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Backyard Water Gardens: How to Build, Plant & Maintain Ponds, Streams & Fountains It's Not Just a Pond--It's a Lifestyle A backyard water feature is a feast for your senses! It surrounds you with sights, sounds, colors, and a constant source of movement that will never fail to inspire you. Both soothing and invigorating, water features come in every size, from simple bubblers for patio-sized gardens to more elaborate streams and waterfalls. You "can" create a water garden--without spending a fortune or all summer doing it--and maintain it yourself. Water gardens offer as much color and variety as "terrestrial" gardens but with "no" weeding, "no "mulching, "no" pruning--and "no" watering. It sure beats mowing! "Backyard Water Gardens" answers your questions about designing, building, maintaining, planting, and even stocking fish. This is the place to getyour feet wet on the road to successful water gardening. Inside you'll findplenty of how-to and step-by-step photos, plus tips for:
- avoiding common mistakes
- properly siting and sizing your water feature (how big is "too" big?)
- keeping up on basic year-round maintenance
- choosing the right kind of equipment
- selecting plants and fish It's not just a pond; it's a lifestyle. Join in the fun today.
List of contents
Introduction
1 • Getting Started and Planning Your Water Garden
2 • A Gallery of Water Gardens
3 • Understanding Water Garden Components
4 • Building Your Water Feature
5 • Fish and Plants
6 • Maintaining Your Water Feature
Resources
Glossary
Conversions
Index
Meet Veronica Lorson Fowler
About the author
Veronica Fowler (Des Moines, IA) is an enthusiastic backyard water gardening expert and professional writer. She was an editor at Meredith Publishing, wrote for the Des Moines Register, and is co-founder and writer of The Iowa Gardener e-newsletter.
Summary
Veronica Fowler’s comprehensive step-by-step manual shows you not only how to install your water garden, but maintain it entirely on your own. Backyard Water Gardens teaches you how to install liners, pre-formed shapes, containers, and aboveground pools and fountains. From there, it helps you choose plants, add them to your garden, fertilize, prune, divide, and ward off pests and diseases. But Fowler’s book goes far beyond the basics, covering all the maintenance and troubleshooting of water feature hardscapes—from a rip in a liner, to a damaged pool, to maintaining equipment and filters (including seasonal maintenance for winter care). Veronica Fowler’s Backyard Water Gardens allows you to fully enjoy the convenience and versatility of water gardening, all while maintaining it with ease for years to come. Backyard Water Gardens is truly an all-inclusive manual, encompassing every style, type, and size of water feature imaginable. No matter the “feel” you wish to convey in your garden—casual, formal, or whimsical—Fowler’s book enables you to create it with confidence. Your range of hardscape options is incredibly vast, from small, container-sized fountains that complement any space with added sound and movement, to large in-ground or aboveground ponds and streams. Larger installations not only provide soothing, rejuvenating sights and sounds; they can also house fish and plants and passively attract natural wildlife to your backyard.
