Time to start planning water features

Well, here we are in the final stretch to spring. The days are longer, are clocks are about to jump an hour ahead, and the (hope­fully) last win­ter storm has come and gone. As daf­fodils push up through heavy, wet soil many of us are final­iz­ing our gar­den plans for the upcom­ing spring/summer. Always one of the most pop­u­lar projects is a ‘water fea­ture’ (a vague term that cov­ers count­less appli­ca­tions). From sim­ple foun­tain to elab­o­rate koi pond, all are con­sid­ered water fea­tures. Per­haps this is due to the end­less stream of backyard/garden makeover TV shows that rep­re­sent water fea­tures as easy, fun changes to make in a few hours. Yes, maybe so with a team of plumbers to engi­neer, a fleet of labor, and expen­sive equip­ment to make it all run smoothly. The ben­e­fits of incor­po­rat­ing water into your gar­den design are all wonderful—the serene sound of water flow­ing over beau­ti­fully arranged rocks, feel­ing your work­day stress melt away as you feed the beau­ti­ful fish, a sweet lit­tle frog sun­ning him­self next to the fruit of your Memo­r­ial Day week­end labor. Water fea­tures are fan­tas­tic addi­tions to a gar­den. But before you run off to buy pond lin­ing, there are a few issues to con­sider that you’ll never hear about on ‘Yard Crash­ers’. After all, those serene moments could eas­ily be stolen by dead fish, algae, bro­ken equip­ment, or other ani­mals who also enjoy a serene moment at your expense. The most impor­tant con­sid­er­a­tion is where your water fea­ture goes. Obvi­ously from a design stand­point loca­tion is impor­tant, but it is also impor­tant to con­sider exist­ing plants around it. For instance, next to a veg­etable gar­den is not the wis­est loca­tion for a water fea­ture. Many ani­mals are drawn to veg­etable gar­dens and may also be drawn to a new place to drink or fish. Or vice versa, the water may lure deer over who then decide to lunch in your veg­etable gar­den. Also with new or exist­ing plant­i­ngs around the water fea­ture it is imper­a­tive to con­sider the run of the plants’ roots. Many plants that enjoy wet con­di­tions have inva­sive roots that will spread aggres­sively. This could inter­fere with how pumps and pipes func­tion as well as dam­ag­ing rock­work around the water’s edge. If you aim to keep fish in your water fea­ture, care­fully con­sider what kind of fish. It can be dif­fi­cult to keep fish in a very small amount of water for many rea­sons. The imme­di­ate con­cern is not hav­ing enough oxy­gen in the water to sus­tain the needs of the fish. Sec­ond, if the area is too small, or shal­low it will be more likely to freeze com­pletely in the win­ter, which would kill the fish. Not only is it sad to lose fish, but can be a very expen­sive mis­take. It is often rec­om­mended to start with gold­fish or even bet­ter fish that are native to our area. Blue Heron and rac­coons also present a com­mon prob­lem with keep­ing fish. It is not unheard of for a preda­tor to clear a small pond of its’ fish in one night. Deeper water helps to solve this problem…of course a deeper pond also raises another risk of wan­der­ing chil­dren or ani­mals. There are rel­a­tively inex­pen­sive screens that can be pur­chased to go over small land­scape ponds to pro­tect the fish inside. A last and very impor­tant con­sid­er­a­tion is where the pump is. Often the pri­mary thought in the place­ment of this equip­ment is keep­ing it hid­den. Of course some­time inevitably some­thing will hap­pen and the pump will need main­te­nance or to be replaced, so keep­ing it acces­si­ble is cru­cial. I am not anti-water fea­ture. I love them, and think the pos­si­ble com­pli­ca­tions are far out-weighed by the beauty and plea­sure they bring to a gar­den. Stephen Jones is an OSU Exten­sion Mas­ter Gar­dener volunteer.

Posted by Halley Miller on Mar 9 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.