3109 Water gardening

Relaxed, you are absoloutly right about ponds in Italy, I actually thought about having a pond in our garden with beautiful plants in the water, but it occured to me that I had not seen ponds in any of the houses that i had visited when in Italy, apart from a couple of houses that had to be restored that had natural lakes in them, ponds dont seem to be a feature,when they start doing the work on our land , I think I would really like to have one as they can look beautiful with the flowers and as you said , I would not have to worry about watering them.:) Francesca

I think the main reason there are not many ponds here is that they are Mozzie traps...and we have enough trouble with them as it is.:eek:

We thought of a pond but were advised against it.

No mosquito probem whasover, so long as you have fish in the pond!
I promise - I had in the same garden a fish pond, open troughs with standing water and an underground cistern (slightly open).
The troughs and the cistern needed the odd drop of bug killer thrown in to keep the mossies down, but there was never a mossie anywhere near the pond (which of course you cannot drop the odd bit of bugkiller into as that would have killed the fish).

Fish will indeed take care of mosquito larvae, but they are not the only thing that will eat them. And it has to be said that the fish one tends to see in garden ponds (goldfish/carp) can be something of a bother in themselves since they tend to spend most of their time poking around in the silt at the bottom. The result can be a pond that looks like a giant mud puddle.

An established pond of any size should have lots of predators looking to munch on mosquito wrigglers. Tadpoles, for instance, go through a carnivorous phase, but just about everything visible to the naked eye in a pond is looking for another critter to eat. Mosquito larvae are very low on the food chain since their diet is bacteria and microscopic plants and animals.

Mosquito larvae heaven would be a small container of warm stagnant water with no predators. Something like a drinking trough or a cistern is ideal because those containers won't have weeds to provide cover and breeding space for larger predators. The lack of weeds will also mean poorly oxygenated water which will make the environment unattractive for completely aquatic predatory larvae. And the lack of any significant amount of greenery other than a bit of algae will mean there is no foundation for a little ecological system.

I think a tin can filled with rainwater is much more likely to produce a significant number of mosquitoes than a garden pond that has been designed and planted with some thought given to creating a diverse environment for lots of little things to get on with munching on each other. My advice is to make sure your pond is as big as you can possibly manage and has a range of depths. Plant it with a good selection of marginals, shallow water and deep water plants. Ideally, dump in a bucket of (just) water from an established pond or lake in order to jump-start the microscopic end of the ecological spectrum. And then leave it alone as much as possible.

It seems to me that the main problems one is likely to encounter with a pond in Italy are due to weather: evaporation will be a serious problem in hot weather and freezing could cause damage in the winter. Someone who has never had a pond might be surprised to learn that evaporation can even be a problem in Scotland. During a typically cool summer, the level in my small pond can drop several inches after a week without rain (believe it or not, that does occasionally happen). It's not just surface evaporation -- all the plants with leaves above waterlevel are doing what all plants do: sucking up water and transpiring it from their leaves.

It's stating the obvious, but one cannot allow a pond to dry out to a damp patch of mud and expect everything to bounce back after the first rain of autumn. So if you want to have a pond in Italy, you really must consider how you're going to keep it topped up during the heat of summer.

Perhaps this, as well as some ill-founded beliefs about mosquitoes, is the main reason one doesn't see many garden ponds?

Al

Thank you Allan for all the above information, perhaps I shall have to reconsider regarding a pond, once I am living at the house full time and I will be there to take care of my land , I would be prepared to look into it a bit further and then make a decision, as they really do make a lovely feature.:) Francesca

Really good informative post!

I think that Italian gardeners have simply not yet got round to thinking about ponds! Taken all in all - from someone who has done ponds in both Italy and UK, they work better in Italy :), and (this would be interesting to know) I suspect that the evaporation issue isn't that different in the different countries - it is rarely even mildly breezy when it is hot here, and that must be a factor, surely?

[LEFT]We are in the process of designing a water pond which will act as a natural filter to a new swimming pool. The swimming pool will therefore be fresh water without any chemicals. The regeneration zone will in effect be a pond with water circulated from the swimming pool, through a gravel base growing water plants.

We have been advised that dragonflies and the like will naturally colonise the area and will keep mosquitoes at bay. The water plants will present as a natural pond whilst at the same time filtering the swimming pool water.

The only consumable will be electricity to power the circulation pump. We aim to power this with a dc solar powered pump. Hence the pond will have a large supply of fresh water circulating through it at all times.

We also aim to have an underground water storage tank to act as a reservoir for evaporation.

Hopefully our plans will overcome all the problems mentioned in this thread.

We are working with a Munich-based specialist for the design who has particular strengths in horticultural and design aspects.

We are near Ostuni in Puglia.

We would welcome any comments from anyone interested in a similar project.[/LEFT]

Sounds wonderful. I have heard of these types of "natural filtration" systems for swimming pools, the only specialists do seem to be in Germany.
At the risk of "banging on" about fish, is there any reason why your filtration pond should not be a habitat for some nice fish?
Do you intend to cover the swimming part of the pool in winter?

I will definitely be building a "swimming pond" in the garden of the house I'm in the process of buying in Abruzzo.

Unfortunately, Relaxed, fish are a no-no in a swimming pond. Partly because of their habit of disturbing the silt I mentioned above. But also for less immediately apparent reasons:

First, they eat the zooplankton (small to microscopic herbivorous animals) which graze on algae and thus stop the water turning a lovely pea-soup shade of green. Second, the excretions of fish add nutrients to the water and this also increases algal bloom (for the same reason, human swimmers should never pee in a swimming pond -- I intend to tell guests that it will be obvious in just a couple days if anyone ever does so ;->). Third, fish in a pond attract predators such as herons; a stabbing, pointy beak and sharp toenails are not things you want anywhere near a rubber pond liner.

Al

Al, you are clearly much more scientifically grounded than I am: I simply rely on experience of building ponds (and amazingly, I have never had one which gave me any trouble - apart from the odd battle with blanketweed in the UK). This tells me that ponds are not difficult!!

Using a natural pond as a filtration system for a swimming pool though, that is a wonderful (and achievable) objective - but needs your sort of knowledge of the relevant ecosystems. Good luck building one - and keep the forum informed.

(By the way, you might like to know that parents of toddlers can buy swimming trunks which act as "built in potties", so even if the youngster isn't old enough to understand that peeing in the pool is forbidden - said toddler couldn't do it even if the will was there!!)

As to herons - there is an architectural solution to this (could be aesthetically unacceptable) - which is to not allow the heron to get its feet into the water. In other words, a "formal" pond with a raised edge. I have done this sort of formal pond less than 3m away from some more accessible water (regularly visited by herons) and because the pond water was an inch or so below the level of an overhanging paving stone no heron came anywhere near the delicious fish desserts which were swimming about.