Category : Ponds and Water Gardens
Ronnie Citron-Fink of Care 2.com and I got together last week to do a ‘Q and A’ roundup of common questions regarding pond care and maintenance. I’ve come up with some great tips and advice for her readers in “Pond Secrets: Create Vibrant, Healthy Ponds With The Green Gardenista,” tackling issues like algae, pond design, fish choices, and eco-friendly pond liners.
Looking for some tips and encouragement? Read our interview, and follow Ronnie’s own pond and garden adventures as she “goes green” in her own neighborhood!
Irises are the perfect water garden plants for the novice pond owner, and thrive to the point of over abundance in almost any water garden! Here is a list of some of my favorite Irises for water gardens, all of these are great places to begin when filling a pond.
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Photo Courtesy of: BigDan
The Cardinal Flower is a bright, brassy North American native plant that grows up to 3 or 4 feet tall, and sports spiked torches of blood red blossoms! In the last several years this Lobelia has gained popularity in garden centers, and home landscaping, but it’s use around the house can go much farther than just as the back row of a wildflower bed.
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Cultivating water gardens can seem more difficult than it is. The perfect plants to start your water garden may be no further away than a trip to your local big box store. Before you put too much thought into purchasing rare plants for your pond, take a look at these garden center classics that will thrive in your pond, and make you look like a water gardening genius when you combine them!
Common Garden Center Plants That Love Water Gardens:
Canna Lily Creeping Jenny Hibiscus
Elephant Ears Iris Zebra Grass
All of these plants are perennial when cared for properly, and while the Elephant Ears must be moved indoors in cold winter climates along with the rhizome root system of the Canna lily to preserve them for the next year, they are all easily cared for. Plant these plants in containers that you place in your garden to ensure that the root systems of the hardier plants (like the Iris and Zebra Grass) don’t latch onto the pebble bottom of your pond.
Photos courtesy of : rjones0856, thatredhead4, wwarby, g kirby, Tie Guy II,
The beauty of pre-formed pond liners is their sturdy construction, and pre-determined shape. Setting a pond in your yard requires few tools, and only a few hours to complete.
What You Need:
- Measuring tape
- 2 or more 50-60 lb. bags of contractor grade sand. (For a 20 gallon pond 2-3 bags will be sufficient)
- A shovel
- A pre-formed pond liner
- One 50lb. bag of pond pebbles
How To Set Your Pond:
- Choose where you want your pond to go and set the pond upside down to trace out the size hole you need to dig.
- Measure the depth of the pond.
- Dig out an area slightly larger than your pond, leaving at least a one inch gap around the entire pond between the pond walls and the soil. Dig the depth of the pond’s setting two inches deeper than the depth of the pond. (more…)
I live in a big city, but I’d like to think that my yard is my own personal oasis no matter how much noisy traffic passes by!
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There are many varieties of fish that work well in backyard ponds, but the two most popular and easily kept fish are members of the Carp family; Koi and Goldfish. Both brightly colored and friendly, these fish make lively additions to a backyard pond, but their needs and behavior in the pond make them suitable to different environments.
While the immediately obvious difference between Koi and Goldfish is the relative size of each mature species, there are many different aspects of water gardening that should be taken into consideration when choosing the correct pond fish for your garden pond. These are the top five points I ask my clients to consider when they are selecting fish varieties for their garden ponds and fountains, and they will help you identify the best fish for you and your water feature.
Pond Construction:
The average backyard pond holds a few hundred gallons max, and is either a prefabricated form, or a hand dug pit covered by pond liner. For a pond to hold any fish, the middle of the pond should have a depth of at least 3-4 feet, to provide the fish with hibernation room, and places to hide from predators and hot summer weather. Goldfish can thrive in a pond of this approximate size and depth, while Koi breeders recommend a pond to hold a minimum of 2000 gallons for schools of Koi, a dramatically larger size than the average homeowner can fit in their yard. Another rather unusual problem that Koi can have is the issue of sunburn. A deep pond is necessary for housing Koi schools because the fish are prone to sunburn in shallow water, and can die from too much exposure to direct sun rays.
