nutrients
When I look at the average pond, I tend to perceive a range of missed opportunities. I come from the world of aquaponics, where I've spent my career figuring out ways to integrate environments for fish and plants in ways that make both fins and leaves grow like crazy. For the most part, I work on an industrial scale, designing facilities where huge populations of fish are grown as food and, nearby, huge
If there’s one thing all ponds and lakes have in common (beyond the obvious fact that they all contain water), it’s that they’re as different as snowflakes – highly idiosyncratic, often challenging and sometimes almost willful in the way they resist being manipulated. For the past 35 years, we at Diversified Waterscapes (Laguna Niguel, Calif.) have just about seen it all as specialists in maintaining man-made ponds and lakes and in remediating those that have fallen on hard times and suffer with severe problems. We’ve found that every situation is different and that figuring out what’s going on involves the evaluation of countless variables – some obvious and easy to read, others less so. For all that, our experience tells us that the serviceability and sustainability of ponds and lakes is for the most part determined long before we come on the scene – even before they are filled with water. When they’ve been designed and installed with a few key principles in mind, we find them to be cooperative and affordably manageable. If a few of the more common mistakes are made, however, it’s a completely different and far nastier
For a long time, I've studied a small lake that formed long ago in a natural bowl in Northern Wisconsin. It has about 20 acres of surface area and is now surrounded by a cow pasture and a cornfield. Holsteins graze right up to the water's edge and at times step into the lake to drink. Sometimes, cows being cows, their waste ends up in the water as well. On the opposite shore, the cornfield has an unusual configuration, with its furrows running straight down the slope and into the lake. When it rains or the fields are irrigated, some fertilizer inevitably washes into the lake. The stage is set for aquatic misery: Viscous, pea-soup mats of green algae and foul odors are the common results of this sort of nutrient loading. Indeed, few life forms other than algae survive in
For a long time, I've studied a small lake that formed long ago in a natural bowl in Northern Wisconsin. It has about 20 acres of surface area and is now surrounded by a cow pasture and a cornfield. Holsteins graze right up to the water's edge and at times step into the lake to drink. Sometimes, cows being cows, their waste ends up in the water as well. On the opposite shore, the cornfield has an unusual configuration, with its furrows running straight down the slope and into the lake. When it rains or the fields are irrigated, some fertilizer inevitably washes into the lake. The stage is set for aquatic misery: Viscous, pea-soup mats of green algae and foul odors are the common results of this sort of nutrient loading. Indeed, few life forms other than algae survive in
The project is complete. You've put the last touches on the landscaping, the swimming pool and spa are up and running, the pond and its water lilies are ready to be joined by some colorful fish, and the expanse of stone decking has been tailor-made for your clients' entertaining pleasure. You've managed to achieve exactly the look they originally imagined, and now they can sit back and enjoy it - or can they? The answer will be a resounding "yes" only if you took the time to consider the longer-term effects their beautiful new plants might have on the watershapes and decks. Partly, the concern over longer-term effects is about what certain types of plants can do as far as dropping leaves and what that can mean with respect to maintenance. Partly, too, it is about
