Web viewNow, if you’re like me, you’ve occasionally wandered through maybe a public...

The Wonders of Water Gardening

Seminars@Hadley


Presented byDoug Rose

Moderated byEd Haines

June 23, 2016

Ed HainesLet me officially welcome you guys to today’s Seminars@Hadley. My name is Ed Haines and I’m an instructor at Hadley Institute. I’m also privileged to teach a course for Hadley called Container Gardening. Now, for several years, Hadley’s featured a gardening webinar sometime in the spring and, before you guys catch the mistake, I know, it’s summer already. We’ve officially moved into summer, but it’s never too late to discuss our favorite hobby. This afternoon we are really fortunate because today’s seminar is called The Wonders of Water Gardening.

Now, if you’re like me, you’ve occasionally wandered through maybe a public garden or perhaps a private one, and it contained a water feature, and you’ve gone green

©2016 Hadley Institute for the Blind and Visually Impaired of 34


with envy. That’s happened to me quite often. There just is something about a fountain or a serene pond that just sets off flowers in the garden and greenery in a landscape, and, if you’re like me, you thought, “Man, I wish I really had a water feature in my garden.” So, today we’re in luck. Today we’ll be having a conversation with Doug Rose, who is a professional water gardening consultant. Doug and his wife, Patti, own PondWorks by Rose, and between them they have over 65 years of water gardening experience. That’s an awful lot.

Just as a side note, Doug is blind and has also enjoyed a long career as an assistant tech teacher, and, additionally, is the leader of a support group for older adults with vision impairment. So, you can see he’s a multi-faceted person. This afternoon, we will be grilling Doug about all things water gardening, and I know we will benefit from all of his experience. I think there’s few enough of us in the room that we’ll be able to pause often for questions, but if it looks like there’s a lot of questions, and I’ll be watching the time, if we’re running late, we may have to put a hold on questions till the end to make sure we cover our material. But I don’t think we’ll have any trouble. I should say also, this particular webinar is going to be more of less of an interview kind of format, so before I start grilling Doug, let me just first officially welcome him. Welcome Doug.

Doug Rose



Hello there, Ed, and everyone else. Glad to be here, because this is one of my favorite topics, so you guys are in trouble. No. We like to give out quality information, so thank you.

Ed HainesOkay. You know, I think before we get into some of the nuts and bolts, Doug, I wonder if you could maybe just tell us something a bit about yourself. How did you make this evolution into water gardening? How did you get involved?

Doug RoseSure. Well, as a kid, I grew up visually impaired. I had sight till I was about 5 in one eye. Retinoblastoma, I had to have both eyes enucleated. But I grew up on a farm in Nebraska near the Missouri River, with water. I think some of that, where I could still see, and as a kid, a lot of that gives you impressions that stick with you. And besides being a sharecropper, my family decided with another family to farm this island out in the middle of the Missouri – well not in the middle – but it was surrounded by the Missouri River. I can still remember seeing the water, my father fishing, that kind of thing.

If I think about it, I think that’s probably where some of it started, plus, as you said earlier, we all seem to be attracted to water. We’re 70% water in our bodies, so



we’re really water if you think about it. The Earth is covered with 70 some percent water, and, like you said, there’s just something that really attracts, I think, most people, that soothes their soul near water. So I think, yeah, maybe the early on farming, and then later in life got together with my wife, Patti, who’s sighted, and she enjoyed the water. Matter of fact, one of the first things we did when we met was go hiking in a stream. Yeah, I think that would answer probably how this all came about.

Ed HainesDoug how did you actually get involved with water gardening as a business? That’s a big leap from just enjoying water features themselves to really doing it for a living. How did that come about?

Doug RoseWell, that’s kind of crazy when I think back on it Ed. Let’s see, we currently live in Northern California, if you guys have heard of Redwood Forest; if you go too much further, you’ll be in Oregon. We’re right along the coast in Humboldt County. We moved here and were growing some water plants in our backyard. We live in a mobile home park and we own the house, but we have to rent the land. The landlord, he came by one day, and being an accountant, he said, “Hey, you guys could sell these plants.” And my wife and I said, “Well, maybe we should try that.” So we went to one of the local garden stores, it



was what they call a feed store for – they mostly did animals, they didn’t sell a lot of plants – and we said, “Would you guys take us on consignment? We could bring you water lilies.” Well, we had no idea how to package them or label them or anything.

