Start Planning for Your Backyard Garden

Water gardens are great focal points for any backyard.

With spring in the air, now is the time to start planning for your backyard garden. For many homeowners, a backyard pond is a perfect supplement to your existing layout. The trickling of water in the background is the ideal way to supplement the natural, serene and relaxing atmosphere that the outdoors should offer.

A pond or water garden will likely become the focal point for your entire backyard. Backyard ponds and water gardens will attract birds, butterflies, wildlife, and family members. Ponds are usually small and no larger than 3 to 4 feet in diameter, and often can be used to raise fish. At night-time, a garden pond can be lit up with both surrounding and submersible lighting. An extravagant light show can be produced by projecting underwater lighting directly onto trickling or falling water.

In the past, the installation of a water garden was a convoluted process that either involved the expense of a landscaper, or trial and error to perfect the art of pond installation. However, preformed pond kits are now available that can make pond installation relatively straightforward. Preformed pond kits are affordable, lessen the risk of mistakes, and come complete with all the accessories that you will need to complete a garden pond installation.

Before purchasing a preformed pond kit, make sure that it fulfils all of your requirements. How large of a pond are you looking for? Do you want to raise fish? Would you like water to trickle down a waterfall? How long is the warranty on the pond kit?

One preformed pond kit that comes highly recommended is the Algreen 180 gallon folding preformed pond kit. New to the Algreen line of products, this kit includes easy-to-follow instructions. The instructions minimize the effort required to install the pond, after a hole is dug. The pieces in the kit fit easily together and leave you ample flexibility to creatively position and landscape the area around the pond, according to your heart's desire.

The 180 gallon kit comes complete with both a preformed pond shell and a preformed watercourse that is manufactured from a revolutionary rubber/plastic composite (this composite material is guaranteed to be more durable and resist wear more than any other existing preformed pond kits). The kit includes a powerful 792 gallon-per-hour SuperFlo pump with flow control; this pump is used to feed varying flows of water to both the watercourse and the built-in fountain. The pump is purposely oversized to allow it to channel water to your watercourse and fountain, and to accommodate fish in your pond.

Up to 4 fountain heads are included with the kit, to allow you to vary your fountain according to your mood. An underwater light is also included free with the kit. This underwater light utilizes colored filters to shine luminous light from the bottom of your pond to accentuate the falling water from your fountain and/or your waterfall.

Small backyard garden ponds are usually low maintenance. The occasional debris from your pond can usually be trapped with a mechanical pre-filter, which is included with the SuperFlo pump. However, if you decide to raise fish in your pond, it is recommended that you increase your filtration capacity. Because the pump is purposely oversized, this can be easily accomplished by upgrading your pre-filter to a larger filtration device. Optional filtration devices include the mechanical and biological SuperFlo submersible filter, or the Algreen pressurized filter.

You will need to start planning for your water garden now in order to have it completed by spring. Before commencing any project, it is always recommended that you conduct research to learn as much as possible about the topic. Therefore, it is recommended that you use the early part of the season to read more about pond construction.

This article was provided courtesy of GardenSM.com.

About The Author
Gerry Fung is the Vice President of of GardenSM.comGardenSM.com.

A Beginners Guide To Pond Supplies

Have you ever dreamed of creating a backyard oasis? Someplace where you can relax and enjoy nature, even if you live in the middle of a big city? If so, then a pond may be just what you have been looking for. While building a pond is not necessarily difficult, there is more involved than simply lining a hole in the ground and filling it with water and some fish.

Before you start the pond building process, you must first gather your pond supplies, decide on the size and the location for your pond and, of course, how deep your new pond will be. The depth will depend on where you live and whether or not there will be fish sharing your new oasis with you.

The easiest way to build a pond is to start with a pre-formed plastic pond liner. These types of liners come in a variety of shapes, sizes and depths to fit any homeowners needs.

You will often find this type of a liner in a pond kit. However, if you prefer more of a do-it-yourself approach to pond building, you also have the option of digging your pond free-form and lining it with heavy gauge pond plastic. This comes in a roll and is laid inside the hole and cut to fit.

When you are digging the hole for the new pond, it is a good idea to include shelves and maybe even shallow caves. These will come in handy when you are decorating with plants to give height and depth to your new addition and provide a sheltered place for any fish you might add.

If you will be adding any type of animal life to your pond, it is extremely important for their survival that you dig the pond deep enough so that all of the water doesn't freeze. In most parts of the United States this depth is between a foot and 18". The reason is that fish, frogs and turtles all need some liquid water throughout the winter. Sufficient water movement is also essential to their survival.

You will need a filter, especially if you choose to add fish, frogs or turtles to your completed pond. It is very important to get the best filter that you can afford, as you will need to clean up anything that the filter leaves behind. The better the filter, the less there is to clean up. There are a couple of different styles to choose from in filters.

