Trouble shooting the kit, how to avoid problems with water gardens?

The first rule for avoiding problems with water gardens is to get things right from the start with regards to the position it is in, its size and shape, design and construction. Then as part of this, the standards of the materials you used and then above all, how it was all installed.

Site and situation

1. Ideally it must be in full sun, with shelter from cold and prevailing winds. This is mainly for the health of the pool and plant life.

2. Keep the pool away from trees or in line with trees and the prevailing wind, especially those with toxic leaves. These would include: willow, yew, oak and laburnum, with gueldar rose (Viburnum opulus) and elder amongst the shrubs.

Laburnum in all its varieties is the most poisonous tree in the garden.

Gueldar rose, Viburnum opulus, also known as swamp eldar in berry at the end of the year.

Apart from the physical effort of having to net tree leaves out of the pool more often than would be necessary or having to cover the pool with a net, some trees have root growth that can undermine a pool liner or even sucker-up through it e.g. Poplars, Cherries and Willows.

Poplars look great lining French canals but keep them away from domestic water gardens.

3. Avoid the boggy waterlogged parts of the garden. You will find water tables are pretty uncompromising things and will just push up a pool liner from underneath or preformed plastic pool up and away. Make a bog garden down there instead from a liner or sheet of plastic with holes in.

SIZE:- The larger the pool is, the more stable the environment seems to be. If you are contemplating having fish then an absolute minimum size of 30sqft of surface area with a depth of 600mm or 18inches is essential.

SHAPE:- Keep the shape simple. This helps prevent any dead spots occurring as the water circulates naturally around the pool. Even in pools without waterfalls, fountains or filters there is movement in the water caused mainly by convection currents when there is a change in temperature.

Design and construction:-

(a) Pools waterfalls and streams: In the construction be aware of the problems of capillary action and minute siphoning. Read the leakages section of this part of the book to familiarise yourself with the problems that can occur. A level overflow pipe set at the preferred water level will prevent some of these problems.

(b) Streams or waterfalls always take water from the pool to run and in so doing cause the level of the water level to drop revealing the inside edge of the pool. If this exposes the liner, it can be obscured to a certain extent with a dense marginal planting around the edge. Also a shady overhang of 1 or 2 inches from a rock or paving edge helps. The reason I mention it is that any lining material exposed to the light of day will eventually deteriorate in the ultra violet light of the sun. Although this deterioration is less rapid nowadays than it has ever been, if you are using a flexible liner you can take the opportunity of building on the inside of the pool right down to the marginal shelf or further. This obscures those upper inches of liner from sunlight forever and so the liner need never degenerate. (However if at any time the liner gets damaged in the future it makes changing it pretty difficult too).

Quick growing marginal plants like these water forget-me-nots and lesser spearworts soon obscure the liner from view.

This old pond under repair has the pool liner obscured by stonework built up from the marginal shelf.

(c) Streams. For the reasons above i.e. exposing the liner in the pool, beware of making streams or waterfalls disproportionately large in relation to the pool. Remember that a stream needs an addition of at least 1/2 inch of water added to its surface to get it flowing, and this must come from the pool. Not only this, there is a backlog of water that seems to get hidden in the system. This can mean a considerable loss of water from the pool once the stream is full flood. The marginal plants in particular cannot stand the radical rise and fall in water level.

In order to limit the demand for water from the final pool, design any waterways, streams or waterfalls so that they are effectively a series of pools running from one into another. This would mean that water would be retained in the stream up to the level at which any fresh water pumped into the stream or stream section would immediately flow out into the next section or back into the pool.

Construction details are explained in more detail in "Designing and Creating Water Gardens".

The creation of a water garden is a building project and like all building projects, the more effort that goes into the planning and preparation, the later stages of the project will seem so much easier and simply a matter of procedure. In this way you are able to give free reign to your artistic flair and inspiration.