PREVIEW...CD-ROM and SUBSCRIPTIONS

HOW TO DESIGN and BUILD for AQUATIC PLANTS.

PLEASE NOTE...SOME OF THE WORDS IN THESE PREVIEW BOXES
HAVE BEEN DELETED FROM THE ORIGINAL TEXT ON THE CD-ROM. AND ARE SHOWN LIKE THIS...XXXXXXXXXXXX.

ALSO NOTE THAT MOST OF THE PICTURES ARE NOT IN THE SAME SEQUENCE AS THEY APPEAR ON THE CD-ROM. AND IN MOST CASES THEY DO NOT RELATE TO EACH OTHER IN THESE PREVIEWS.

You should always design your pond with aquatic plants in mind, and the first thing to think about is how you dig the hole. See..."Digging the Hole".
So many people, including so called "Professional" Pond Builders/Landscapers, "forget" to include ledges for aquatic plants in their plans. I've seen pathetic attempts to create the right planting depths as an afterthought (and they all look bad), such as suspending planting baskets over deep water by wires and ropes...just terrible, and hardly natural!

Note...this section isn't intended to be a boring list of every aquatic plant on the planet.
You can find that in ANY book. What you will find in these chapters is...inspiration, what you plant is your choice, I intend to point you in the right direction by showing you what I consider to be the best plants...and the best to me are the most interesting.

Probably 90% of all available aquatic plants are boring, or invasive, and therefore a waste of space.

Look in "normal" books and you will see a beautiful flower, photographed as an example of the "beauty" of xyz plant. What you're not told is that the picture of the flower has been taken with a lens strong enough to pick out detail on Mars! So don't be fooled, my pictures show you exactly how the best plants look.

There are three reasons for showing you this picture.
The first reason...did you know...water lilies will shrink and die in moving water and they hate being splashed by fountains and waterfalls.
So the question is...define moving water. Well, gently moving XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX ...more on how to create the perfect environment for these fantastic plants later.
The second reason...the "hand" is to show you how clear the water is and that's without any filtration. So how's that done? XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX that's how!
Lastly...have you noticed the liner? It rather spoils the effect, don't you think? This "Formal Pool" was constructed with inconsistent levels, in other words, whoever built it "messed up" the levels so that at one end the liner is BELOW the water, and at the other it's clearly visible ABOVE the water. See..."Digging the Hole" and "Constructing Formal Pools".

Superb effects can be created by constructing different environments for different plants at the digging out stage.
In other words if you think about it after you've dug the hole and started building it's probably too late.
Here I've created a slightly moist bed for the Primula, and growing completely in the water are Aquatic Iris. All you need to know is in this section...and also in "Bog Garden Construction and Planting".