Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Renovating a Pond or Lake? trees to keep, trees to remove?

Great question Tanner - and hey welcome to the forum!

Thinking this over, the cedars and pines won't drop much in the way of leaves [needles] to impact your water quality in comparison to maples or oaks, obviously. From that perspective, doesn't seem to present much of an issue growing around the perimeter of the pond. Of course the needles that do fall could impact your ph level if there were enough falling - guessing it would impact the acid levels of the water. Again though I doubt what you have there will have much of an impact but I'm not an expert.

In regards to your deciduous trees while they do drop leaves and add to the organic mass on the pond bottom, they also benefit your pond from an ecological and aesthetic standpoint. I see photos of Ewests' bows and they are all seemingly cut out of a MS forest, and I don't recall him relating any issues due to accumulating leaf matter in the BOW.

One way to help combat leaf matter is to speed up decomposition using aeration. Not sure if that's within the budget for you, but I believe it would help address some of your concerns due to falling leaves.

Others will chime in with better direction - but if it were my pond I'd keep as many trees in place as possible and deal with the leaves via aeration or manual removal in the Fall.

Good luck on your project can't wait to see your progress. Please keep us apprised!