I also built a new house on 40 acre farm ground then started on my 1 acre pond. before the pond filled I built many fish reefs, one big one from blocks, bricks, broken cement, etc. And others of tires, wood stakes, old rolled up fence wire and so on. Before the pond filled I started my deck/gazebo.
And as you can see in the picture I put gravel at intervals around the pond for fish spawning.
I first started trees that were kind of expensive as I wanted some that looked established.
Then I literally put in thousands of tree of which only about one in five lived because of mowing accidentally over then when small, rabbits and deer eating them, incidentally spraying them and so on. I planted 5 1/2 acres around the pond and now have a nature woods with a pond.
More of the pond area.
I got many of the trees from the dept. of agriculture that were very nice and not expensive. Others were clippings that I started. It wasn't that hard.
I also put in two dump truck loads of sand in beside the deck for swimming.
