It might be fall where you are

But it sure isn't fall here in New Orleans.  We did have some cooler weather for a few mornings, but it was just a tease until the real thing comes along in a few weeks.  So, down here, our ponds still look like this with tropical plants making the landscape lush and green.

And misters turning the garden into a magical place where faeries live.

Up where you live, you are perhaps looking at your first snow

Me, wandering around Mt Rainier

Or writing me letters wondering how to overwinter your pond and pond equipment.

To find those answers, you can:

Visit my website at pondlady.com.  Visit us with your pond questions or just to show off your pond.

I talk about seasonal pond care in my book as well. You can buy it by clicking below.
A Practical Guide to Building and Maintaining your Pond, available here http://ow.ly/btFJQ

Fall Pond Care

Those pretty tropical pond photos were fun, but now that the seasons are changing, it's time to concentrate on some of the nuts and bolts of pondkeeping.  Here's an article I wrote about fall pond care.

http://www.pondlady.com/Articles/fallpondcare.html

Sadly, very soon we will be talking about winter pond care.

Visit my website at pondlady.com.  Visit us with your pond questions or just to show off your pond.

I talk about seasonal pond care in my book as well. You can buy it by clicking below.
A Practical Guide to Building and Maintaining your Pond, available here http://ow.ly/btFJQ

Even more pond design pics

Want to hear lots and lots of water.  After packing this pond chockablock with plants, pumps, tubes and waterfalls, the client wanted to hear even more waterfall sounds.  So I attached a hose to a pump and pointed the hose up.  The higher the hose was, the more water came shooting out.  You can do this with a small pump and hose if you just want a bubbling sound at the top of the water.   It's easy.

This was not just a pond building job, but an entire garden landscaping job.  In fact, it won a city wide design competition. The owners were thrilled. We all were on television....in our pond building clothes. But we had champagne.  At 8 am.  

We had mostly sun to work in. The owners wanted no grass at all. They certainly were my kind of clients.  

After removing the grass, we dug the pond hole and build the pond first.  Then we installed that lattice you can see to help hide the yard from the neighbors. 

These folks lived on a busy street near a very busy city intersection.  The picket fence was already there, so we used it as part of the design.  The path leading to the picket fence was flanked with spots of specimen plants and underplanting just where the windows were in the house.  

We used the same rocks to make the path as we used to make the pond.  Arkansas moss rocks in case you are shopping for some.  

Visit my website at pondlady.com.  Visit us with your pond questions or just to show off your pond.

To learn more about pond design read my book.
A Practical Guide to Building and Maintaining your Pond, available here http://ow.ly/btFJQ

Pond Design, Continued

Let's keep showing pond design solutions.  I know it seems simple just to dig a hole and fill it with water and in many ways it is, but making that pond fit where it's dug is as different as the people who will live with the pond in the garden.

This client had a long, narrow back yard. He wanted to hear waterfall noise.  In fact, he installed a baby  monitor outside the bedroom window so he could hear the sounds inside while going to sleep.

This pond is 22' long and about 8' wide. I built a hill in the yard, so we could put a path behind the pond and it could be viewed from 'behind the set'.  Of course, that meant there was no 'behind the set', so I used plants on both sides of the path to cover the back of the waterfall where the tubes and hoses are and against the wall that formed the back of his yard.   You can see both waterfalls. For some reason two waterfalls worked better than one long one.

This pond was mainly in the shade so the plant palette had to be specific to shade plants.  Notice the ferns and even a croton in back of the waterfall.  Putting plants behind a waterfall and in front of a fence solves two problems:  Covers the back of the waterfall and separates the pond from the fence. One of the biggest mistakes DIY pond builders make is to back the pond right up against the fence.  Water does not come out of fences and we can't figure out why we don't like the way it looks. Put plants in between and you will suddenly like your waterfall more.

Visit my website at pondlady.com.  Visit us with your pond questions or just to show off your pond.

To learn more about pond design read my book.
A Practical Guide to Building and Maintaining your Pond, available here http://ow.ly/btFJQ
Learn to build your own pond.

