You and your water garden design are not the main beneficiaries of this feature

Wildlife and water

It is only when you have a pond that you realise the importance of water in the garden. You realise that although the water garden may have been designed into place as an attractive visual feature and even a focal point, you and your garden design are not the main beneficiaries of this feature. In fact you are a benefactor. It is the wildlife for which it becomes the main benefit, a focal point, a habitat and a place for sustenance. It comes as no surprise then that because of the rise and rise in popularity of the garden pond many of the endangered species of animal indigenous to UK have brought back from the brink extinction. These include the common frog and the great crested newt, which because of the filling in of farm and rural ponds and the management of the countryside with pesticides and fertilizers were being bereft of places to live and breed.

Other species in decline that are not directly linked with the aquatic habitat also benefit from the extra dimension of diversity a pond adds; the grass snake; the slow worm and the toads; even the fox and badger will come for a drink. The badger also has a great fondness for ripe frog spawn too, I understand.

Having a pond and having it as an open-house to wildlife, brings nature to our back-doorstep. It is something we yearn for, but with many of us it is inhibited and I think our instinct for gardening is a disguised version of the same yearning. We have learned to live so apart from the natural world that we feel slightly apprehensive about having something too wild too close to home. Possibly, we may feel it may get out of control because it is so beastly and wild. Children love though, perhaps because of this. They are in awe of the strange and alien world that despite its strangeness has a beauty, grotesque and a tale to tell. Things that always captivate the young mind.

Children at this wildlife centre open day are enrapt in wonder at the muck and mystery of a pond. They always are.

But it is not an alien world out of control and on the verge of taking us over. There is control; there is the natural balance of true nature and if you work with it rather than against it, it needs very little help to sort itself out. Besides with pond life, it is just that and thats where it stays, in the water.

You as a pond keeper, your role needs to be exactly as you intended it to be before you started with this pond. You must be an observer, an all-seeing-eye, not only taking the pleasures in watching the comings and goings in the world that you are caretaking, but also watching the way the seasons progress and how the pond is developing. As it becomes more overgrown, so you see the habitat changing, new species are attracted and the world changes. In this way the worry that suddenly things will get out of hand, or there is a real problem with the water garden, are insignificant. You see a long time before hand when a job has to be done or you need to intrude on the delicate web of life. Its like having an allegorical Hand of God.

But dont let this responsibility of being a caretaker of a water garden ever cloud the appreciation that here is another world, almost another dimension in which things live and breath unseen, right here in your very own garden.

The magic and other-world quality captured by Anglo Aquarium Plant Ltd in their 2000 Hampton Court Palace Flower Show garden, A Midsummer Nights Dream.

SARY of terms idiosyncratic to the author and the aquatic industry

Aquatic plants

Plants that thrive when growing in or under water.

Bog plants

Definitively these are acid-loving plants (plants that will only tolerate a low pH in the soil) that will thrive in wet spongy ground rich in organic matter. For the purposes of this book and the companion volume Designing and Creating Water Gardens by the same author, they can include lime-tolerant plants, but are linked by the fact that they prefer moist, humus-rich conditions in which there is a certain amount of drainage the moisture is restrained, not retained.

Deep-water plants

These are plants that grow from the bottom of the pool or pond, sending their leaves to the surface for gaseous exchange and sunlight. Water lilies are the most important and numerous in variety.

Filters, biological

These are filters that effectively clear pond water that is pump through them by trapping floating organic matter and algae in various forms of medium contained with in the filter. This detritus is actually is then broken down or digested by bacteria that build up in the filter. This prevents the filter from clogging up in a very short time. The bacteria not only process organic matter but also break up the polluting chemicals associated with rotting organic matter, like ammonia compounds and nitrites, and some cases nitrates, thus cleaning the water of some of its unseen problems.

Floating plants

These are plants that float freely on the surface of a pool or pond with their roots dangling freely underneath.

Flow Rate

This is usually expressed in gallons per hour, litres per hour, even litres per minute. It is the volume of water that a pump is capable of delivering to a specific height. The maximum flow rate would be an expression of the volume of water the pump could pass through with restrictions or even any pipe work. This can be a misleading statistic.

Gate valves or flow valves

Two different methods of adjusting the flow of water in a pipe: one is based on the old plumbing fitting that has a tap that you screw down to close off the flow of water. The other, by a quick twist, blocks the pipe quickly and efficiently. Both types come with either male or female threads.