You can get a submersible or an outside filter for your pond. A submersible filter sits under the surface of the pond and sucks water from the bottom through a filter surface putting clean water back in. An outside filter sits on the edge of the pond and gets its dirty water from the pond at a depth of about 18" or so. Traditionally, both kinds are hooked up so that the water is deposited back into the pond via a waterfall or small stream.

Now that you have the pond dug out, lined and a filter selected, it is time to fill it up, decorate it, add fish (if desired) and enjoy.

About The Author
Daniel Roshard is an interior designer fascinated by outdoor architecture, he is currently studying public parks and outdoor design. Daniel is writing articles about home improvement and landscaping issues at http://ponds.advice-tips.com/

Get Rid Of Green Water Algae In Your Garden Fish Pond

Do you have a problem with green water in your garden pond?

Many people who have a small fish pond in their back garden commonly experience this problem particularly in the summer, and waste a lot of money and time on buying chemicals to prevent the green water algae, when in fact they can adopt a more permanent and natural solution to the problem, which also ensures the safety of your fish.

This goes out specially to all you pond and fish enthusiasts who generally have small ponds, don't have much cash to spare, or just want to learn how to improve the health and clarity of your water, and so keep happy fish!

I first started my Leisure web site at http://leisure.prior-it.co.uk/pond.shtml in 2003 to show how you can design and build your own homemade DIY bio-filter for if you get that terrible green water (thick green pea soup) in your pond due to water-borne algae.

After much research from various fish pond web sites and forums I got an idea for creating a filter design that was a more attractive than most homemade bio-filters which are often constructed using a "Rubbermaid" tank - a big hulking water tank with appropriate plumbing, usually sat at the top of a waterfall, and which normally requires hiding behind plants, rocks and the like because it is so big and ugly.

Like many amateur pond-owners, your pond is probably quite small, perhaps between 350 and 1000 gallons capacity, and so does not require a massive amount of filtration. On my web site I will show you how to set about building something that looks ok, and incorporates a number of different features to aid easy cleaning, and ensure efficient breakdown and filtration of waste products produced by your fish. For example a vortex settlement chamber, a pre-filter and oxygenating venturi, and more recently a trickle-tower filter.

Since then I have updated my pond filtration setup in a number of different ways, and recorded these changes in my Pond Bio-Filter web site (http://leisure.prior-it.co.uk/pond.shtml), but what was lacking was a way of sharing new ideas, successes and failures along the way.

So I also created a Blog for you that will hopefully act as a way of filling the gaps, and keeping you informed of how things progressed and any news and suggestions.

You can find and subscribe to the blog at http://leisure.prior-it.co.uk/jims-pond-blog/

I hope you find it useful.

Just follow the links to my web site, where you will find information on “How to Build a DIY Pond Bio-Filter”, and “Homemade Pond Venturis” where you will find plenty of detail and lots of photographs.

Good luck.

Jim

About The Author
James Prior is an amateur pond and water-garden hobbyist, webmaster, designer, and builder of all types of water features. Jims Pond Blog and Leisure Website is a useful resource for garden fish pond keeping, and cheap homemade DIY bio-filtration and oxygenation methods and techniques. The website provides ideas and construction details complete with many photographs detailing bio-filters, venturis, trickle-filters, pond and stream construction.
For more information see: http://leisure.prior-it.co.uk/pond.shtml
Copyright (c) 2006, James Prior
leisure@prior-it.co.uk

Overwintering the Garden Pond

It seems that there are always questions in the fall about winterizing plastic ponds. To begin with, clean out all the gunk (composed of fish and plant waste) at the bottom of the pond. Specialist garden catalogues have a little gizmo that attaches to a hose and when the hose is run, the gizmo acts like a vacuum cleaner, sucking debris from the bottom of the pond. Or you can put your pump on the pond bottom and point the discharge into the garden. If you don’t remove the plant debris, it will continue to decompose. Decomposition uses oxygen as one of its primary fuels and this means that oxygen will be taken from the water to fuel plant decomposition. If there is an ice-layer over the pond, and there will be shortly, the water will not be able to replace that oxygen and the pond will go into an anaerobic (without oxygen) state under the ice.

Now, you’ve never quite smelled something until you’ve taken a whiff of a pond that’s in that state. It is basically your very own backyard sewage system. Aside from getting rid of the smell, the reason you remove the bottom layers of material is so any fish you’re leaving in the pond will have enough oxygen to survive the winter. And survive they will as long as you stop feeding them when the water temperature is less than 50F. At that temperature, it is really too cold for them to feed and any food will simply rot. The fish will survive as long as the water doesn’t freeze solidly to the bottom of the pond. If the pond is three to four feet deep, it will not freeze and your fish will be fine. Shallower ponds will either have to have a bubbler, a pump left running to keep an open area open or the fish removed to an aquarium for the winter. But start with removing the gunk.

About The Author
Copyright Doug Green, an award winning garden author who answers pond questions in his free newsletter at http://www.water-gardens-information.com.