The Making of a Water Garden— By Henry s. Conard 



WATER TIGHT CONSTRUCTION AND DRAINAGE— WHAT TO PLANT IN PONDS OF DIFFERENT 

 SIZE— THE TREATMENT OF THE MARGINS AND IDEAS ON THE SELECTION OF THE SITE 



Baltimore, 

 Maryland 



MY FIRST water garden was half a kero- 

 sene barrel, sunk in the ground at the 

 southwest corner of my father's house, where 

 a rain pipe from the roof emptied into it. 

 Here the water-hyacinth (Eichhomia crassi- 

 pes) grew and flowered, to the delight of all the 

 family. The tub was nearly full of earth in 

 which the plants anchored themselves by 

 their roots and were able to resist the tremen- 



A well planned and properly edged water garden, 

 but loo thicKly planted: result, few scattering blooms, 

 too solid foilage mass and loss of water effects 



dous floods of water from the rcof. All 

 through the summer we had a succession of 

 spikes of big azure flowers, each one with a 

 yellow eye-spot ; and the glossy, heart-shaped 

 leaves, with their stout, spongy petioles, were 

 themselves an ornament and a curiosity. I 

 thinned out more than a tubful of the plants 

 during the season. The fault of this garden, 

 aside from its smallness, was the irregularity 

 and violence of the water supply. No other 



Photographs by Henry Troth and H. C. Tibbetts 



plant, except perhaps a cat-tail (Typha), 

 could have stcod the strain. 



COMMON-SENSE PRINCIPLES 



The real water garden will conform as 

 nearly as possible to the conditions under 

 which nature herself constructs one. 



Place it at the foot of a terrace, not on 

 top. 



Let the ground slope down to it on all 

 sides. 



If it is to stand in a broad, sloping plain, 

 grade down the upper side as much as is 

 necessary to bring the lower side about on 

 the natural level of the ground. 



It is essentially artificial to find anything 

 like a long dam or terrace descending from 

 the margin of a pond. 



OUTLINES IN RELATION TO SIZE 



It does not offend if the small tank takes 

 some conventional shape. A sunken tub is 

 essentiallv round, and a wooden or iron box 

 will unavoidably be square-cornered. A 

 brick or concrete construction, if not over 

 ten feet long, may be rectangular. But if 

 possible avoid geometry in the garden. A 

 bald circle with a gaping ring of cement be- 

 tween the sod and the water is not a thing of 

 beauty, though ponds of geometrical figure 

 edged with stone coping are effective in for- 

 mal gardens. 



I like best a narrow, curving pool, like the 

 bed of some slow stream. Let it widen out 

 here and there into broad, open strectches if 

 you wish. At the ends, also, or in shallow 

 pockets on the side, the water may give place 

 to a bog garden. On the north side a thicket 

 of trees and shrubs may come out to the 

 water's edge. But keep the south side clear, 



so as to admit every available ray from the 

 sun. 



It is in the treatment of the margin that 

 we make or mar a pond's natural beauty. 

 There is no one way in which native waters 

 always meet the land, but there are some 

 ways in which they never do. Nature never 

 made broad borders of concrete or brick or 

 hewn stone. Therefore avoid these in mak- 

 ing a water garden. Rough stone walls are 

 permissible at inlet and outlet only, and even 

 here they may be avoided if clayey soil can 

 be had. And in place of stones there will 

 spring up beds of moisture-loving mosses, 

 liverworts, and smooth sheets of Pelkea, 

 whose delicate fruit-stalks shoot up in the 

 first warm days of spring. 



Beside the pond itself a path of gravel will 

 enable us to come close to the water's edge. 

 No w we must bend away from the water 

 around the bog garden ; now we cross it on a 

 stone causeway or rustic bridge. 



All around the grass and flowers run right 

 out to the water's edge. This is the essential 

 point, and perfectly easy to attain. The 

 water-tight construction of the bottom of the 

 pond only needs to come up to the height of 

 the desired water level. From this point a 

 grassy bank may be raised as steep and high 

 as one desires. Four to six inches above 

 mean water level is high enough. We can 

 hide the junction of land and water com- 

 pletely by means of water-clover (Marsilia). 

 This curious fern-like plant, with leaves like 

 a four-leaved clover, grows equally well in 

 the wet edge of the sod or in the pond to a 

 depth of eighteen inches. In the former 

 situation the leaves stand up three or four 

 inches, in the latter they float. 



The bed of the pond may be variously 





This style of pond is proper near buildings. FranKly formal, but adequate for 

 its surro.uodings, and perfectly fitted to the accompanying architecture. It is 

 not overplanted 



A California water garden. "Tender" and "hardy" water plants do equally 

 well, and grow with an amazing strength. They have to be thinned out per- 

 sistently 



