Wow. Thanks, guys!!
I certainly appreciate the wisdom and experience.
but...
Why say you guys considering this:
Small trees: dogwoods, Japanese maples, Cherrys, etc. wouldn't have much of a root structure and would also shade out the algae. My Dam runs the whole south side of my pond. My dam is also crazy wide and tall compared to my pond. Like five feet from the top of the water to the top of the dam, and 100 ft wide, and 250 ft long.
If you think algae won't grow in a pond that is shaded, think again. The leaves from the trees will slowly make the algae problem worse over the years and turn the pond into an algae, duckweed and watermeal covered pond. You want to create a legacy pond, you have to think 50+ years in the future. With the dam on the South side of the pond, trees on it will have their leaves blow into the pond (South wind). Also, unless you have an unlimited supply of water, the trees will suck a lot of water out of the pond to live. Lastly, if roots of the trees die, their decomposition will leave a path through the ground for water to flow, and if they are on the dam, it could compromise the dam, resulting in a dam failure. A dam 100 feet wide isn't immune to that. Tree roots don't stay in a small spot under the tree. Tree roots at the bare minimum spread as wide or wider as the branches spread, and at the most can go over 3x the length of the branches. A large tree can have branches over 40 feet in length, so a large tree can have roots that go from the water to the opposite side of the dam.
I have a customer that LOVES his trees. He had a1 acre ponds dug, and had the contractor dig a 5' deep, 7' wide trench the length of his pond. He has trees surrounding the pond, and mature trees within 20 feet of the pond. 3 years after constructing the pond I did a contour map of the pond. That trench was nonexistent. When I probed the area it was full of black muck - organic matter from all the leaves that ended up in the trench and decaying. He has 4 ponds on the property all situated in the woods like that one. We did a 2 year test with bacteria, grid based aeration and windmill based aeration and no aeration. We found that bacteria and grid based aeration both showed a 1"-2" per year reduction in the amount of muck, windmill aeration basically kept up with the muck and no aeration allowed the muck to accumulate at the rate of 1"-2" per year.
So, while this isn't the answer that you want to hear (Sorry, I'm not politically correct, and I don't tell people what they want to hear - I tell people what they need to hear), but KEEP THE TREES AWAY FROM YOUR POND if you want to avoid having to dredge muck and accumulated debris out of the pond in 20 years. Last time I got a quote on dredging it was close to $50/cubic yard.....