It kind of just evolved from there, growing them in our backyard with the landlord’s suggestion. Lo and behold, we started being so successful at it that he said, “You know, you guys can’t be doing that here anymore.” So he asked us to find some other place to do it. Then we had to start renting space elsewhere. We started at the local what we call farmer’s market, where they mostly sell produce and flowers, and that was a whole learning experience in itself trying to load up water lilies, they have to stay wet all the time, and get them to market. That’s kind of how that whole thing originated.

Ed HainesWell, it already sounds like a lot of work. I think that leads to, possibly, my next question. Before I do that, I wanted to say, we did have someone text in indicating they’re having a little hard time hearing you. You might want to turn up your mic a little bit. I didn’t have that issue, but someone’s having a problem. At any rate, it’s obviously a lot of work, and now you’ve evolved into a professional consultant for people who want to have water gardens. I think a lot of us shy away from doing a water feature in our



own gardens because we just don’t know how to begin. It does sound like a lot of scary work, so I wonder if you can tell us what sort of questions our listeners should be asking themselves even before they get involved. If you have a customer that approaches you and says they want to have a project, what are the kinds of things they need to think about before even contemplating beginning a water feature?

Doug RoseEd that is probably one of the best questions anybody could ask themselves. Too many times I have seen people just – we get real excited, “Oh, wouldn’t it be neat to have the sound of water, the look of fish swimming around,” and this kind of thing. They just go out and they excavate a hole in their backyard, and then they get down the road and it’s not working, and they fill it in, and that’s really sad to see. I’ve run into this several times.

I think one of the first questions is what do you expect from your water feature? Do you want to look at fish? Do you want just sound? What size a place do you have? Do you own there? Do you rent there? Just because you rent there doesn’t mean you can’t have some kind of water feature. There’s very portable ones, like you were talking about container gardens. I think that’s the first thing.



We had this one customer, and he got this big – it looks like a cement ball – it’s a buoy that they put out in the ocean. Well, he got his hands on one of these, it must be 6 feet in diameter, and he put a liner down and set it on something in his yard, and put water that trickled out of the top and ran down the sides. Well, it looked pretty cool to him, but then with water comes algae. So this nice looking ball, he didn’t envision as that, so he brought us in and we said, “Well, it sounds like you’re up against a couple things because you want to see this ball how you envision it, but it’s not going be like that unless you just bleach it and treat it like a sterile environment, kind of like an office fountain or some of those things that you run across.” I’ve found that with other people, too. They hadn’t really thought it out.

If you can get connected with, say, a pond club in your area – I run a pond club over here; several communities have them – or just talk to other people and keep asking, “Do you have a pond? Do you have a water feature that we can come look at?” And I think just experiencing different water features and ask the people that have them, “How much maintenance is this? Is it gonna fit in my location? What size do I have to fit it in? How much work do I want to do?” All these are good questions up front.

Ed Haines



All right, we have an idea of what we need to ask. We need to ask how much work do I want to be involved in and what kind of pond am I really looking for? For those of us who are rank beginners, are there some options for us who are just interested – and we have a lot of folks who will be listening to this webinar in the future, we’re mostly container gardeners; some of us have a bit of both – are there options for those beginners who are interested in a smaller water feature? They don’t want to go dig in their backyard, but they’d like something for their patio.

Doug RoseOh, this is a fun part. There are so many different ways you can go about incorporating, say, into your current landscaping, some kind of water feature. I have seen all kinds of ideas. You can go to the store, some of the hardware stores or gardening stores, and they’ll have anything from a little tabletop fountain that’s already made, or, if you like to be creative, you can think about, “Well, I have this old water pump, where we used to pump the handle on a water pump, and I just want to connect it to, say, a base and water and have it spill out of there.” This is where the fun, to me, really begins.

Then you can go up to what we call container gardening and water gardening. If you already have, say, a nice looking ceramic pot that people like – most of them, of course, are made for flowers and this that need drainage –



but they usually have one or two holes in the bottom. Just get yourself a cork a little bit bigger than that hole and stick it up from the bottom, wedge it in there real tight, and then place it where you want it in your landscaping, fill it with water, and the water will tell you if you’re level. Then, if you’re not quite level and it spills out a little more on one side, just take some wedges from the hardware store, some gravel or sand, and if you can just poke it underneath the side, you’ll pretty much level it out. It doesn’t have to be real level; I mean ¼” off, that’s not gonna matter any.

