pond design

2015/4.1, April 8 — Cascade Mastery, Hydraulic Balance, Digital Pioneering and more
THE ESSENTIAL E-NEWSLETTER FOR WATERSHAPE DESIGNERS, ENGINEERS AND BUILDERS March 18, 2015 www.watershapes.com DIGITAL DESIGN…
Froggy Paradise
The life of a pond installer is dotted with moments of quiet satisfaction.  Getting a contract signed is an obvious one, as is accepting final payment.  But in between, you have to take positive moments where you can find them - and for me, there's nothing more soul-satisfying than introducing aquatic animals to a new pond I've built. In the specific project covered
Envisioned Environment
No matter how firm a focus you maintain on making a pond into a safe, comfortable home for frogs, there's always the need to keep at least one eye (if not both) on the way the pond looks.  My goal, as I discuss in some detail in the video linked below, is to make every watershape I produce look as though it belongs where I've put it, as though the pond
Ecosystem Design
As mentioned previously in this video series, one of the key points distinguishing frog ponds from most other modern backyard ponds is the fact that there's no circulation system of any kind - no pump to keep the water moving, no skimmer or filter to help keep it clean.  That fact puts quite a burden on the frog-pond designer to make certain the water will be safe for tadpoles and attractive to the
An Eye on Aesthetics
The fact that frog ponds are so shallow offers the pond installer some special challenges with respect to making them look completely natural. As you'll see in the video linked below, there's an obvious temptation to take the easy way out by lining the edge with rocks of similarly large sizes and settling for the dreaded "string of pearls" look, where stones hang out like some sort of lumpy
The HazMat Pond
This is a case where the client said it best:  In describing his backyard pond as "a HazMat spill," he put it more bluntly and succinctly than I ever would or could have.  And he was right:  The little pond was a complete, total, unholy mess. For starters, the waterfall and skimmer had been placed within inches of each other in a hard-to-access corner, thereby obliterating
2014/9.1, September 10 — Reinventing Paradise, Gutting a Pond, Customizing Vinyl and more
THE ESSENTIAL E-NEWSLETTER FOR WATERSHAPE DESIGNERS, ENGINEERS AND BUILDERS September 10, 2014 www.watershapes.com PROJECT PROFILE…
Chatting with ‘The Pond Guy’
An Interview by Lenny Giteck When Greg Wittstock built his first watergarden in his family's backyard at the ripe old age of 12, it was designed to provide a home for his pet turtles. Unfortunately, his treasured pets were not all that appreciative of a residence that leaked and had green water, so they fled the scene. He wound up ripping out and rebuilding the pond
2014/6.1, June 11 — Waterfall Tuning, Concrete Artistry, Un-Common Tadpoles and more
June 11, 2014 www.watershapes.com ESSENTIAL Concrete Expressions Concrete is the primary building material used by…
Aquascape Announces UltraKlean Biological Pressure Filter
Aquascape (St. Charles, IL) has introduced the UltraKlean biological pressure filter for use with ornamental…