1998 Water Garden

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My parents had a fish pond, when I was growing up, it had many variety of lilies and gold fish, the pond was build by my grandfather for my grandmother.  The pond was made out of concrete, and would crack, my father made many repairs to it.  It got  to the point where the repairs were needed more often, in 1979 they filled in the pond and made a rock garden in it's place.

I always enjoyed water gardens, when I was younger it was my fascination with fish, now that I'm older, I still am fascinated by the fish but also developed an interest in the plants and other aquatic life. I was going to go back to college for marine biology, but computers won over.

Today I have a two water gardens, a small one that I have in a large flower pot, and another in-ground pond.  The large flower pot I've been maintaining  for over 5 years, it does well, I put small gold fish, guppies and platties to keep the mosquito larvae population from forming.  I usually keep on lily in it.

The other water garden is in-ground, it's in two layers, the bottom layer is a four by four and four feet deep.  That is the main pond, I keep my larger Koi, rosies and turtles in there. Also because the water moves slowly around in the lower pond, I also have my water lilies and lotus planted there.   This year is its third summer. The upper layer flows into the lower layer, that is three by two and is three and half feet deep.  This year I have comets and fantail goldfish, along with other aquatic plants.

Last year I bought water lettuce and water hyacinth, it was a banner year, they both took off over crowding the rest of the garden.  I would give the stuff away to people, and it kept growing back.  It looked nice but it hindered the growth of the lilies and you couldn't see any of the fish.  This year I went with a different approach and did not include them in the garden.