Lining a Pond

One of the most crucial aspects of constructing your pond is ensuring that you have enough pond liner. Having too little pond liner means you will need to rethink the size of your pond or you will have a pond that is not always watertight.

When measuring your pond you need to consider not just the length and width that you pond will take on the ground, but also the depth of the pond into the ground i.e. you need to know the pond’s volume.

A good rule of thumb is to measure your pond and then add a couple of feet to both measurements. This will allow your rubber pond liner to sit slightly proud of your hole in the ground ensuring that your pond is fully watertight and that your pond water does not seep away.

Pond Filtration

Another essential part of building a pond is a good filtration system. If you look for pond filters on the net you will find a good selection to choose from.

But what is it you need out of a filtration system? To achieve an efficient biological surface you must ensure that the water that enters the filtration is rich in oxygen. This helps the friendly bacteria to oxidise the waste products through the nitrogen cycle. This is called aerobic filtration. Filter systems must fulfil the following criteria:

• The filter volume should be at minimal 10% of the ponds volume.
• You should be aiming to turn over at least half the ponds volume once per hour.
• The filter should have several chambers which can be which can be kept separate and emptied individually when cleaning. And a vortex should be included.
• The biological surface area should be at least one square metre per ten cubic metres of pond water.
• An ultra violet clarifier should be installed to eliminate single celled algae, which causes green water.

There are two main types of filtration. The first type of filter is called a gravity feed where water is removed from the pond via a bottom drain. It is then forced via gravity through the filter which is sited buried in the ground close to your pond so that the water level in both your filtration and pond are the same. The water is then returned to the pond via a dry sited pond pump through an outlet in the side wall of the pond below the waterline. At this stage it is important to use a venturi on the outlet to oxygenate the returned water as the biological surfaces will have depleted the oxygen during oxidisation of the waste products.

The second main filtration type and probably the more familiar is a pressurised feed filter. This involves an internal solid handling pump at the deepest part of the pond pumping water through a flexible pipe up to the filter which is sited above the surface level of the pond, which allows the water to return by the forces of gravity.

Water Pumps

Without a good pond pump, a water garden is at the mercy of bacteria, lack of oxygen, and the settling of dirt and debris. A dependable pond water pump does wonders in creating and maintaining a healthy environment and balanced ecosystem in your garden pond by circulating and oxygenating water continuously. Additionally, the water pump plays an important role in keeping humans and pets safe by helping to prevent unwanted insect pests from breeding and infesting the area. You can find a wide variety of pond pump systems to fit every small pond application from good aquatic and water garden retailers.

If you are serious about having a garden pond whether its for wild life or koi, have a look round for pond and aquatics retailers that not only sell you the product but also provide good advice and after sales assistance.

Bonsai

Watching bonsai grow and shaping them into amazing living works of art is an absorbing and very rewarding pastime. Growing bonsai isn’t an expensive hobby with only a few specialist tools being required, but a magnificant bonsai tree can be much more of a statement in your home than many an expensive ornament. A bonsai tree is a true living sculpture.

Bonsai Trees are container planted plants or trees that are developed to be miniatures of its natural sized plant. Bonsai trees can be grown from almost any perennial woody stemmed trees and shrubs that produce branches and is able to grow small through pot confinement with the aid of crown and root pruning.

A Bonsai tree can be grown from seeds, from young shoots taken from the countryside, (please observe any local laws regarding removing wild plants or trees in your area), or can be bought as mature planted bonsai trees. Obviously growing bonsai from seed is the slowest route, but you will have maximum control of how your bonsai tree will look.

Bonsai trees are grown in pots that not only contain root growth, but are also designed to further enhance the look of your bonsai tree. Special soils can be bought that give you the ideal conditions for your bonsai tree to develop.

Many specialist methods are employed to shape and give unique character to your bonsai including leaf trimming, wiring, grafting on other plants, dwarfing and deadwood, (a process used to age bark). Few specialist tools are needed to shape bonsai trees, and these are easy to come by cheaply. All that you need to get started can be easily purchased from a bonsai nursery.

Bonsai trees are available as indoor and outdoor varieties, and some bonsai are best if left outside in the summer and then grown inside in the winter.

And for anyone that likes the idea, but would prefer not get involved in growing bonsai, you can even buy artificial bonsai trees.

If you wonder if developing bonsai trees is for you, I say have a go, bonsai trees are easy to grow and maintain, take very little of your time, each and every bonsai is individual, and who does not admire a bonsai tree every time they see one.

Gardening is a wonderful activity you can enjoy in many ways. It is nice to see your garden mature over the years and see where your creativity and hard work has lead you. A Japanese garden is no different, you would think, but in fact it is. There is a different kind of intrinsic beauty in Japanese garden ideas that you need to learn to appreciate. Most people need to get used to a Japanese garden, there are few people who love this type of garden the first time they see it. Most people will only enjoy the beauty of this type of design if they can find the internal peace to see each little element at its own. Both kind of people will be able to take advantage of the Japanese garden ideas we will take a closer look at in this article.

Numerous different Japanese garden ideas

Although there are many different Japanese garden ideas, we will show you some of the common grounds we call the basics. One of the basic principals is that almost all design ideas will all point to nature as being the most beautiful work of art of all. The Japanese garden is always designed with nature in mind, this means the garden should always reflect the things we see in nature. When we design a yard with this kind of design it might look unorganized and wild but when we take a closer look it is often perfectly in balance, a little replica of nature at its finest. And in fact that is a type of perfection we do not see much in other types of garden design.

Rocks and Space

A well known kind of Japanese garden ideas are the rock gardens and they are much more orderly than other Japanese garden ideas. In a way the rocks represent the mountains in nature and pebbles and other small stones can create the image of a river bedding. Small Japanese trees and shrubs are the image of what nature creates on a large scale.

Empty space is another special style element in our Japanese garden ideas, this one of the most important style elements that the Japanese garden has. It is one of the traditions you can follow when you decide to design your own Japanese garden. That empty space creates a sort of retreat to all the beauty of the trees, plants and other elements. It reminds you of what you have missed and what you have found. These are just those elements what people need to learn to understand before they can fully appreciate Japanese garden ideas.

Separate the garden from reality

Some features have a deeper meaning in the garden than we are used to like fences and gates, in the western countries they are used to keep strange people away from the house and to keep pets and little children in the yard. Japanese garden ideas follows totally different traditions, here those structures are used to separate the garden from reality and to let the people experience the beauty and serenity of the garden.

Hank Gordon has a passion for gardening and wants the world to know how relaxing and rewarding it can be. On his website he talks about Japanese Garden Design and Japanese garden plants.