Within there, you can put, say, a water lily. I suggest you leave it in the pot. Some people put soil in the bottom of that big ceramic pot and then just plant the water lily in there, but it’s easier for maintenance if you just leave in its own little pot and you can take it in and out and trim it and fertilize it and all that kind of stuff. And you can add fish in there, some goldfish, that will help keep down the mosquitoes, because people are always scared about mosquitoes, but fish love mosquito larvae. So just put some goldfish in there; they have what’s called mosquitofish. Then you’ve got yourself a nice little water garden right there. And from there, you can expand to more than one pot.

My wife, when we gave up the business, couldn’t get rid of all her water lilies because she loves them, so we must



have 15 of these – well, we got them at Costco, the wholesale store that many people have, but other stores sell them – they’re maybe 20 gallons and they’re plastic now. They look like a half of a wine barrel, if you’ve ever seen a wine barrel, a wooden wine barrel. I’ve used the wooden ones, but these plastic ones, they work so much better. They’re lighter, they don’t dry out and fall apart and rot, eventually, if they’re sitting on the ground. But with those, you can have one, you can have two, you can put a little fountain in there if you want. If you get my idea, there are so many ways you can go about it.

Ed HainesIt sounds like there’s lots of options. You mentioned just getting one of these, and I’m gonna probably want to do that this weekend, getting a ceramic pot, putting a plug in it and filling with water. But I’m assuming, before I go on to my next question, the water you fill it with – I have city water, chlorinated water – is there a problem with that? What do I have to do if I wanted to start one of these small projects? Do I have to buy distilled water?

Doug RoseTypically, I wouldn’t be too concerned about the water. Plants and fish, for the most part, don’t care too much. I will have to caution you, in some metropolitan areas, if they supply the water, they may have chlorine in it, which will dissipate if you just set it out in the weather for 4 or 5



hours. Some locations do use what they call chloramines, and that you may have to let stand for a week. But just maybe set it up for a week or something like that and then add some fish and plants, some, what we call, feeder goldfish. You just go to the pet store, and, I don’t know, they’re anywhere from 10¢ to a quarter a piece, and they’re kind of like the canary in the gold mine. Put those in there and, if they’re still swimming around in a few days –some of them will die off anyway because they’re not the best quality being shipped around in a pet store – but that’s kind of a good way to get started.

Caution about that, when you do place it, Ed, pick a place partially shaded, next to something that will maybe give it a little shade, because it could get too warm in some climates, like Michigan or other states that really warm up. But, for the most part, they’re really nice because you can get all the way around them, you can easily reach in there and maintain them.

So, yeah, that is a good question that people have on the water, but I would say, for the most part, just put your hose water in there that you water your garden with and let it sit for a few days. Which brings up another point. I think one of the biggest mistakes most of us water gardeners make as newbies is we get too impatient. We think this thing’s gonna happen right away. But folks, it takes about a year to two years for a pond to reach its own balance.



Ed HainesWow, that’s really interesting. My next question had been are there fish and plants that can survive in these smaller water features? It sounds like there are. Are there some specific – you mentioned the fish itself – are there some specific names of plants that do well in these smaller water features?

Doug RoseAny of your water plants will do well in any size of water feature. They do breed specifically what’s called some miniature – you’ll probably see them listed as miniature water lilies – they have a smaller leaf and they don’t spread out. Water lilies can go from a radius of – leaf spread we’re talking about now, say the size of what a tree does, we call them bushes, and then we call them trees – well, water lilies are sort of the same. If you see them listed, they’ll say 1-3 leaf spread; 1-3 feet. So you’ve got a, say, a 2 foot pot. Buy one of the water lilies that are called miniatures, although the other ones will work in there. Helvola is a good one, Indiana is a good one. Those will work. In the growing season, you can trim off about 30% of the leaves each week on a water lily because they’re gonna grow fast. You’ll just keep it within the pot unless you like to see the leaves come over the side of the pot.



A lot of people like to put, say, a sedge, or something that grows tall, in that container pot. Visually it looks good to the sighted world that you’ve got something tall growing. Our friends are water hyacinths. They float in water and they’re really helpful because they’re a good filter plant. They have a lot of these roots you feel growing off the bottom of them. There’s a variety of plants you can put in there. Like I say, just get yourself some mosquitofish or feeder goldfish from the pet store, put in there, and they’ll help set up the environment, keep down any mosquitoes that like to live in there.

