Has flipping through the home and garden magazines sparked a new passion in your life? Do you envision a tranquil water garden with a fountain spraying a plume of water into the air that shimmers in the sunlight as it inevitably plummets down to the surface of your pond? Or maybe you want to create a backyard ecosystem that combines an interest in pond fish and water gardening? There are many directions you can take water gardening. You can even have a water feature without a 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.
Now you'll want to dig this down 18 to 24 inches. At that depth your hardy plants and pond fish should be safely deep enough to ride out your winters in most cases. And even if the surface freezes over there should be enough oxygen at the depths for them. Of course if you're going for koi you'll want to double that since something along the lines of four feet would be better for them.
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.
When venturing into the world of ponding you may need to decide whether you want a water garden or a koi pond. If you do the koi thing you likely won't want to include aquatic plants because koi have a tendency to chew leaves, munch on stems and tear roots to shreds. For that reason if you have your heart set on pond plants and fish, you might be better served by easier-on-plants gold fish.
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.
Still if all this sounds tempting but you aren't quite convinced you're up to a full scale water feature you can always start small. Do a lined half whiskey barrel with dwarf varieties of plants, maybe some kind of small fountain and a mosquito fish or two and see how it goes. My guess is before you know it you'll be designing a bigger pond in next to no time. As you come to understand why more and more homeowners are getting into water gardening with a passion.
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.
Now you'll want to dig this down 18 to 24 inches. At that depth your hardy plants and pond fish should be safely deep enough to ride out your winters in most cases. And even if the surface freezes over there should be enough oxygen at the depths for them. Of course if you're going for koi you'll want to double that since something along the lines of four feet would be better for them.
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.
When venturing into the world of ponding you may need to decide whether you want a water garden or a koi pond. If you do the koi thing you likely won't want to include aquatic plants because koi have a tendency to chew leaves, munch on stems and tear roots to shreds. For that reason if you have your heart set on pond plants and fish, you might be better served by easier-on-plants gold fish.
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.
Still if all this sounds tempting but you aren't quite convinced you're up to a full scale water feature you can always start small. Do a lined half whiskey barrel with dwarf varieties of plants, maybe some kind of small fountain and a mosquito fish or two and see how it goes. My guess is before you know it you'll be designing a bigger pond in next to no time. As you come to understand why more and more homeowners are getting into water gardening with a passion.
About the Author:
Nash Thaxter shares how to use ornamental preformed pond liners, offers tips on pondless waterfall designs, plus ideas about how aromatic water lily flowers povide a sense of serenity and calm. If you want the inside scoop about pond care get it at Backyard-Ponds-Care.com -- the site for useful advice and ideas.
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