Introduction

Garden Ponds, Streams, Falls… can be a pain the behind, or they can be pure joy. You can own a garden pond that owns you, controls and consumes your time and requires you to cater to its every problematic whim. This would be considered a “high maintenance” garden pond. 

On the other hand, you could own a garden pond that you own, that allows you the luxury of controlling and consuming your own time as you see fit, required 5 minutes a week to maintain, and caters to your every naturalistic, organic, and holistic whim. It serves as your friend, your ally, your escape from the stresses and strains, the daily grind, the work-a-day world. This would be considered a “low maintenance” garden pond. 

The key to having a state-of-the-art, headache free, low maintenance pond is to install it correctly in the first place. More specifically, the key is to create a balanced ecosystem that works in harmony with Nature, so that 99% of the potential problems resolve themselves. As a matter of fact, the root cause of any problem in a garden pond is an imbalanced ecosystem! If you don’t eliminate the root cause, you’re destined to be treating symptoms, addressing effects, putting out a series of fires for the entire life of your pond. 

Here’s a brief history lesson for you on ponds. Natural garden ponds actually have existed for thousands of years. How did the Japanese in the 17^th century do it? The Egyptians in the time of Pharaohs were into ponds. The Romans Empire was into ponds. The first pond dealers on record in about 600BC were the Babylonians. They all had one thing in common -- NO ELECTRIC OR CHEMICALS -- so how did they do it?