Water Garden

Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000 19:09:21 CDT
From: "Nancy Lowe" <nlowe@hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: water garden

Nice pictures, Sheryl.  Boy, have you got some ROCKS!!
Colorado is famous for their rocks. Our friend that did the rockwork just loves to lift them and place them.  The liner is completely covered with rocks that has benefits and detriments. It is much more natural looking and has lots of places for the fish and toads to set eggs. We have a lot of small snakes hiding in and out of the rocks and we think that is fun.  The detriment is that the string algae grabs on to the rocks. We climb in and pull it off - a nice way to cool down in the summer time.

So, are you happy with what you did?  I'd really like to hear some other
folks' successes and mistakes.  Maybe that would help me avoid some
aggravation.

The size of mine is dictated by the space where it's going; maximum of about
7 ft. front to back, and somewhere between 5 and 8 ft. across.  Right now,
I'm deliberating on the shape.
 
This is our second pond. The first one was 10 by 7 main pool, 25 ft stream from a 3 ft diameter small pool. The mistakes were:
1. omitting the ledge for plants. Without a ledge I ended up trying to balance rocks and bricks for the plants to set upon.
2. Using a sump pump instead of a real pond pump - it is bearingless and uses less power.
3. Didn't compact the dirt supporting the smaller upper pool enough. It has sunk so that it tilts back and if we leave the waterfall on all the time it will pump all the water out of the pond - yuck.
  Do I want a planting ledge all around the
perimeter, or just on the sides?  Or, does it work to make it one depth, and
then use rocks to support plants that need shallower water?  This is a whole
new (ad)venture for me!
 
The best book I've found is: Aquatic Plants & Their Cultivation - a Complete Guide for Water Gardeners by Helen Nash with Steve Stroupe. It lists each plant including bog and marginal plants and tells you how much water should cover the crown. I found that I needed several different heights based on the size of the pot needed. A 5 gallon pot needs a lot more depth that a one gallon. I ended up putting the 5 gallon pots in the middle with another pot upside down as the base. The 1 gallon are on the shelves in the new pond. The pond plants really grow quickly and water cannas really need some space to spread out their rhisomes.
 
I acidentally left a few water lily rhisomes in the small pond (depth 2 1/2 feet) over the winter and they were just fine. We get to 20 below zero. We use a tank deicer for the small pond and plan to leave the waterfall running in the large pond to prevent icing over. We don't really get any snow and the sun is very intense here at 5000 feet. I have brought in some water plants over the winter. The book I mentioned tells you which can be treated as house plants. This year, I'll probably decide based on price whether I want to spend the money in the greenhouse or just by new plants in the spring. Aqua-mart in Florida has really good prices and quality plants.
 
Hope this helps,
Sheryl


If I have it finished a month or so before frost, can I put plants in now,
or should I wait until spring?  Help??!!

Nancy Lowe
Arkansas, zone 7
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