Building a Mini Pond

Our garden plot is bounded by neighbours on 3 sides and over the winter one of the neighbours decided to install a sump pump that vented excess water through a pipe right into our garden area! Given that we had a very wet spring, the pipe was gushing about 5 gallons of water under pressure about every 20 minutes which created a huge muddy patch. It also ran down the driveway making it very slippery for the parking area.

We tried to discuss the issue with the neighbours but they are tenants who speak little English. We were able to find out that the property owner who installed it was away until mid summer. So we had a bit of dilemma. We could take on the trouble and expense of re routing the pipe ourselves but  that didn't seem like a good plan since it would have to be run over 20 feet. Or we could report it to the city and risk getting the tenants caught up in something that wasn't their fault. Neither seemed like a good solution.

The water from the pipe is clean water and we don't have access to a water source other than our rain barrels so we started to look at ways to make use of the water as a resource. I had seen a video of someone who turned their downspout runoff into a small wetland and wondered if I could do something similar.

Using a plastic half barrel planter as the base, I was able to create a 3 level water feature that allowed us to capture most of the water.  I dug a small pit and buried the half barrel about 3/4 of its depth. The top level is a ceramic planter turned on it's side with a small drainage hole - when the pump turns on, the water jets into that and collects there initially. That drains into the next level which is a round basin planter full of gravel. The water filtres through the gravel and drains into the half barrel at the bottom. The barrel is full of rocks and small plants. I laid pipe from the barrel to the two adjacent gardens with the idea that I would install them as overflow drains but didn't to finish that part. so currently the excess water spills over the side of the barrel and slowly drains. We are looking at potentially turning that spot into s small wetland planting area but need to see how it works in drier conditions when the pump won't filled the pond as frequently.