Water is trickling, aromatic magenta and blush pink lilies are unfolding under the shimmering moonlight.
Is it a Hollywood set?
The tropics?
No. It's a backyard pond, known to landscape designers as a "watergarden." One can add a splash of atmosphere and the soothing sound of flowing water to any garden.
And according to experts, water gardens are easy to maintain. After all, there's no mowing, weeding, or watering.
In Potomac, Maryland, Patsy Miller had longed for the sound of a brook on her property. So four years ago, she commissioned a design landscape company to create a waterfall and two ponds, transforming her property into a dream realized: Her front pond is free-form concrete, with a pump, fountain, lights, and a walkway of natural fieldstone boulders that leads to a small bridge. Her backyard pond has a waterfall. "When I'm sitting in the sunroom with the light beaming in, I feel as though I'm in the woods, babbling brook and all. It's a perfect place to unwind," says Miller.
She stocked her front pond with cherry red and white lilies, miniature bamboo, and fish. "The first year, I named all eighteen fish and became a fish expert. The best part was having a pet but not having to stay home to feed it. And sometimes a frog drops in."
Marlene Bolze of Bethesda, Maryland, had a landscape company plan and build her pond, a triple-tier design with a waterfall. Unlike Miller's, Bolze's pond has no plants in it, just fish. It has turned her backyard into a nature center--birds and butterflies flock to it. Bolze says her friends have nicknamed it "Marlene's Park."
"We can see the birds drinking and bathing and the butterflies fluttering around from our family room," she says. Reading the Sunday paper on the patio has become a favorite family pastime.
Louise Jackson of Bethesda, Maryland, designed and built her 7-by-4 ½ foot free-form pond herself. The project was to be completed in one weekened but it actually required several weeks because she encountered a large, unexpected root system.
After her husband installed an electrical outlet needed for the pump, "the rest was easy," says Jackson. The project cost about two hundred dollars, compared to the nine thousand dollars Miller paid for her front pond. Jackson says she particularly enjoys falling asleep to the soothing sounds of water.
She is one of many who value watery spots in the garden. At Behnke's Nursery in Beltsville, Maryland, Bruce Toland, head of the aquatic division, says, "We've had so many inquiries that this year we decided to get our feet wet and sell ponds and aquatic plants."
John Mirgon, former president of the Water Garden Society of Colorado, attributes the growing popularity of garden pools to the advent of flexible heavy-duty plastic and preformed fiberglass mat liners.
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