If you're doing some landscaping work and this will involve removing a large pond by draining its water and filling the opening with soil, here are some tips to follow.
Arrange for an earthmoving contractor to fill the pond with soil
It's best to have an earthmoving contractor add the soil to the drained pond. Whilst you could pour bags of soil (or tip wheelbarrows full of soil) into this opening yourself, this could take a full day or more if the pond was very large and deep. The hours spent doing this by hand could be better used to finish off the other landscaping work that you need to do. An earthmoving specialist could use either a bulldozer or an excavator to push or drop many kilos' worth of soil into the drained pond in just a few hours.
Additionally, if you do this by hand, there's a chance you could get hurt, as a result of lifting or trying to tip a heavy bag or wheelbarrow full of soil into this opening; you might, for example, pull a back muscle or injure your shoulder whilst doing this, and find yourself having to postpone the remaining landscaping work until you recover. Conversely, an earthmoving contractor who uses a bulldozer or excavator for this job will be safely housed in the machine's cab and so will not be at risk of being hurt as a result of doing excessively challenging physical labour.
Ensure you let the drained pond dry out a bit before adding soil to it
You should leave a few days between the date on which you drain the pond and the date on which you have the earthmoving contractor fill it with soil. During this period, you should watch the weather and cover the drained pond if it starts to rain.
The reason for this is that the soil that remains in the drained pond after you pull the water out of it will initially be saturated and soft. If you have the earthmoving contractor drop lots of dry soil onto this saturated earth, it might be harder for them to level the top layer, as the weight of the fresh soil will make the saturated, soft (and, therefore, unstable) earth under it sink downward. This might result in you having to add more soil to this opening than you planned to, which could be expensive. By leaving the drained pond to dry out a bit beforehand, you should have no issues with levelling or stabilising it.