Water Garden Essentials

If you are looking for something different for your landscaping that can add an element of beauty, uniqueness and bring more tranquility to your yard, then maybe installing an ornamental pond or water garden is just the ticket. Just be careful. Once bitten by the water gardening bug you may end up with a new love of your life. Your pond.

Exploding interest has come about because of all the new technology which makes installation much simpler. No more cement ponds that were expensive to install and next to impossible to fix if they cracked. No, putting in a water feature is easier than ever due to rubber, fiberglass or plastic pond liners.

Plus it’s never been easier or more affordable to get started. No need to bring in a back hoe. No second mortgage to cover the cost of that either. All you need do is dig out a rather shallow hole and line it with a flexible pond liner made of either long lived PVC or EPDM. Both offer a way to get into this past-time for less than you’d think. Even with the cost of your pump and liner factored in, you can get a decent sized basic pond going for less than $700 in most cases – if you man the shovel to do the excavating. This budget would even allow room for a few plants plus some decorative pavers to line the edges and hide the liner.

You want to keep an eye on the depth as you dig. Yes these are considered so called shallow ponds. But you want to go down at least 18 inches. 24 might be better. And heed your building codes. Any deeper and you may need to fence it in depending on the regs in your area. But 2 feet is the minimum to over winter any gold fish you may keep. But likely not deep enough for koi.

If you’re going to keep fish, especially koi, you had also better plan on doing some serious water filtration. Some fans of koi would install both a bio and mechanical filter as well as a skimmer. Some even go so far as to put in a heater too to protect their fish during the winter months.

Water lilies are the ying and yang of aquatic plants. You can find them in full size or dwarf. They can be hardy or tropical. They come in as day or night bloomers. And if you can imagine the color you can likely find a water lily that has that color blossom.

Here’s the thing. The idea is to create a balanced ecosystem. You want to blend sunlight, oxygen, any fish and plants in the pond setting. Do this right and you’ll have a nicely balance system that hums along with little help from you. Do this wrong and everything can die on you, leaving you with a pea soup colored mess of algae blooming and little else.

Look, few things compare to ending another busy day sitting and relaxing by your water garden. You can entertain yourself by tossing food pellets in for the fish. You can listen to the water from the fountain hit the surface or bounce off the water lily leaves. All this may give you another reason to rush home so you can take it all in.

Featured author Nash Thaxter loves to share ideas like what to consider with preformed pond liners, to how to best use a pondless waterfall, to how to keep koi to enjoy and interact with. He contributes useful pond care tips to help your troubled outdoor ponds to Backyard-Ponds-Care.com – a leading water gardening web site.

The Simple Pond Plants Fix Every Water Gardener Needs

If you want to stay away from a labor intensive water gardening experience then be sure to pick the right aquatic plants. They can serve to minimize the effects of algae, keep the water clear, and help balance your backyard ecosystem. Besides what’s a backyard pond without a couple of water lilies, right? Yet it helps to know what you’re doing when shopping for pond plants. Let’s see if we can’t help with that.

Size matters: That means the size of your pond will dictate how many plants you can comfortably include. Don’t do like some might and have so many floating plants that you can hardy see any water. Certainly having maybe 60% of the ponds surface covered with plant material works to create a healthy pond. But total coverage is not the goal and might be overkill actually.

Know Your Plants: A variety of plants is the key to a successful pond. Because different plants play different roles in the overall ecology. Some shade the surface and add dramatic blossoms like water lilies. Others, the oxygenators, help ward off algae by competing for the same nutrients algae needs to thrive. Other still enhance the edges with fragrant flowers, interesting variation or colorful leaves. With any of these you want to allow for growth and development when planting or arranging them.

Visual Appeal: The edge of your pond, where the water is shallow perhaps because of a planting ledge, is ideal for marginal plants. They prefer water of lesser depth. And they work well around the rim or perimeter of your water garden.

Pots or Pails: If you’re planting aquatics like lotus or water lilies, you’ll want to get some plastic pots or buckets to plant them in. Heavier clay laden soil is preferred over sandy loam in most cases. And to keep any koi from making a mess of things cover the expose dirt with pea gravel or other small stones.

Feeding: Most plants get all the nutrients they need from the pond naturally – courtesy of your fish. But that may not be enough for heavy feeders like water lilies. In that case you’ll want to supplement their diet with slow release fertilizer tablets that you stick in their pots.

Finally a few questions to leave you with. Just to give you something more to think about.

Is it better to get younger, more juvenile water plants expecting them to develop in your pond over time? Or is it smarter to buy more mature ones now? What are the pros and cons of either decision?

Do you know how much sunlight is needed for plants like water lilies to put on a dazzling display? Again the answer is at least six hours of full sun. So does the location you’ve selected offer that much sunlight?

How are shallow water plants different from bog plants? And which plants work best at clarifying the water and filtering out contaminants?

As you can see water plants are an integral element for your backyard water feature. They play a critical role in water quality, use what waste the fish produce for food and overall add an element of beauty that water alone can’t match. Just make sure you have a variety of oxygenators, floaters and marginals to round out the picture you are painting on the canvas your yard offers you.

And for those curious about who makes the best pond pumps there’s a site you should know about. It’s Backyard-Ponds-Care.com. You’ll find it loaded with tips on things like pondless waterfall construction that may tell you just what you need to know to advice on preformed rigid pond liners. Why not check them out now?

Your Backyard: Pondless Water Features

Do you want to decorate your home with something that can give you both tranquility and soothing calmness? There’s only one thing that can give you both and that’s the sound of moving water within earshot. If that sounds kind of neat then you should seriously consider pondless water features for your home.

This somewhat abbreviated approach to water gardening is suggested as an alternative to the set up a pond, add fish and plants approach. Yes that does sound idyllic and all. But have you considered the work involved?

But let’s say you still want to enjoy the soothing sounds of a waterfall splashing over rocks. Well, this is exactly what you get with pondless water features. The intrinsic benefits without the work.

You could call this the keep it simple approach to water gardening. Much like container gardening for those who want fresh produce without tearing up half their yard to put in a garden. And you’d be surprised at all the ways you can achieve this. They range from a waterfall to some sort of fountain even.

Today, more and more people are taking great interest in pondless water systems according to many selling such things. Not only because they are one of the hottest landscaping trends going but because they offer solid advantages over your more traditional backyard pond.

Soothes You: Just imagine the sound of trickling water nearby in your backyard in the middle of all the urban hustle and bustle.

Safe Alternative: Unlike a traditional pond there’s no standing water so you can take a deep breath and simply relax without needing to worry where your little kids have gone off to and the nagging fear of them falling to water.

Saves Space: Anytime you’ve got water disappearing into a closed basin or bed of rocks you’re going to save space over a full blown pond. That’s the very definition of a pondless water feature right? No pond.

Saves Time: The whole idea is here is to have a low maintenance water feature. And a pondless water feature is perfect for that as there is really nothing to take care of. Leaving you with all the benefits yet without any of the drawbacks common to water gardening.

So for those in search of a little stress relief in for the form of the tinkling and soothing splish-splashy sounds of water in your backyard, a pondless water feature may be the ideal solution.

It is correct to say freelance writer Nash Thaxter eats, lives, and breathes pond care. He has also looked at waterfalls for backyard ponds, when to use rigid pond liners, plus covered how to build a koi pond in some detail. All that and then some can be found at Backyard-Ponds-Care.com.