I am sorry I have not been able to do more with the site recently. My mother has recently been diagnosed with bone cancer in her spine. Once things get sorted out on the home front I will be back and do more with the site. I appreciate your patience and your prayers for my family.
Night blooming lilies are tropical plants and are not winter hardy in alot of regions. They usually have spread on their leaves which gives good pond shade and the flowers are large and stand above the water. I always recommended a night blooming tropical as a possible choice for my pond customers that worked 8-5pm jobs.
The great thing about these plants is they start to open up right about the time most folks get home from work and they do not close until about the time most folks have finished the first morning cup of coffee. So for busy professionals on the go this plant represents perfect timing for their lifestyles.
If you have yard lights or water lights in your pond you can really use these plants as a focal point of the pond for the evening hours. They can be a spectacular arrangement for those evening deck parties to bring your backyard pond into the limelight. All your other water plants will have closed off for the evening but the night blooming water lily will be drawing alot of attention.
Well converted into a pond
This turned into a realy great conversion of an existing old structure into a pond. This whole backyard area was overgrown. When the new owners got through trimming out all the underbrush, they discovered an old well. It had been filled in and the decorative wooden top had collapsed.
After clearing the debris, we went in and dug out alot of the fill dirt near the surface of the well so it was about 2-3 feet deep. Then painted the outer surface to make it look nice and new. Then we sealed the inside with concrete paint so that it would hold water - it took a few coats because the old surface was very pourous.
Once we got it to hold water, the owner got the old bricks they had found in the back under the overgrown brush and made a nice patio area around the converted pond. Then we added a dwarf lotus, some pigmy water lilies, parrots feather and some duckweed. They added a smal frog fountain spitting through the leaves to keep the water circulating and dropped in some feeder goldfish to keep the bugs down. Some great landscaping around the area and what once was an eyesore is now a nice focal point for the backyard.
I could say because they are pretty or because they bring nature to your backyard. But the reality for me was dealing with the customers. I loved helping customers create their dreams. Sometimes they were not real sure and I had to work through the process with them other times they were dead set on what they wanted exactly. But all of them were alike in the enthusiasm and excitement they presented for their ponds. So I am hoping by building this backyard pond site I can create a place where all us pond enthusiasts can gather and share the fever so to speak.
I had one customer that could talk me to death about their Koi fish. They were all named (I am guilty of this myself) and they would come over and eat out of his hand which you can train most fish to do in ponds. Which is pretty cool if you ask me. Other customers would plant specific types of bushes and hang feeders because they were bird watchers and saw the pond as a way to invite their feathered friends to come visit. I have often had to make what I called “bird pools” in some of the waterfalls and streams we built for the ponds so the birds would have a place to drink and bathe. It’s trickier than you think because it can not be too deep and it also can not have really fast flowing water or the bird could get hurt. It is more of a gentle eddy to a side where the water just slowly washes over a flat rock area.
I will never forget this one time I had two customers calling me to share almost the same situation for their backyard pond but with two totally different reactions. These ponds were not side by side so I am not sure why these bird visitors decided to show up simultaneously but they did. I am not kidding you they must have hit the ponds on the same flight plan because I got calls within a few hours of each other. Customer one was a bird watcher and his pond was fairly new so he was very pleasantly surprised when he went out on his deck and saw his visitor. He had a blue heron on the side of his pond. He was very happy and took pictures and just bubbled over with enthusiasm about his new pond.
Customer two called me a few hours later and I am sorry to say he was not a bird watcher and was more of a fish lover. His pond was well established and he had a lot of fantail comets in his pond. Some really big ones too which I think were crosses between his regular gold fish and the original fantail comets. But one thing about fantails is they are slow swimmers. Usually I have to warn customers with cats about getting those types of fish. I never thought to warn about herons dropping by. You guessed it; he had a blue heron stalking his fish. Now I do not know if it was the same bird but if it was he had a very large meal before he moved on because my customer was missing a lot of those bigger fantails after he left. Needless to say, customer one was not a happy ponder that day.
I could keep going with the stories but I am hoping we will get some visitors soon that will share their stories so I can let them share before I bore you with my reminiscent wanderings. I think I should create a category called “Ponderings” so we will have a place to store the backyard pond stories people share.
Emclosed Patio Pond
This was a great patio pond. It was built in a side enclosure near the driveway of the house. The sound effect from the waterfall would echo through the house. The family also had the waterfall lit up at night and it was viewable from the kitchen and family room. They did a great planting job around the pond to make it really fit in and seem natural - for a pond up against a brick wall anyway.
Hi Folks -
I wrote a Squidoo Lens all about Japanese Koi. You can find it here! It gives some detailed information about the main 13 categories of Koi. Still working on the pictures. Should have some good stuff up this weekend.
