Water really should feature

Cornish Guardian; Truro (UK), Jun 16, 2010 | by Richard Dee

PONDS and water features add an extra dimension to the garden. Water has a calming and cooling effect; even the sound of moving water is restful and the way that light plays on the surface brings movement and life to the garden. Many of the self-contained water features currently popular as a result of television shows may be a way of incorporating water into even the smallest garden but they have little to do with water gardening.
Real water gardening involves using the pond, however small, as a place to grow a range of plants that cannot be grown in the rest of the garden.
Dwarf water lilies can be displayed in containers as small as a large sink or half-barrel while, at the other extreme, bull rushes need a large relatively deep pond to thrive. The larger the pond, the easier it is to maintain, as the various types of plants and attendant animal life form a selfcontained ecosystem with its own checks and balances.
Semi-natural ponds are easier than formal ones but any body of water attracts wildlife to the garden, much of which is beneficial.
Although most authorities state that fish eat tadpoles and should not be kept in ponds designed to encourage wildlife there is little evidence to support this. Fish may take a few tadpoles but they rarely have much effect on the population.
The pond in the Italian Garden at Heligan is rectangular and only a foot deep. It used to contain a good population of goldfish yet we had to put up signs warning visitors of the hundreds of baby frogs and toads that left the pond every August.
I also know of a large, deep pond that contains too many goldfish, orfe, rudd, roach, tench and koi that supports a mass of tadpoles.
Still water provides the ideal breeding site for midges so I would recommend keeping a few goldfish in any container holding water, even water butts, to eat the larvae.
Almost all ponds become discoloured in spring or early summer with an explosion of algal growth. This is normally nothing to worry about as it will soon right itself.
The algal bloom is caused by a surfeit of nutrients released as the water temperature rises. If there are sufficient plants present they soon start to absorb the nutrients thus starving the algae and clearing the water.
If the problem persists for more than a few weeks you can try introducing more plants, especially those that float or have floating leaves.
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