Formal Pond Design

This pond was at New Orleans' famous Broussard's Restaurant.  I did not build it, just needed to make it work again after being a festering hole for years making their courtyard a not-so-nice place for dinner.  After installing and plumbing the bronze cranes, I added aquatic plants and tropicals to soften the look of bricks and make the space more inviting.  If customers wished, they could even sit on the sides of the pond and enjoy the subtle splash of the water coming from the cranes.  I changed the seasonal color with the seasons.

You will find this pond in the courtyard of Trinity Episcopal Church in New Orleans.  That huge vase-like structure in the middle leached lime to the point of starting stalactites into the pond.  Of course the water chemistry was so far off, plants would not grow.  I started adding vinegar by the gallon when the officials of the church would not redo or remove the vase.  Each week, I dropped by to add more vinegar.  Finally these plants grew and soon after, the pond was supporting water lilies and more.  It was a losing battle, but vinegar took care of the hugely high pH as long as I poured vinegar in it.  It smelled like the congregation was dying Easter eggs or was having Caesar salad after services each week.  

It was a beautiful structure, but never really successful as a pond because of poor materials.

Visit my website at pondlady.com.  Visit us with your pond questions or just to show off your pond.

To see more photos and get more ideas, read my book.
A Practical Guide to Building and Maintaining your Pond, available here http://ow.ly/btFJQ
Learn to build your own pond.

More pond design

I am continuing the series of photos giving ideas about how to best design your pond to make the most efficient use of space in your garden.   A well designed pond 'fits' in your garden and in your lifestyle.

Sometimes a pond is HUGE. This waterfall is so big I had to climb up the bottom to build the top.  It has an artesian well flowing over it, down a creek and into a 7 acre bayou.  I had to add pumps at each of the 3 waterfall levels to create enough water sounds to make the waterfall look and feel right.

You have to have the space to make a pond like this one work.

Wow, what a bad photo.  This photo was taken a few minutes after the pond was finished, as most of my photos are.  I used color to make the water feature stand out in the partial shade it was in.  Using foliage colors and broadleaf shapes is a great way to make a pond look as tropical as this one does.  It should, as it's in Bay St Louis, MS.  Tropical is easy over there.  The Chinese fan palm backs up the waterfall. That's almost a signature of mine and makes a great backdrop for a waterfall.

Visit my website at pondlady.com.  Visit us with your pond questions or just to show off your pond.

To see more photos and get more ideas, read my book.
A Practical Guide to Building and Maintaining your Pond, available here http://ow.ly/btFJQ
Learn to build your own pond.

Pond photos

Maybe you can get some design ideas from ponds I have built.  Most of these are free form ponds with flexible liners.  Occasionally a formal pond done with concrete pops up, but not often.  My first love was making a pond look like it was there before a house was there and the house intruded.

This one was in a front yard.  See what happens here in the tropics when the plants just keep growing without being tended. Cutting back rather than encouraging to grow is how we tend our gardens.

Another example of our plant palette here in zone 9.  Isn't it wonderful?  I took this photo five minutes after we finished the  work. The rest of the crew is still cleaning up.

Visit my website at pondlady.com.  Visit us with your pond questions or just to show off what you have done.

To see more photos and get more ideas, read my book.
A Practical Guide to Building and Maintaining your Pond, available here http://ow.ly/btFJQ
Learn to build your own pond.

More design ideas

I found early on while starting to build ponds for customers that most of them didn't want formal concrete boxes, but free form natural looking ponds. They wanted to feel like their back yard was part of a forest.  I loved building those kinds of ponds.  And a side effect of all those ponds was that the pond was part of a backyard habitat that allowed critters a place to get a drink of water and probably find food as well.  Yes, often that food was our goldfish, I know. But since we stole the habitats of the wild critters, perhaps our ponds could help pay them back for that theft.

Here's what I mean:

I sorta put critter pics up. I promise design pics tomorrow.

Visit my website at pondlady.com.  Visit us with your pond questions or just to show off what you have done.

Don't forget my book, A Practical Guide to Building and Maintaining your Pond, available here http://ow.ly/btFJQ
Learn to build your own pond.

Recalling Ponds in Pictures

During these last days of the heat of August, I will continue to post photos of ponds I have built over the years.  Some were easy and others were more than difficult.
By the way, the owner usually made the difference.  People, if you treat the folks who are working at your house with respect, you will get a better job.  Yelling at me always resulted in walking off the job and never returning.