Up front here, I took three different of these plastic wine barrels, and I put them on different levels. I set a cement block on its end, so it’s 16 inches high. Then the next one is sitting on some cement blocks that are on their face, so they’re only 8 inches high. And then the third level is just sitting on the ground. What we did is we carved a notch in there with a saw, and then we got some plastic pipe, cut it in half, made it like a spout. So one, the top level, the pump from the bottom level pumps it up there, and then you hear this trickle sound as it hits each level. Also within your barrel or container, your pot, you can put one or two bricks in there to lift the plant so it’s higher than the others, so it’s visually good. For me, I like plants like the water mint because I can smell them when I rub against them. The lilies themselves, oh, they’re amazing. If you get



down next to them, the flowers on them will have various kinds of scent. That’s what I really like as a blind person.

Ed HainesOkay. That sounds fantastic. We do have a couple questions. I think it’s perfectly appropriate to stop here and ask them. Barbara asks a question that was actually on my list, so thanks Barbara. She wants to know, what about the winter, and I wanted to know that too. I live in a hardiness zone with a long period of freezing temperatures. You mentioned that even the smaller ponds can take a year or two to equalize, so what about those of us who do live in cold climates and these small containers? I could see mine freezing down to the very bottom. That’s the first question. So if – I can remind you of the questions as we go – Wendy wants to know – you mentioned a tall plant – she wants to know what that was again. And then Susan has a great question, are there plants that are toxic to pets that patio gardeners especially should avoid?

Doug RoseLet’s see here. Yeah, the freezing question, I’m not too good on that because, fortunately, where I live, it only gets to about 32 a handful of times during the winter. But, yeah, I could see if it froze clear to the bottom of a 2 foot pot, it could crack it, especially if it’s ceramic, so you’d want to keep it de-iced somehow. I do see on the internet, for



people in your region, they do have de-icers that just keep it a little warmer, it’s electronic, that you would plug in. Or, during those hard times, you may have to move it inside and just keep your plants wet. Or, what’s recommended – when I get ice over here, it’s about anywhere from ½” to 1” thick on top of my pots. I just pour some water on it and it’ll eventually break through, so the pot won’t bust and, if anything’s in there that needs oxygen, then it can get it. I don’t have a lot of good experience doing it in the colder climates because our zone is pretty moderate by the Pacific Ocean. But I do know – we’ve had these 2 gallon pots of lilies, water lilies, they’re called hardy water lilies, that’s mostly what most people grow in the United States – as long as the tuber, or the main part that’s in the ground, doesn’t freeze, you’re okay. I’ve had my 2 gallon pots ice over and the plant survives. Hopefully that answers that one.

The tall plants – there’s a variety of tall plants. They’re usually in the cattails that you may be familiar with; they grow tall. Any of the sedges have edges. Any of the sedges or grasses. There are water grasses that will grow tall. Pickerel, water pickerel, has, I believe, it’s a purple/white blue flower. It will grow tall. Your local stores that carry water plants, if you look over there, you should find several. And what was that last one?

Ed Haines



Susan wanted to know, are there specific plants that are toxic to pets that we should avoid? I know this has come up before in container gardening. It seems like cats especially tend to eat plants that are hanging around close to the house, or nibble on them. Are there any ones that you know of that are particularly toxic?

Doug RoseNo, Susan, I can’t think of any in the water plant business that I know of are toxic per se. But I think this does bring up another consideration when you’re planning a water garden, especially for the people that want to put in a bigger pond. Water containers wouldn’t be so much because, as the word says, you have them contained. For bigger pond installations, we do caution people. Water plants are very invasive. They’re probably one of the fastest growing plants around, so there are some considerations if you’re near a creek or some kind of waterway. Just be careful wherever your water comes out of your pond you’re not introducing it into the wildlife.

Ed HainesThat’s a good point Doug. I live near Lake Michigan and the whole region is battling something called Phragmites, which is a marsh plant or a water plant. It’s so aggressive it just crowds and kills off any other kind of water plant, which adversely affects the wildlife and everything else. So, great point.



Barbara has a – Barbara, if I can put your question off for a second because you’re asking all the questions that I was gonna ask him, so I will bring that up. I wanted to talk about maybe some larger features right now, briefly. Doug, we’ve discussed this, but I’ll tell you folks a little story. My parents had a lily pond. It was probably 12’ x 12’. It was a kidney-shaped kind of pond. As a teenager, it was my job to dig it, and then we actually had to wire up all the rebar, and we had to have a concrete truck come in and pour concrete, and it was a huge, huge production to construct. You know what, it always kind of leaked, especially after a couple winters. Doug, I wonder, for those of us who maybe have some garden space and who would like a little bigger pond, are there easier options than just dealing with all that rigmarole?

