I beg your pardon! I never promised you a koi garden.
It is said that once you own and care for koi gardens, the only way to go is up. Most people start with a small pond, a fountain or waterfall and a few fish. They add a lily plant to the pond and a few marginal plants like irises, ornamental grasses amongst some rocky ledges and then it all seems to grow. Before they know it, the little koi garden has taken on a new spirit and become a extension of the living space.
A year later, the pond has expanded two or three times its original size, with a walking bridge separating the pools and the plants have multiplied in size and variety, too. The koi garden has added new dimensions to itself. A small pebble beach has evolved, a rock garden, and a bog patch with a zen meditating garden. Ornaments find their place in a koi garden. The statue of the little boy fishing, the Japanese stone lanterns and garden charms like gargoyles hidden in corners, where you wouldn’t expect to look, all add to the koi garden.
A few years after that, those few small brightly colored fish have grown many times the size they were when you bought them and they too have multiplied. Koi gardens don’t seem to stop growing until they run out of space. Each and every year, they are more beautiful and tranquil then the year before. Wonderfully shaped potted bonsai trees have found a place and Japanese maples adorn the garden and are flourishing also.
A koi garden mixes several different elements of many types of gardens and molds it into a healthy, thriving system. A world unto itself. Typically though, koi gardens consists of four major parts; the pond, koi fish, plant life and atmosphere.
The first part, the pond section should be a large enough to start with two or three good sized fish. It should be four to five feet deep at least, in the deepest section, so that the fish can winter over in the sediment at the bottom. The depth depends on the average winter temperatures. There is the option of having a shallower pond and overwintering the fish indoors in a large aquarium.
The koi garden should be placed at least partially in the shade, for various reasons, including lowering the water temperature, protecting the fish from sunburn and predators, reducing algae and evaporation.
The plants should also play their part in shading the pond, plus there is the added benefit of their beauty. They will provide some food for the fish and a place to congregate. Koi and plants don’t really live well together though. Koi are bottom dwellers and tend to swish the soil away from the roots of the plants, particularly if the plant are in pots. Larger fish can also knock over the plant pots which leaves the owner having to wade in to set things right again. Of course appropriate weights and netting to hold the soil in the pots can overcome such obstacles.
Chemical runoff can be a problem for your koi garden. Lawn pesticides, roof runoff, even the environment can produce some of the strangest difficulties, but learning how to cope makes having a koi garden worth while. A koi garden is a place of pride, of learning, of teaching and a place of tranquility.
