PONDS

One of the most unique and intriguing features found at Daylily Hill are our beautiful ponds! Visitors are surprised to find clear water teaming with fish, completely natural in appearance, and adorned with water lilies and beautiful waterside landscaping that accents, rather than covers up, the view of the ponds. Dragonflies cruise by, tiny white flowers of Valisnaria grass and watercress embroider the edges, and the spring season blackens the shallows with thousands of pollywogs. These ponds have no filtration, no aeration, and we don't change the water- and yet the quality of the water is clear, and highly oxygenated. We design and project manage the creation of the most beautiful, natural, and maintenance free ponds and water features that have ever been experienced- from the size of whiskey barrels to lakes. In this section of the web site, we'll introduce you to our ponds at Daylily Hill, as well as to many of the water projects that we are doing or have completed.
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VALISNERIA GRASS, PONDS AND STREAMS:

Any body of water eventually acquires a certain amount of nutrients (substances that act like a kind of fertilizer) in it, that promotes the growth of SOMETHING! In many cases that "something" is stinky black bacteria that takes away oxygen, and makes the water stagnant. In other cases, it is microscopic, single-celled, green algae that float suspended in the water, making it pea-soup green, and completely cloudy, so that you can't see an inch into the water. These little algaes don't live very long, so eventually they are part of a "soup" of living and dying cells that also takes oxygen out of the water, causing it to smell bad and stagnate. The other kind of algae is fibrous and has a "horse-hair" kind of texture. This plant produces oxygen and can actually help to clean the water, but it is unsightly, covering much of the surface of the water.

Acting as a living, biological filter, VALISNERIA is a plant that looks like an underwater grass. The proof that it is not a true grass, is the fact that it produces little snow-white flowers, making the edges of streams and ponds beautiful. We have discovered that the miracle of this hard-working little plant is that it can be planted in plugs, about 6 to 10 inches apart, and it will quickly fill in, forming a beautiful underwater "lawn!" While it is living and growing underwater, it absorbs nutrients out of the water that would otherwise promote unwanted stagnant conditions, and algaes. This results in beautiful, clear water- so that you can see your fish swimming around, as well as rocks and stones, and the underwater landscape! A water feature planted with Valisneria "grass" never needs any kind of mechanical aeration- from a pump, or waterfall or any other such method, because the Valisneria itself produces oxygen all day long, dissolving it directly into the water, from its leaves.

THE "KOI CONFLICT:" Koi and goldfish are members of the carp family, and are basically vegetarian. If you have very many of these, or if they are very large, it is possible that they will eat the Valisneria grass before it gets established, or faster than it can continue to re-grow. This of course, would eliminate the "biological filter."

Prepare a layer of washed "builders" sand about 2-3" deep in the bottom of the pond. Plant 1/2" thick plugs of Valisneria directly into it, with the roots covered, and the leaves above the sand. If it is a new pond, add about 1/4 cup of 15-15-15 fertilizer, for every 500 gallons of water, directly into the water. It will dissolve quickly and will not hurt fish at this concentration. Fertilizing should be repeated once or twice again over a period of about every two or three weeks. Your water may turn very green, and become completely cloudy for up to several weeks. Then, virtually "overnite," it will turn clear and remain so. This works for ponds sized from whiskey barrels to acre lakes. There are occasional changes in the water, and weather, that may allow the water to get cloudy in established, balanced ponds. This happens rarely, and usually lasts only for a week or two, and then it takes care of itself. This works for "closed system" water features, not natural lakes and ponds with earthen bottoms, where there may be too many nutrients to control.
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Testimony from a "Happy customer"

Dear People,

December 14

I just wanted to send you this note to let you know how pleased I am with the water grass I purchased in October. My little pond is clear as a bell. It did take a couple of months to clear up but now it's truly swimable. I'm sure the fish, all six goldfish, are thrilled. I'm glad it doesn't smell anymore and I can see what's going on. It was really good to have something perform as advertised. I'll be sure to tell the people in the Vista Garden Club and at the San Diego Horticulture Society how thrilled I am with Valisneria grass.

Sincerely,
Louise Anderson
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TOM BRINGS THE MOUNTAIN CREEK HOME!

As many of you know, I grew up in the Sierra Nevadas, in the foothills, between Reno and Lake Tahoe. My brother and I would hike up into the mountains behind our house, and in no time would be near a beautiful, small creek that threaded its way between the aspens and pine trees, and through the willows. We had willow switches rigged with a short piece of fishin' line, and a hook, stashed away in our secret hiding places. It was only a matter of locating and sacrificing a worm, or a fat grasshopper- and soon we had savory trout roasting on the campfire! Dig up some wild garlic and add the tiniest sprigs of sage, and our trout was perfectly seasoned.

