By the time I put pen to paper, I had already spent hours on the Internet, gleaning as much information as I could absorb (and a lot I couldn’t) and it wasn’t long before I became overwhelmed with the options available to me. It was clear however, that there were some basic decisions that had to be made early. In some cases, if I were really clever, I’d be able to keep my options open.

What I wanted: All I knew to start was that I wanted running water, lots of it. I wanted two ponds, connected by a stream with little and medium sized waterfalls and dropoffs. At the time, I didn’t care about fish, in-pond plants were secondary to landscaping. I wanted to enjoy this thing. I didn’t want to have to live in it everyday doing maintenance. I also didn’t want someone else to do it for me since I didn’t want to go broke over an obsession.

I laid it out in a U shape to minimize the distance the water would have to be pumped and so that all utilities would be in one area easing the coverup of the external biofilter. I wanted to make sure that the water circulated well in both ponds. The design also allowed for a waterfall in the lower pond on the opposite side from the skimmer and pump giving me ideal water circulation within the lower pond. I planned to pipe water up the slope and then to the bottom of the lower pond, and the waterfall weir on the top of the lower pond would give me good water circulation there. Such was the plan.

What I ended up getting was what I wanted, but I decided along the way that aquatic plants and fish are what a water garden is really all about. Now that the thing is built, I will set about to learn more about plants and fish than I really wanted to know. It’s a character flaw.