How far out can you go when designing a water garden? Beware Chelsea Flower Show and Hampton Court Ideas and Designs

If you are still considering having a water garden outside in which to keep fish, and you have been looking at the garden shows like Chelsea and Hampton Court for inspiration – take care. A designer’s idea of water in the garden can be very misleading.

As you have probably seen, nothing seems impossible when it comes to water in the garden.

Garden designers working on show gardens are not there to create sustainable gardens that would look just as good in a month, let alone six months.

'Originality' comes up on the top of the list of methods of trying to inspire you, often resorting to using new materials or new gizmos, both for functional purposes or decoration.

It is the magical ingredient that sustains all life.

Two inch deep pools need the same or a complex filtration system.

The current trend for putting cobbles or pieces of stone right down into pool water to help hide the pool liner and the whereabouts of the pump is a fish keeper's nightmare when it comes to the big clean out.

For most types of fish, anything deeper than one metre is over doing it, but koi enthusiasts are usually prepared to go to twice that depth and more.

It needs to have a surface area of at least 3 square metres (approximately 30 square feet).

This will enable you to maintain a balance within the pool environment that is less immediately affected by the weather or outside environmental pressures.

LACK OF PLANTS Quite often you see an impressive display for a garden and the water feature doesn't contain any plants.

Sometimes, just for dramatic effect, it may have just one variety of one species.

When it comes to water plants, particularly the marginal plants that inhabit the shallow regions around the edge, these are never plants that can be considered as reserved.

Certain people like to classify deep water marginals separately from others, but if you plant them all at the same level, up to their necks, just over soil level, in water, then the deep water crew will find their own level.

Suffice it say that variety is the spice of life to enable you to get that natural balance and to keep everything under control, including each other and the water clean enough to swim in.

Many serious keepers of Koi carp do, partly because koi love to mess around muddy planting baskets, and partly because technology allows koi keepers to have a more exact scientific control over the conditions that their valuable investments live in without worrying about the effects that weather, light and seasonal temperatures have on plants and water.

Even though you may not need it or be able to afford it straight away it is worth making provision for the installation of a biological filter system.

The least you can do now is to mentally reserve a site for the filter box that is hidden and allows for easy 'back flushing' (a quick and easy method of cleaning the filter that sucks out the debris from the filter medium).

The size and 'thru'put' I'll talk about next time when I'll also tell you how to make friends and influence people with fountains waterfalls and other things.

water pool plants gardens fish deep metre square marginals filtration life materials filter environment reserve click link to read full article

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