How many times have I sat in Orange County, or San Diego traffic, and missed those days?! It's not very often that I'm able to make the quick retreat back to my native homeland, so I finally had to make a piece of it in our own front yard.

We have developed a methodology and artistic eye toward designing, shaping, and constructing ponds and water features. So when I decided to create a mountain creek in our own yard, we were able to apply our abilities toward creating a stream and pools, that can hardly be discerned were man-made!

First we shape the land. The error that many water feature companies make is the failure to understand water and how it erodes- shaping "valleys" and "canyons," meanders, cuts and deltas, and occupying low spaces. We are careful not to create a "molehill" for our waterfalls to cascade off of. Instead, our waterfalls appear as if they have eroded down in their own little canyon, to hard layers of bedrock, and when they could cut against it no more, go tumbling off of its hard edges. (Contrast that to the slate "shelves" that you see in other water features- a man-made phenomenon for easy waterfalls that you will never see duplicated in nature.)

After the basic shaping is completed, then we contain the water-to-come with pond liner underneath. A layer of fabric goes over top of the liner. After that, we hand-shape the features of our stream, sometimes incorporating natural rock, and sometimes forming our own matching faux rock, with concrete. We have developed staining techniques that are permanent and natural appearing. When combined with our textures that mimic features ranging from soil, to erosions, to sand, to rounded rock, to fractured rock, to bedrock with its striations and veins- we can create whatever kind of stream and geology that we want. And we are not reduced to covering every square inch of the water feature with contrived piles and edgings of rocks, just because that's the only way to hide the liner, or the very man-made looking gray cement of most other water feature companies' work. After that, we pay attention to the details like, "how, and where would moving water deposit rounded cobbles, and pebbles, and even sand, along the edges and underwater?

Next, we plant our Valisneria "living biological filter" grass system in the pools, and even in the stream itself, to give us the crystal clear water that is our trademark, without any filtration equipment having to be built into the pump or recirculation circuit. We like to add watercress in spots along the edges, its roots contributing to the cleaning process of the water, and its matts of vegetation creating habitat for baby fish, frog and toad eggs, pollywogs, and many other forms of life. When we selected the water-side, and water's edge plants for our landscaping, we used ornamental grasses frequently associated with water and areas that are moist, as well as Paper White Birch trees to give the feeling of my homeland mountain aspens (which will not grow successfully in warm climates or much below 6,000 feet). Added to that were a few Arctic Willows with their beautiful, wispy, lacy, blue green leaves, and some splashes of "wildflowers" (Cosmos, Daisies, Zinnias, Erodium, Pennstemon, etc.) and I was really being made to feel at home!

Notice how the water turned a discouraging pea soup green in its first weeks after construction? This is a normal part of the process, and in fact, we made it worse by throwing in a few handfuls of 15-15-15 fertilizers! Soon after (about two weeks), the very fertilizer that made the water turn green with single-cell, suspended algae, encouraged and sped up the growth of our Valisneria grass, which as it developed, took over the job of growing and producing oxygen, out competing other algae and bacteria that would normally foul the quality of the water, and turning it crystal clear instead.

Whenever you first add (or replace large quantities of) the water, be sure and use a dechlorinating chemical to remove chloramines from the municipal water system, or it will be hard on your underwater plants, and will kill fish within minutes. As you can see in the pictures, we selected many varieties of sub-tropical, and very colorful, fish as the final touch and the living voucher that our water quality is excellent, and clear enough to view the fish from above as if they were in an aquarium. We have tested and selected about twenty-five varieties of sub-tropical fish that are winter hardy on the Southern California coastal plain, and in fact, we have a greenhouse with spawning and raising pools where we grow our own fish. Soon after we added about 60 fish, they started reproducing wildly, and the numbers went to hundreds by the end of the summer! Our fish weren't content to stay in the bottom two pools. We found them at all ends of the stream, having overcome even two of our tallest waterfalls that crossed an air-gap of over 12 inches! We're talking leaping "salmon" here!

We built a campfire ring alongside of the creek, brought out some chairs, and now we sit out at night roasting weenies and marshmallows over the sweet smell of pinewood, looking up at the stars, and listening to the frogs croaking to the background of our babbling brook. Or, Jackie and I take our bowls of cereal and glasses of juice, and sit out in the warmth of the morning sun, sprinkling in bits of fish food and watching the glint and flash of the brightly colored fish as they dash from their schools to the surface and away again, with a quick morsel of food, while our dog (who is named "Anna Banana") laps away at the cool, refreshing water and we watch the darting dragonflies, while birds splash, and flutter, bathing at the water's edge.

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