biosystem design

Beauty and tranquility are words on the lips of more and more consumers these days, and they’re discovering with greater and greater frequency that ponds are just what they’re after. Critical to meeting this rising demand, says zoologist and horticulturalist Jeff Rugg, is knowing what goes into creating healthy, clean water in the presence of plants and animals – and into setting these mini-ecosystems up for the long haul.

Nature’s Balance

It's a tale of two professions: Pool and spa people are taught to keep things dead; pond people are taught to keep things alive. Pool people sell chlorine; pond people sell de-chlorinator. Pool people sterilize; pond people fertilize. This contrast in approaches to basic water maintenance is perhaps the most significant difference between two trades that are coming into closer and closer contact with one another every day. At issue between the two groups is whether to work against nature in a sterile system, or work with it to create an ecosystem. Each discipline has a foundation in the science of water chemistry and both have a place in the world - but beyond that (and as the table below demonstrates), things really couldn't be much different. As more and more pool/spa professionals move into water gardening and more and more landscape designers and architects get into pools and spas, there's an increasing need for all of us to understand these water-treatment distinctions and the basics of each approach. I come from the pond side, so I'll cover things from that perspective in a pair of articles - a science-oriented overview this time before we