I say misinformed because he brought up these concerns and the original installer said to not worry about it.

Don't worry about massive maintenance bills and the possibility of water iris and cattails growing through your liner? Really?

Sounds like someone that has never done a days maintenance in his life.

No rock and all plants in pots for a standard water garden unless you want to pay me hundreds of dollars to save you from leaks and a pond that is completely out of control. Your choice.