Joe Sherinski: There is no doubt that water gardening is gaining in popularity in America, and why not? It attracts wild of life, you have great looking plants and you have fish swimming around in the water. You can have it all in your backyard, along with the soothing sound of splashing water. That splashing water can also mask out street noises and neighborhood children. All things considered, it’s a great idea, but not everybody wants to go the expense or the effort of creating such an elaborate water garden. Today, I’d like to show a way to bring the sound of splashing water and plants and the fish to your patio or deck even if you were living in apartment.
Now the first thing you’ll need for your patio pond is a suitable container. You could get a ceramic pot or you can get a nice lightweight plastic one like this, fooled you didn’t I? Then we’re going to set it on little feet which are designed to protect the wood of your deck, if you’re using a concrete potty that will be a problem, and if you choose to use a ceramic pot, be sure to seal it up and of course seal up the drain hole in the bottom.
Next, you want to put a large plastic pot upside down in the bottom of the container, that’s to hide the pump that we’re going to installing here and also the support some stone and we’re going to set on top of it to get a more natural look. The reason for cutting a hole in the pot is not only to allow the cord of the pump to get underneath it. But it’s also to provide a nice hiding place for the fish that were going to be putting in here. We can’t cut it too big because it has to support the weight of those rocks.
You’ll noticed I have also enlarged one of the drainage holes in the bottom of the pot and the reason for that is we need to sneak our tubing in to get down to the pump. This all really a simple project, the fun part comes when we start putting in the plants and the fish. This is an ordinary submersible pump. You can get this at garden centers and home stores around the country. They will range in price from $20 to hundreds of dollars. This one will pump 250 galloons an hour. Might be a little large for this project but it will make for a better sound. It connects to our tubing very simply; no clamps are necessary and then we’re going to use our pot to hide the fact that there is a pump underneath it.
All right, the cord is going to have to hang out the outside. We’ll plug it in later after we’ve got some water in there. Next, we need some rocks to place on top of our pot. I’ve got a couple of fairly large, flat rocks specifically for the purpose right here. You can see why I needed the fairly sturdy pot and fairly small hole, these are heavy. Now, once you’ve got your shelf built, it’s time to start assembling plants. And water gardens are gotten so popular that the selection of plants now at any garden center is enormous.
This is called a picaro plant and it blooms with these purple flowers all summer long in full sun. It sits up on the shelf. We’ll also include some floating plants and some oxygenating anacharis which will help the fish to live. Now here’s a good tip, we’ve assemble this out here while I can work all around it. But we need to put where we want it before we fill up with water because it does get heavy. I’d like it back here so we can hide the cord between the post and the container. Good, that looks good enough. Now, next we put in our plants.
The anacharis will seek for the most part and as it grows it will oxygenate the water and help the fish out there. Our picaro plants will sit up on the shelf and help to hide the tubing and then our water lettuce, which is one of my most favorite water plants just floats around looking pretty. The last thing we need to do is cut the tubing off at or below water level. And we can adjust the water level as well, and then plug in the pump.
The soothing sound of splashing water blooms all summer and once the goldfish had been acclimated to the water, we’ll have fish swimming around too. For more information on patio ponds and other project around the home, swim on over at MichaelHoligan.com.
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