You can easily build your own water garden to add interest to your yard. The process isn't very difficult and can be achieved with little expense. We're big fans of the waterfall garden, so here's a step-by-step guide to building your own waterfall right in your own yard!

Your waterfall will run on electricity, so it will need to have its own outlet for a power source. Ideally, the construction of a waterfall should be done by a patio, deck, or porch. If you don't have an outdoor outlet, one will have to be installed by a certified electrician.

Remove all weeds in the area where you will be digging for your pond. Make sure the area is level. Measure the liner you have chosen so you can dig a hole big enough to hold it. Simply invert the liner and trace around it on the ground. Then start digging!

The depth of the hole should be the same depth as the liner and the diameter as close to the actual diameter of the liner as possible to insure a nice, snug fit. If you find your hole is a little bigger than the liner, just fill in the sides with sand.

Sand will also be used at the bottom of the hole, since sand floors provide the stability needed to play with the height of preformed liners. Put about an inch of sand in, so that the top rim of the preformed liner will stand about an inch above ground level -- reducing the amount of dirt that will keep falling into your waterfall pond. You'll be pushing the sand around to get the level of the preformed liner just right.

Next, place the preformed liner into the hole for the waterfall pond. Check for levelness by placing a carpenter's level across it -- both front to back and left to right. Depending on the readings you get from the carpenter's level, it is at this point that you'll have to remove the preformed liner from the hole and adjust its sandy floor accordingly.

OK, prep work is out of the way, it's time to move on to the structure itself. Take a look at the rocks you have. The most important rocks are what might be termed the "spillway" rocks. The spillway rocks are the ones directly over which the water will cascade.

The spillway rocks should be relatively flat as opposed to rocks that are more rounded in shape. They should also have sharp, squared edges. Water will cascade more cleanly over such edges. When rocks have blunt, gently-curving edges, some of the water tends to follow that curve and trickle back under the rocks. The idea behind the selection of spillway rocks for a cascade design is to choose rocks that are most likely to channel the falling water in the precise direction in which you want it to go. How you lay the spillway rocks is also important to this end, as you'll see later.

In addition to seeking out relatively flat rocks with sharp edges, see if you can't find rocks that are slightly cupped. That is, occasionally you'll come across rocks that curl up ever so slightly at the edges, leaving a depression in the middle. The natural channel in such rocks will be greatly advantageous for the creation of the spillways in your cascade design. Their raised edges will help keep the water from deviating where you don't want it namely, behind the rocks.

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