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AQUASCAPING � ESCAPE TO YOUR OWN BACKYARD
By Jim Duff (Printed in the Hudson Gazette May
26, 2004)
When we moved into our new home early last summer, we were
enthralled with our backyard, well over 100 feet deep, heavily treed
with maples and apple trees and concealed from our neighbours
by a towering cedar hedge. But until
last fall�s heavy rains, we couldn�t figure out why the entire back
lawn was a mass of ugly weeds. The
previous owners had built the house 20 years ago on a
20,000-square-foot hillside lot, which meant that neighbourhood
runoff would cascade down the hill into our yard, soaking the soil.
When it froze, the yard turned into a skating rink � which, in fact,
the original owners had encouraged so that their hockey-mad sons
could practice their stick work. The
back yard took forever to thaw out and left a sodden swamp between a
beautiful hillside garden and the house. What grass could grow in
yellow clay? Our original idea was
to dig out the wettest part of the yard and turn it into a pond, fed
by buried drainage piping. We planned to turn a stone stairway
alongside the garden into a stream, fed by a submersible sump pump
in the pond that would return the water to the top of the stream via
underground piping, creating an endless waterfall.
Even before we began digging, people warned us we�d be making
a mistake. Forget using polluted surface runoff to feed a pond,
someone said. You�ll need a liner and rock sealant we were
counseled. We heard about clogged pumps, algal blooms etc.
Then we met Doug and Judy Harvey, who ran a successful Landscaping
business. Some 15 years ago, Judy and Doug decided they�d build a
pond. Doug�s first effort was a
15-by-8-foot hole in the ground lined with a hay bale tarpaulin,
folded in four. �When we finished, we
turned the couch around so it faced outside and sat there,
enthralled as we looked at our glass-smooth sheet of water,� he
remembers. That first pond is still there,
for inspiration, Dour says, but their couch now faces their newest
creation, a 15,000-gallon state-of-the-art pond with an Aquascape
Designs biofiltration and circulation system, lights, extensive
plantings and fish. The story of the
ponding industry has been one long, slow learning curve, says Doug.
�We used to make esthetically beautiful ponds, but they had no
mechanics.� People insisted on unlined concrete basins that would
crack in our climate and leach lime, killing the fish. To their
neighbours, pond people were those poor fools out there in their
gumboots every Saturday, covered in slimy green algae as they fought
Mother Nature. Before Doug even set foot
out our back door, he wanted to know if we were truly pond people.
�People think of a pond as a way to solve a drainage
problem.� He said as my wife and I exchanged guilty Looks. �They
want to put the pond in a low spot 60 feet form the house, where
they can�t hear the pump or see the filtration systems the old
technology required.�
Eleven years ago, a 22-year-old Midwest landscape contractor, Greg
Wittstock, began experimenting with a better pond system. Rather
than fighting Mother Nature, Wittstock worked out the mechanics that
turned his ponds into miniature ecosystems where plants, fish and
naturally occurring bacteria all worked in unison to out compete
algae and other undesirable species.
Today, Wittstock is a billionaire because he refined his system and
turned it into a marketing coup. The 20-step, 20-component Aquascape
system allows a landscape contractor or even a competent do-it-your-selfer
to design and build a foolproof waterfall and pond without worrying
about the mechanics, in a fraction of the time it took to custom
design systems for every application.
As we headed outside to our still frozen backyard, Doug made
us an offer � if we agreed to host a Pond Day for landscape
contractors, we�d have a working 11 by 16 foot pond and 12 foot
waterfall by the end of the day for the cost of the system and the
materials. Doug�s landscaping crew and his Pond Day students would
supply the labour.
We roughed out our ideas; where the pond should go, on that early
spring evening, but the final design and positioning awaited Judy�s
approval. The designer on the Harvey Pond World team, Judy decided
that our pond should edge right up to our backyard deck, where we
could sit in our gazebo to watch the fish and listen to the brook
and waterfall. The stream would flow toward the deck, where the
sound of the water could reflect into both the livingroom and
kitchen through the screen doors. There was no further discussion
about using the wet spot in the yard for the pond.
