How to improve an ordinary water garden to an expert water gardeners pond

There, you are a WATER GARDENER. You have created a pool with all the necessary ingredients in it to make it a complete and self-sufficient little world. Given time it will develop its own balance and way of sustaining itself. With your caring eye on it, it will develop from season to season providing more pleasure and entertainment than any T.V. set, and it will be real.

A well planted pond

The temptation is that before things really get underway, before it really begins to show itself as true part of the garden, you think there needs to be something added. Its like when you were given that basic train set or that simple Barbie doll when you were a kid, you wanted all the add-on extras - the station platform, the bridge, the little people doing things around the station; Barbie wanted her clothes, her horse a car and probably her boyfriend.

If your pool was planned correctly you should have the complete kit already; the little bridge, the viewing platform, and all the little things doing things, if not there in the form of fish, should arrive soon in their own time. But beware of the temptation to add on before it even begins to develop of its own accord. If necessary keep it a secret from relatives and friends otherwise gnomes and frogs and spouting herons will proliferate, ad nauseam year after year, until there is no room for humans to move next to the pool, and the gismology soon overshadows the live occupants of the pool.

In other words, take your time. If you do feel as though something needs to be added to your initial inspirational concept; think about it.

Though perhaps if you do have a Koi pool, bare of all the plant essentials because of the vandalistic propensities of your charges, bristling with technological hardware for their welfare and protection, then maybe this ought to be softened and hidden by trellage or wattles and well-placed plants.

Possibly you are still at the planning stage, or you have inherited a water garden that seems visually lacking in something. A backdrop of complementary plants may be required. Isolated and alone in a lawn, it may seem isolated like an island that needs to be visually linked with the mainland, with trees and shrubs that would lend themselves to the scene and to the rest of the garden as a whole.

A small bridge

Fancy stepping stones at a Chelsea flower Show garden.

Possibly it is in the way where it is, and needs a bridge or stepping-stones somewhere to cross it. This was would double as a viewing platform, if you wanted a good view of what was going on down in the depths. An alternative place to view from would be a jetty, or decking or some well laid paving. You may however want somewhere to sit and contemplate it from a simple seat or a fragrant bower.

A pool with a decking edge

Perhaps you are working so hard to pay for your water garden, you only get an opportunity to see it at night. So some pool lighting, even underwater lighting becomes a priority.

If it is a formal pool, particularly in a small courtyard space, it may need a central focal point. Whatever you feel as though you have to do, these problems need a tasteful solution that blends the water world with the rest of the garden. There is so much that verges on tasteless in the market which might be cheap but definitely adds up to the fact that economy does not necessarily dictate the best policy. So spend your money like angels remembering that only fools rush in........