Doug RoseYes, Ed, I think what you speak to is very important. There’s been an evolution in this whole pond industry, you might say, and water gardening. A lot of us did create them out of cement, like you say, and I get several calls on there a year from people that they’ve cracked over time. Folks, if you want to do it the easy way, Firestone makes what’s called PondGard. If you’ve ever seen or felt an inner tube, it’s made out of rubber like that except it comes in a big roll or a sheet. It comes anywhere from 5’ widths, like you could run down a waterfall, to 25’ widths, and you



can actually tape and seam this stuff together if you need a bigger pond. It’s very flexible. It’ll give when the earth moves. You usually put a padding under it to help protect it from rocks and rodents digging in, which I know will happen. It will conform and you fold it – if you’ve got a kidney-shaped pond, you can make these little folds inside and it conforms very well.

You can also run pipes through it, what we call a bulkhead fitting. You cut a hole about half the size of the pipe you’re gonna stick through it, and it creates a little neck around the pipe, and then you just clamp it off with a regular hose clamp. That will make constructing ponds a lot easier. You don’t always have to dig down; you can dig down a little bit and then dig and bring the soil up around it so half of your pond is below where you’re walking, and a little bit of it is above ground. This will help insulate it and moderate the temperature, which is important in ponds, especially during the growing season. The EPDM rubber liner, if you shop for that on the internet or your local hardware store, that makes pond construction a lot easier.

Ed HainesBoy that sounds a lot easier than what I went through. Susan had a question, and also Susan says she’s lost audio, but I could hear you fine Doug. If anyone else is having problems, please text and let us know. Susan wanted to know about mosquitoes, and I think you



touched on that briefly, but I wonder if you could comment on mosquitoes. And then Kathleen asks maybe would a fountain keep the pond thawed out in cold climates?

Doug RoseYes. Susan, if you can hear me, this is probably one of my first questions I ever get from people, because there is a big mosquito scare, which I understand. Yes, fish, if you don’t feed them much, whatever fish they are – and there’s actually Gambusia, commonly called mosquitofish. They’re so innocuous; they’re real small, but do they love to eat mosquito larvae that are laid in a pond or in a water feature. Most pet stores, I think anymore, carry those because they want to keep down the mosquito population. What’s nice about those is they multiply pretty good. A few of them will survive during the winter, so you’ll have them left over when the springtime comes around, when the mosquitoes are starting to lay their eggs. And then the birds, which are predators for our bigger fish, they don’t mess with the little ones, so that’s good. Someone else wanted to know about – what was it Ed?

Ed HainesKathleen wanted to know about would a fountain work to keep a pond thawed out in cold climates? I’m guessing maybe – I don’t know. I know where I live, people turn off their fountains and drain them because they just freeze and break. What do you think?



Doug RoseI think you’re right on the money there. In a transitional climate, like say in mine where it only freezes a few times a year, yes, the waterfall or the fountain, running water will keep the system open from thawing all the way. But on most of these good filters at the bottom, they always have a drain cap that says drain this during the winter. So a lot of the harsh winter people, they drain their whole filter system and their lights and so forth. There’s actually on my filter a setting that’s called winter, which I never have to use.

Ed HainesNow, I do want to go back to the pond options. You mentioned a liner. I know some people use these preformed, and I’ve seen them at my lumber store, preformed, below-ground pond – they almost look like plastic wading pools; they’re different shapes. Are those preferable to the rubber liner, or do you recommend using the rubber liner?

Doug RoseOh, I’m glad you asked that. Yeah. I would go for the rubber liner above those, although, for some people, those have been a nice option. If you get one of those, they come in various sizes. We call them preformed ponds, like you said. They’re rigid ponds that you can dig into the



ground, or I almost like to put them above ground and then build a frame around them with wood and just fill soil or sand in there and set them in there. They come anywhere from 50 gallons up to maybe 300 gallons. They have nice oddly-shaped ones, kidney ones. I had one that – I don’t remember what it was called, Kodiak or something – it had a nice spillway that was a waterfall into another pond.

If you get one of those, and you have the room for it, maybe 6 or 8 feet in diameter, get one of the bigger ones. You’ll have less trouble with, say, raccoons, because they can easily get in those and just tear everything up you’ve done. They are a nice little option, and they can be doable, but anytime you could create yourself one with an EPDM rubber liner from Firestone, comes in different thicknesses, about 25 mil up to 40, that would be the way I would go on that one.