In the weekends leading up to Pond Day, we worked feverishly
to drain the swamp in our back yard. Our fear was that the runoff
would find its way under the pond liner, forcing it upward through
hydrostatic pressure or contaminating the pond water by overflowing
the edge of the liner. By the time Pond Day dawned, we were ready,
right down to the Sani-Vac portable toilet in the driveway and a
daunting pile of river rock from Aquascape�s Quebec distributor,
Pierre et Brique Provinciale Inc., beside it.
At precisely 8:15 a.m. on Saturday, May 8, our neighbours
were awakened by a convoy of cars and pickup trucks pulling into our
quiet crescent, discharging close to 30 contractors and landscapers
from as far away as Laval and Gatineau. Within minutes, Doug was
issuing orders in French and English as his crew and students
grabbed shovels and began digging along the inside of the rough
circle that Judy had laid out using our garden hose as a marker.
�Where most people make a mistake is in excavation,� Doug
explained to his class. �They want to dig the pond to its full depth
from one side to the other. Think about it, Mother Nature doesn�t
design ponds that way. There�s a deep spot in the middle, but
shallows around the perimeter where marginal plants take root.�
So it was that the digging crew stripped off the sod and soil
to the depth of about a foot. The excavated earth and sod was
carried by wheelbarrow to where the stream and waterfall would
cascade into the pond. There, the crew tamped it into a ramp roughly
20 feet long terminating at the pond�s outer edge.
�Why not use one of those small power excavators,� I asked
Doug.
�We�ve found that, by the time you get the excavator loaded and
unloaded and the time you need to repair the damage it causes to the
nearby lawn, a crew with shovels is faster. Besides, my crew are
hockey players, they need the work to stay in shape.�
Once the crew finished the first hole, they moved in two feet
and began digging a second foot. Again, the earth excavated from
this inner two-foot-deep pit was added to the waterfall ramp. When
that was done, the crew dug the pond�s deepest section another two
feet in from the second pit, adding the earth to the growing
waterfall pile. Lastly, they cut two shovel-sized holes that would
become the water-lily pockets. All
the excavation and earthmoving was done by the time we took a 10
a.m. coffee break. By then, Doug had unfolded the 11-by-16 foot
neoprene rubber liner and the underpadding designed to protect it
from punctures from underneath. The liner carries a 20-year
guarantee, he explained, but he doesn�t like to take chances.
The shock-absorbing pad and then the liner were pressed into
the three concentric pits. River boulders were used to line the
sides, then the river pebbles were poured into the flats to hold the
liner down. At this point, the crew installed three underwater
lights, two to illuminate where the fish would live and one to light
un the waterfall. All three are connected to a timer that ensures
longer bulb life by turning them on and off automatically at preset
times. Next came the water lilies,
planted into good black earth shovelled into the pockets in the
liners and covered with gravel to keep them there, followed by the
marsh marigolds and other marginal plants in the outer transition
ring. Finally, Doug added a little cave where our fish would be able
to hide. Great Blue Herons can spot a pond from 200 feet up.
By lunchtime, Doug�s crew had installed the major components
of the Aquascape System � the skimmer, a large polyethylene box
buried at the end of the pond closest to the house, joined by a
flexible three inch pipe to the BioFalls, another box at the far end
of the ramp leading down into the pond. These two boxes contain the
pump, skimmer and biological filters that together provide a home
for the harmless bacteria that act as the pond�s cleanup crew.
�People used to think it was crazy, putting rock and gravel
on the bottoms of ponds.� Doug explained. �They�d see the slime
buildup on the bare liners and they�d assume that gravel would make
it that much harder to clean. What
they didn�t understand was that, with the rock, the entire surface
becomes a filter,� He added. �Like the gravel in the bottom of an
aquarium, it provides surface area for the bacteria that compete for
nutrients with the algae. If there�s no nutrients available, the
algae can�t get a foothold.� Once
lunch was over, Judy took over the crew, levelling and contouring
the ramp into a natural-looking streambed before covering it with
sheets of the same rubber liner used for the pond basin. Instead of
merely stacking rocks to hold the liner down the crew used plastic
foam to glue them into place, so that the rushing water couldn�t
sweep them down the streambed over the falls and into the pond.
While work was progressing on the stream, Doug added his personal
touch � weathered mossy logs and sculpted bits of wood to conceal
the front of the skimmer chamber and Judy �tuned� the stream and
waterfall by adding pebbles and moving boulders to create a
combination of pleasing sounds as the stream poured over the rocks
and tumbled into the pond.
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