Pond Microclimate

This is my back 3 or so acres. I want to do away with my dirt garden and build a huge raised bed. I'm thinking 16'x4'. I had a pond enlarged almost 2 years ago. It's still pretty murky, but starting to get there. It's around 1/3 of acre in size and around 25 feet deep on the south eastern side. I want to place my raised bed to bed take advantage of my pond. My entire place is a hill top the line running left to right it the crest of the hill. The brown box is my dirt garden. Wind is almost always west to east. The north, west, and south are hardwood tree's with a few pines.  Any thought or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

yeah I've been going through the same thing, redigging and enlarging a large pond..the rain makes it clay colored..as we still have clay piles around it but it generally will clear in a day or two.

I just ordered some new plants for mine from www.trickers.com found they had the best prices so far.

i still have a lot of water lilies and in the shallows cattails and some other plants,but the newly enlarged and dug areas are bare clay bottoms..and can't really put in more fish (just have a few hundred goldfish right now that are happy but want people food fish)..until i get more plants growing for them for oxygen and food.

I have been planting around my ponds..it is hard to remember that your pond banks may be very dry, so close to water you would think they wouldn't be, but they are..so you have to think dry in most of your bank situations..

plant your tenders on the north side so they get advantages of the refleciton of the sun and get the added heat from the water in the cold weather..if you have cold winters where you are.

you  can plant things a zone colder by the water that way..also if you ahve a warm bank on the north it makes a wonderful area to garden, esp fruit trees..I have an apricot on my north bank and on the west i have apples, pears and cherries where it slopes slightly toward the pond..but they don't really get much advantage from it like the north does.

will add more plants now that most of the construction work is done..but the southern areas of my pond really has a lot of work yet to be done on the bankis esp..

in my blog below if you go to the pond pages # 2 you will see my pond this week after a lot of redigging work..you can't see much of the plantings as most of them aren't growing for this season yet (it is still freezing here at nights)

Love your blog. My pond was also super blue clay. It never losses a drop of water. I think it's still to brown to reflect much light. I found a volunteer cherry tree in my cherry grove yesterday, I'm moving it today to north side of my pond, and hopeful getting my garden box started.