Ed HainesOkay, thanks, good to know. You mentioned raccoons, so I did have a question about maintenance. A lot of people are unsure about water gardening because they don’t have any idea about the level maintenance involved, I sure don’t, and I know people make mistakes because they don’t do any maintenance and then the pond just turns to a soupy, algae-filled mess. I want to ask a general question about – these kinds of garden features,



are they pretty time-consuming to maintain? Swimming pools take a lot of work for people who are constantly scooping leaves out of them and testing the pH, etc. What are some of the maintenance issues, like pest control, and then what do people need to know exactly about pond biology? How do you troubleshoot when you’ve got a problem?

Doug RoseThis is probably some of the most common and problem areas that people eventually get out of water gardening for because they don’t have the correct information. What I find, doing this for years now, is that there are people that call themselves contractors that will put you in a pond, but they’ll put you in the most minimum filter system because it makes them the most money. You guys may have heard of lava rock filters. If it was me, I wouldn’t go near it. Been there, done that, tried that. It’ll make money for the guy putting it in for you or it will save you money up front, but pond maintenance, like other garden maintenance, it depends on the plant and your original setup. It can be as little as a few times a year, and then you go enjoy it.

I probably can’t emphasize enough, don’t be impatient with water gardening. No matter if it’s a container garden or a larger pond that you set up, you gotta give it a couple seasons to mature. The reason for that is it’s all about



what we call beneficial bacteria. If you feel inside a pond or a container garden, you’re gonna feel a lot of scum on the side. The biggest mistake people make is they take a high pressure water hose or a brush or something and they get rid of all that scum that’s on the side. Well, actually, that’s your friend. I call it your friend, because that has beneficial bacteria in it.

They’ll sell on the market things, you’ll go into the hardware store or the gardening store, and they’ll say algaecide on them. Especially sighted people – I don’t care too much if the water is green or murky because I can’t really tell – but sighted people get all excited about this and they go buy this stuff, and I wish they didn’t sell it, but they’re called algaecides and they basically will kill off algae, which is a plant, and then it’ll clear up their water for a few days. But what they’ve done is they’ve put all the nutrients from the dead algae back into the system and you just start this vicious cycle all over again. And then they’ll call me, “Well, I used this, it cleared up for about a week, and now it’s murky again.” Or, “it’s pea-soup green algae.” So, if a sighted person tells you it’s pea-soup green algae, it’s what we call single-cell algae. Most of us pond keepers now, we use what’s called an ultraviolet light, and the water will pass through this, by this light, and what it does is it wrecks the DNA of the single-cell algae. It will clear up your pond and keep it clear as long as you’ve got the electricity on. You only have to have it on



during the growing season. You don’t have to use your algaecides. Your filter will catch – a good filter – will catch most of that debris if it’s dead algae that dies off.

You gotta give it time. It’s a process because there’s two bacteria that are involved that break down the first round of ammonia and stuff that your plants, and especially your fish, put off when you’re feeding them. And then there’s another bacteria that comes in and it turns the nutrients into what your higher-level plants, like your water lilies and your marginal plants, your marsh-marigolds and that, will use. So if you can get that balance just right – and an important thing, if you’re gonna put in a bigger pond, say – I like to start at about 1,000 gallons – it’s a little harder to get the right equipment and stuff for ponds that are smaller than 1,000 gallons. If you start with one of those ponds, put in the proper equipment up front. It’s gonna cost more, but it’s gonna cause you less maintenance in the end and you’re not gonna fill that in later and say, well, we’re gonna do vegetables or something.

Ed HainesIt sounds like, with the bigger ponds, you really do need to have some equipment, like filters and things like that. Is it possible to have a water feature that’s just self-sustaining, that, just because of its balance of biology, it more or less



is stable, or, because it’s a closed-system, is that almost impossible to achieve?

Doug RoseNo. I have seen plenty of systems, whether it’s the stock tank that’s about 200 gallons, or the bigger ponds where they just throw in a rubber liner, they put some plants in there, and, if they’re patient enough, after a few years it’ll balance itself out. Sighted people can see the fish swimming around in there. It’ll be clear water. They don’t have any pump. They might have a little aerator that puts bubbles of air into the water for the fish. But they don’t have to spend thousands of dollars on filters, ultraviolet lights, pre-filters, skimmers, bottom drains, any of this stuff. That’s the minority of people that are willing to do that. But it can be done with your backyard pond. You just have to be probably more patient and it can be a lot less maintenance and a lot less cost than going the accepted route of what we call a skimmer or a pre-filter, a filter, a waterfall. It can be done.