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Summer weather usually triggers a season-long battle with algae and pond scum in the waterfalls and ponds that I manage, but according to MIT, the future of green technology may be just as entangled with these easily grown plants.
Common strains of algae, including pond scum, are competing with other plants in the search for the next ‘green’ bio-fuel. Common algae outpaces the growth of other ‘green’ alternatives such as corn, but vast pools of brackish water would be needed to produce enough algae to benefit the energy market. Plans for such algae pools are being examined in several of the western states, such as New Mexico, where the dry air and sunny locations could provide an ideal environment for the growth of massive crops of the stringy stuff.
As with all crops, the potential vulnerability of algae to parasites creates unique challenges, and may require growing conditions in production that could cause prices to skyrocket and send it out of the competition. I’ll let the energy guru’s factor in the pro’s and cons of massive algae fields, but I’m crossing my fingers and hoping they will find some use for this seasonal frustration, and at least help me gain a few respect points for the plant while I’m ripping it out of my ponds!
Do you think that algae production and conversion sounds like a feasible biofuel option?
Spring and fall are great times to establish a water feature in your yard. You don’t need a ton of space, or know-how to create a diverting water feature that can house fish, and you can make one more easily than you think!
The barrel water garden is a quick way to incorporate a water garden in a small space. I borrowed this idea from a gentleman at the local community garden, who created this clever zen motif with only a few materials!
What You Need To Create This:
- One 20-24 inch wide half barrel (new, or vineyard recycled)
- One and a half quarts of “Pond Armor” pond shield and epoxy
- One 2 inch paintbrush
- One sheet of 60 grit sandpaper
- A leveling tool
- One large narrow stone for the focal point (available from stone specialty stores)
- River Rocks (enough to cover the slope you create around the barrel)
- Two four foot Bamboo planting stakes
- Topsoil as needed
- A saw to cut the Bamboo into segments
Substitutions:
- A pre-formed 30 gallon pond liner (from Depot or Lowes) can be substituted in place of the “Pond Armor,” and should fit inside your barrel as your waterproofer. Make sure to check the measurements of your barrel to ensure a liner will fit before you purchase either a barrel, or a liner.
How To Install:
- Identify the area you will build this water garden in, and decide on the shape the garden will take around the barrel. This design borrows from traditional Japanese water gardening the use of raised, free-form shapes in the planting area. For this “Zen Barrel Water Garden,” the barrel is mostly hidden inside the planting bed.
- Run over the interior of your barrel with a 60 grit sandpaper to prepare the container for the waterproof seal.
- Apply the “Pond Armor” seal and epoxy to the inside of your barrel to provide protection against leaks, and, in the case of recycled wine barrels, to protect your fish and plants from wine residue left in the grain of the wood. Barrels are often waterproof to an extent, but for the purpose of a long lasting waterfeature, a protective coating in your barrel is ideal, providing up to 25 years of protection. (more…)
I found this great light read recently on everything pond related, and made sure to add it to my gardening shelf! This hard-cover book, An Essential Guide to Choosing Your Pond Fish and Aquatic Plants,
is 80 glossy pages of photos and tips guaranteed to help you build and run a successful pond or water feature, and take your water gardening skills to the next level buy introducing you to a wider variety of fish and plant life to build a dynamic backyard ecosystem!
Covering topics ranging from water feature creation, plant selection, fish varieties, and DIY tips for the weekend water gardener, this book is thorough and written simply and concisely. The format is easy to read, but with an information pool of a much larger book. The chapters are broken down by topic, and each point is illustrated thoroughly through detailed photographs and step by step instructions, or one sentence tips in the photo margins. The basic pond topics are expanded to provide new information for every level of water gardener, while not overwhelming the novice. The writing and visual style of this book is unique, as it alternates between classic paragraph style and and almost scrapbook feel on pages heavier in photography, with tips and pointers artistically arranged around diagrams and pictures.
This book is a great resource for every water gardener, and one that I recommend for the home library for quick topical searches. I particularly appreciated the full page spreads dedicated to the needs and habits of pond fish varieties, and the section on pond and bog plants that included many native plants unmentioned in other pond resources I have read! Check it out today at your local library or on amazon, and create a beautiful water feature around your home or apartment.
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