Pond, Stream, and Stone Bridge Project in Cedar Falls, IA

The backyard needed more than a single basin. The owner wanted a pond with a stream you could cross, gardens around the water, and a feature large enough to organize the whole yard.

A stream only works if the grade, liner, and weirs are continuous. Skip that and you get dry sections, leaks, and a bridge sitting on mud.

Larger Cedar Falls backyard with enough length for a pond, stream run, and stone bridge, plus planting beds to frame the water. Clay soil and freeze-thaw exposure on every liner edge.

We excavated the pond and stream, installed liner, stacked stone for the channel and falls, set a stone bridge, and planted the surrounding beds so the water feature reads as the center of the landscape.

Long stream runs hide leaks. Every transition has to be sealed and the flow has to stay in the channel in a heavy Iowa rain. The bridge needs a solid bearing that does not settle into the liner. We staged stone and plantings so the yard was usable while the water feature came together.

The backyard is a pond, stream, and stone bridge with gardens around the water. It is a full landscape, not a kit pond. If you want this scale of water feature in Cedar Falls, the build is excavation, liner, stone, then planting: in that order.