Ed HainesWell, that’s great to know. That’s definitely what I would be interested in. We do have a question from Susan. She just wants to know, is there a water garden 101 book you



can recommend, sort of a water gardening for dummies, or something like that that she could refer to?

Doug RoseI’m trying to remember. On NLS, they do have – I have seen some water gardening books on there by some of the leaders in the industry. Feel free to contact me because that’s what we’re about with the pond club. Our whole emphasis over here with my wife and I is getting people some quality information so they don’t get discouraged and they get started off on the right foot to enjoy water gardening at whatever level. There are some good quality sites on the internet that will tell you about pond biology. Each company, if it’s by a company, of course they’re gonna say their filter is better than the other guy’s filter, and some of that is just marketing hype. So if you need help sifting through that, you can get a hold of me at PondWorks.us.

Ed HainesAll right, thanks, Doug. Susan, I just did a quick search on BARD for any NLS books on water gardening and I’m not seeing one right now. It’s a good question. I don’t see any water gardening books. Lots of gardening books, but none on water gardening. Maybe I’m doing the wrong thing in the search engine. We’ll keep looking, but Doug, thank you for volunteering to give people information in the future.



Now, we’ve talked about some mistakes that beginners make. Oh, look at the time; we’re getting close to time. Are there any other common mistakes that beginners make that you haven’t mentioned that you think we ought to know about?

Doug RoseWhat I see most of us do is we rely on a contractor that says, “Oh, I can put you in a pond.” And, like I say, they skimp on what I would call the proper filtration and they give you a barrel of lava rocks. I’ve tried that. Ponds will do what we call bioload, and those lava rocks work for about a year or two, and then they load up. If you’re gonna put in some of the bigger ponds, if it says this filter does 2,000 gallons, I would get one that does 4,000 gallons. Oversize everything because you want some fudge-factor. That’s what I see the most common mistake. People don’t put in what we call skimmers, and that’s where it pulls the water or skims it off the top of your pond, because, I don’t care what environment, if the trees are 25 feet away, 50 feet away, they’re gonna drop their stuff in your pond that you want out of there because that’s nutrients for your algae to grow, which most people don’t want. Then other things go around, the wind blows stuff from your neighbors in there.



Some of the common mistakes are not spending enough up front, people getting frustrated and then just filling up their pond with soil and saying I’m gonna plant grass. Just try to research it the best you can. If you can go visit other people in your neighborhood that have ponds that are successful, you could see what works in your climate. And see if there’s a pond club in your area. I do pond tours over here about three times a year. We’ve got one coming up this weekend. We just go to people’s backyards that will allow us to come there and just ask them questions on what they’ve done, what worked for them, the mistakes they’ve made. Maybe that’ll help you get directed into having a water feature as part of your landscape.

Ed HainesThat sounds like great advice Doug. I’m always telling folks, find a garden club near you because these people are a wealth of information about your own little micro-climate you live in. Also, I’ve found that being part of garden club is a great way to get free plants because everyone’s always dividing what they’ve got in their garden and looking to give them away. So if you want free stuff, garden clubs are the way to go.

I had a few more questions, but I wanted to ask this one because we’re running out of time. This is something that really interested me when we were talking about this



presentation. I wonder if you could go into a little more detail about what you as a person with a vision impairment find so special and enjoyable about water gardening. What are the aspects that our visually impaired listeners would enjoy?

Doug RoseThat’s a very good question. It’s so fascinating to me compared to other types of gardening I’ve done. I mean I like my vegetables, I like my flowers, I can eat the vegetables, I can smell the flowers, but you can do the same with water plants. The water lilies have interesting smells, the flowers do. Oh, the textures are unbelievable. The water is so smooth and soothing. The water lilies come in – the leaves come in so many different shapes. The stems are hollow. You can pick one off. You can make it into a drinking straw. If you feel the back of them, sometimes they’ll have fuzz on them. Sometimes the, what they call the sinus of the leaf, on the backside they’ll overlap. The flowers feel a lot different depending on their size, their shape. And just dividing up the tubers, they’re kind of like an iris tuber, or rhizome is what we call them, and you can tell where there’s gonna be a new lily because there’s a collection of leaves there.

And then, wait till you get into creating sounds with flowing water. It can be anything from a trickle. What you’re gonna find is what creates the sound is what you put in



front of the water to break the flow up. Heck, I can spend two hours out there changing the rocks around in my waterfall and getting different melodies to come out of that thing. You just sit back, relax, enjoy it. And I like feeling the fish swimming around.