Now on to pretty pictures.
I built this pond for a delightful couple who loved color.  We put color everywhere around the pond and the rest of the yard. Both were inveterate gardeners, so they had lots of input into the color pallette.

We had a spot that demanded a peaceful feeling, so next to the pond, I placed round river rocks to make a bit of a dry stream bed.  It lent a zen feeling to an already relaxed garden.  Sadly the entire house was destroyed in Hurricane Katrina.  The pond survived, but the owners moved to another city.

Visit my website at pondlady.com.  Visit us with your pond questions or just to show off what you have done.

Don't forget my book, A Practical Guide to Building and Maintaining your Pond, available here http://ow.ly/btFJQ
Learn to build your own pond.

Summer is still here even if Isaac isn't

Although much of Slidell is flooded and without electricity, all is OK here on our end of town.   So it's time to call the emergency over and get on with what needs doing.

Oh, I got word from the carpenter at the Arkansas house that the sliding glass door is installed in the master bedroom. That makes the entire wall facing the ravine glass.  I will be setting up the above ground pond just off the deck when we get there for good.  It's gonna be a combo pond and birdbath.  The critters need water and the birds love their baths.  It's the greatest entertainment in the world.

Building an above ground pond is easy.  I built this one pre Katrina.

Here's how it's done:

http://www.pondlady.com/Articles/above_ground_pond.html

In fact, this is the pond that the article documents. Above ground ponds are more expensive than in ground ones because they use so many more rocks. But they are certainly worth it. They allow you to have a pond when you can't dig a hole for whatever the reason.  This pond was under too many trees to allow digging a hole.

If you fill one end up with rocks, you have a birdbath. Easy.

Visit my website at pondlady.com.  Visit us with your pond questions or just to show off what you have done.

Don't forget my book, A Practical Guide to Building and Maintaining your Pond, available here http://ow.ly/btFJQ

Life returns to normal

I went to replenish all the groceries we lost from the freezer and refrigerator yesterday.  I shoulda stayed home.  The shelves were almost bare.  I was reminded of photos of stores in Russia (or was it one store and only in Moscow) that we were shown photos of in the '50's.  They were always bare and folks were queued up waiting for a moldy potato.  Or something.   Hey, I was under ten years old.

Anypotato, I ventured out for the first time since Isaac visited and at least I tried.  Frozen veggies had been there since before the power went out and then just allowed to refreeze when the power returned.  Meat and dairy shelves were empty.  As a vegan, I eat nothing from those shelves, but it still looked strange.  Fresh veggies were scarce and very possibly were 5 days old.  I did pick up a few that were not soft or mushy.

I did find out that when store supplies are lean, I don't spend much money.  I sure do miss all of our garden frozen freshness.

Visit my website at pondlady.com.  Visit us with your pond questions or just to show off what you have done.

Don't forget my book, A Practical Guide to Building and Maintaining your Pond, available here http://ow.ly/btFJQ

Isaac is officially gone

It's getting to be fall in parts of the US.  Down here in New Orleans, it's still summer and filled with heat and more heat and will be for another two months.  But in the northern parts of the country, fall is starting to show up in the mornings and evenings.
So I am talking about fall pond care today:

http://www.pondlady.com/Articles/fallpondcare.html

This article is on my website at pondlady.com.  Visit us with your pond questions or just to show off what you have done.

Don't forget my book, A Practical Guide to Building and Maintaining your Pond, available here http://ow.ly/btFJQ

After Isaac

Isaac has come and gone. He did significant damage, much more than  I expected.  At our house,  the biggest problem was loss of power. We were HOT HOT HOT!  I finally plugged in an inverter in my car and ran an extension cord in the house to power a fan.
We lost everything in the freezer and fridge.  We expected that, but are sad to see our garden veggies in the garbage can. We could have cooked it after the power came back on late yesterday, but were just too tired to do so.
So the grocery store will make a few bucks from us today.  I am so glad to have AC. We don't realize how much we need it until we don't have it.

Read my book about ponds to learn more about these almost maintenance free beauties: Get it here.

Join us at http://www.pondlady.com to discuss your pond and any pond problems you might have.