Ponds 101 Chapter 2
The Water Garden
Typical Water Garden
This is the type of pond made famous by the painter Claude Monet, who fell in love with the hybrid water lilies of a botanist named Latour-Marliac at the 1889 World’s Fair in Paris. Monet planted up a pondfull at his home in Giverny and started painting, sparking a world-wide craze and earning him the title of “Father of Modern Water Gardening”. As you would expect from the name, the Water Garden showcases plants like the Marliaceae water lilies we still plant today, or Iris or Lotus or any of thousands of aquatic and water-loving varieties. The pond shown here, at the International Waterlily Collection in San Lorenzo, Texas, was specifically designed to showcase the world’s largest water lily, Victoria, with leaves that can span 5 feet across. The fish and frogs and turtles that live with the plants in the Water Garden are there for biological balance and to control insects. As far as filtration and circulation go, this type of pond traditionally relies the least on pumps and filters, for a couple of reasons. Many aquatics like Water Lilies and Lotus bloom best in still waters, and the natural filtration of the plantings (“phytofiltration”) usually ensures both good water quality and good water clarity, so aggressive circulation and filtration are unnecessary.
Typical Water Garden
This is the type of pond made famous by the painter Claude Monet, who fell in love with the hybrid water lilies of a botanist named Latour-Marliac at the 1889 World’s Fair in Paris. Monet planted up a pondfull at his home in Giverny and started painting, sparking a world-wide craze and earning him the title of “Father of Modern Water Gardening”. As you would expect from the name, the Water Garden showcases plants like the Marliaceae water lilies we still plant today, or Iris or Lotus or any of thousands of aquatic and water-loving varieties. The pond shown here, at the International Waterlily Collection in San Lorenzo, Texas, was specifically designed to showcase the world’s largest water lily, Victoria, with leaves that can span 5 feet across. The fish and frogs and turtles that live with the plants in the Water Garden are there for biological balance and to control insects. As far as filtration and circulation go, this type of pond traditionally relies the least on pumps and filters, for a couple of reasons. Many aquatics like Water Lilies and Lotus bloom best in still waters, and the natural filtration of the plantings (“phytofiltration”) usually ensures both good water quality and good water clarity, so aggressive circulation and filtration are unnecessary.