Head (in reference to pumps and their flow rate)

This is the height above the surface level of the pool that a pump, pumping water up from that pool, will pump to.

Header pool

The small pool at the top of a waterfall or beginning or a stream, into which the water from the submersible pump in the main pool emerges before it begins to flow back to the main pool. This small reservoir evens out the wildness and inconsistencies of the supply from the pond pump and enables the pool constructor to engineer the width and dynamics of the flow of water.

Hosetails

An aquatic store expression for the plastic hose connectors that screw into pumps, UVCs and filters, and also into hex sockets and hex nipples for joining or reducing hose diameter. The screw ends come in male or female forms. On the male the screw thread sticks out in order to screw into the female.

Marginals, Marginal plants

Plants that not only enjoy the waters edge, but actually grow in the shallow water. For the purposes of this book and how modern preformed ponds are constructed, they are all quite happy sitting planted into special aquatic pant baskets, with the water just over the level of the soil they are planted in.

There are some that are often referred to in some books as deep-water marginals that are tolerant of greater planting depth, but they can find this depth for themselves from the shallows. Examples of these are the bog arums, reed mace, and the pickerel weed (pontedaria cordata)

(PIC 265, NEG 29: The pickerel weed, Pontedaria cordata, is often described as a deep marginal.)

Oxygenators, oxygenating plants

Plants that grow under water and have underwater foliage that exchanges gases and can, in some cases absorb nutrients directly from the water. They release oxygen into the water during daylight hours.

RCD, RCCB, RCB or ELCB

A device for breaking the circuit or power supply to an electrically powered device, as soon as there is a difference in the current flowing in the neutral and live wires supplying the power, on the basis that it may be leaking to earth through a human body or some other object. The difference at the time of writing is set at 30ma (milli-amps) or less.

If you have an old-style trip switch and no other form of circuit breaker for electrics or machinery used outside, get your system checked by an electrician before you run a submersible pump off it. One of these devices should be fitted to your exterior power supply, to isolate it from you domestic interior supply.

UVCs (Ultra-violet clarifiers)

An ultra-violet lamp, contained within a waterproof quartz glass tube around which water from the pool flows pumped through it by a submersible pump. All this is contained within a larger plastic tube. The U/V light from the lamp causes free-floating algae in the water to clump together and sink to the bottom of the pool where they are either digested by the pond bacteria or taken up by the pump and sifted out in a biological filter.

Bibliography and Further Reading

Every home with a pond should have the "Observers Book of Pond Life" by John Clegg. First Pub. Warne 1956

"Water Gardening" - James Allison. Interpet

"The Encyclopedia of Koi"- various contributors. Pub. Interpet.

"Waterways and Wetlands"- Alan Brookes and Elizabeth Agate (BTCV guide to doing it wild and on a grand scale)

"Water Gardens"- Francis Perry (Penguin Handbook in conjunction with the RHS.)

Water Gardening Francis Perry. (1938. Revised 1947 Countrylife Ltd.)

Water Gardening Water Lilies and Lotuses Perry D. Slocum and Peter Robinson with Francis Perry.

Manual of Fish Health by Chris Andrews, Adrian Exell, Neville Carrington

Hardcover: 208 pages

Publisher: Voyageur Press (MN) (March 1, 1989)

ISBN: 1564651606

BLURB

Ponds and water gardens where once the desirable garden features exclusive to the country houses and the rich. Now with modern materials, sophisticated ponds and water features come within the realms of affordability of everyone. With regards to setting them up, there is a lot of information out there. So much so, it is difficult to sort it into a cohesive whole. Just the miasma of products is mind-boggling. What pump, for instance would be most suitable for you and your water garden? There are so many different types working in sorts of different and subtle ways.

Then once you have a pond, where do you go to if your pond, fish or waterfall or filter has a problem and does not seem to be working? The aquatic centre where you bought the gear? They may just sell you more gear when the truth is you may need to be leaving it all well-alone. If you have a problem with leaks in the pond, how can you take the whole water garden or even just the pond liner in? If the fish are struggling to survive, bagging them up and taking them to see an expert behind a counter is only going to finish them off completely. For that matter, why is the water never clear? Why are you forever clearing out plants and pond-weed? Do you really need all this expensive paraphernalia from the aquatic centres, like biofilters and u/v lamps and magnets(!) ? After all its meant to be a natural feature. What you need is an expert to come and visit and tell you what the score is. Could this be expensive? No, its in your hand. Take it to the counter pay for it and take it home, and it will always be on call for whatever problem you have with you water garden.