Oh, one thing I want to tell you guys is they make a plastic T-shaped label, and the T part of the label, you can get about 40 braille characters on there. So that’s how I’ve labeled a lot of our plants, whether they’re water plants or in the vegetable garden. You can take a Perkins Braille writer and your braille won’t go away on there. A sighted person can take a grease pencil on the front side so they can see it. Those are some of the fun things I found about water gardening.

Ed HainesBoy thanks Doug. I think that is just terrific and we can hear the enthusiasm in your voice. It just sounds wonderful. The sound of the trickling and falling water is an amazingly relaxing thing. I hadn’t really thought about the idea of changing the configuration of the rocks so that you could get different melodies out of the water. I think that’s just absolutely fascinating. I guess we have a – I’ll just ask another quick question; we don’t have any other questions up on the board. Finally, if someone’s getting excited about this, and I am certainly, is it – you touched on it briefly – can you get these supplies and this stuff, can



you get them from your local – I’m gonna say Walmart, I shouldn’t mention names – can you get them there or do you have to go on the internet to get some of these special water gardening supplies?

Doug RoseI do see more of what we call big box stores carrying water supplies, or water gardening supplies. For some of the smaller features, it’ll work fine. If you get into some of the bigger ponds, I would research it on the internet and get what we call a closed pressurized system. One of the companies that I really like is OASE for pumps. They have a pretty good line of pumps and I find them very reliable. Some of the products aren’t as quality that I see on the internet, so it’s kind of hard to know, I think, as a novice. But, also, I use a company out here in California called Aqua UV. So, if you find a dealer for them, I like their ultraviolet lights for the bigger systems. More of the stores, I think, are starting to get into the water plant business. It was one of the fastest growing parts of the gardening business about, probably, 8, 10 years ago. It kind of depends where you live and what they want to carry. Yeah, you could do plenty of research on the internet.

And some of the other things, before we wrap up, that I’ve messed with you guys might like is what we call a Japanese deer scarer. It’s this thing that, kind of like a



teeter-totter, that’s made out of a pipe, and the water hits the front of it and it drops forward and makes a click, and then when it comes back, it can hit a rock. The Japanese said they use it for scaring off deer. I played around with making one by just hearing about it on the internet. It was fun. And then another one is called a Japanese water harp and it’s where, underneath a sink, the drops hit this jar, and this jar will kind of make a “ding dong ding” sound. Those are some other fun things that you guys could do with water features.

Ed HainesBoy that sounds fantastic. Japanese water harp and Japanese deer scarer; I’m gonna look those up on the internet this afternoon. That sounds like a lot of fun. We are just really out of time. We had one more listener who wants to know about, if she just set up a super small birdbath, would rinsing it out each day be the best way to discourage mosquitoes? I think I’ll answer that one for you, Doug. Yes, absolutely, and, also, birds need clean water; you don’t want the water to get stagnant in there because that’s not good for the birds. So, I think if you rinsed it out and filled it every day, your birdbath, you wouldn’t have a mosquito problem.

Boy this went by really, really fast. I learned a lot and I hope you guys did. I’m just going to close up the seminar now. I hate to. This recording and additional handout



resource – which we will not have – but the recording will be archived on the Low Vision Focus website and Hadley School website, actually, www.hadley.edu. That’s the place where I’d look for it. The recording will be available 24/7. Each of our seminars at Hadley is available now as a podcast, so you can download and listen to those on your computer or mobile device. And, for those of you on Twitter, Hadley’s Twitter hashtag is Seminars@Hadley.

Everyone, I really appreciate you participating today. We had some great questions and we certainly value your feedback, so if you’d like to stick around for a little while longer and let us know what you thought of this seminar, and, certainly, if you have some future topics for gardening seminars, let me know. You can send an email to [email protected]. I’m gonna hand the microphone back to Doug to say goodbye. Doug, once you’ve given your farewell, you’re free to leave. I really appreciate you doing this today. It was a lot of fun and I’m thinking maybe we should have a water gardening part 2 sometime because this is a fantastic topic. Doug, I’m gonna hand the mic back to you for a final farewell.

Doug RoseOkay, everybody. Get out there, get your container, get some water in it. Have any questions, let us know. And carry on.


mailto:[email protected]

http://www.hadley.edu/


Ed HainesWell, thank you so much Doug. I really appreciate it.

[End of audio 0:57:59]


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