The hidden dangers - Landscaping near the pond
Landscaping choices in the yard can vary from basic, to lush clumps of flowers and fruiting trees. When the star of the yard is a pond or pondless waterfall, (which it should be because they turn a nice yard into a STUNNING OASIS) the area where the pond meets the rest of the yard can be a landscaping challenge. Considering grass or mulch around the pond? Did you know that what you choose can potentially cause expensive problems? It can!
Considering Grass or Mulch Next to the Pond?
Grass: Allowing grass to grow right up next to the pond can look really nice, at first. Grass spreads it roots readily and before you know it you’ll see grass growing in the edges of the pond and by that I mean, OVER the edges of the pond and directly IN the pond. This soon causes the liner to be pushed down and can cause water loss.
While the grass might look alright for a while, remember the grass will get taller and taller and will need to be mowed! You certainly can’t bring a mower near the pond and even a weedwhacker is risky for the liner. Not to mention the grass clippings that will end up in the water just adding to algae growth!
Once the grass begins to grow along the edges of the pond (in or out) it can be difficult to get rid of. The roots get down in between the rocks, winding into places we can’t reach!
What is worse than grass? - Mulch around the pond !
Wait, there is something worse than grass growing in the pond?? There is!
MULCH
Mulch is a common landscaping choice that is inexpensive, nice looking and not too heavy. But putting mulch around the pond is a really bad idea
Thinking about putting mulch around the pond?
The Pond is a Mulch Magnet
I know, we think it won’t blow in. We think mulch around the pond will look great. We may even spray a mulch glue onto it. But it always ends up in the water – like a mulch magnet!
Mulch appears to be small chunks of wood, but in fact it has various sizes from the large chunks to tiny shreds (seriously, shreds) and mulch dust. All this gets right into the pump, causing not only a low flow, but it can clog the pump to the point that it stops pumping. It can even burn out.
Let me tell you about what happened with a client here in Longmont….
The beautiful pondless waterfall was getting a weird black/dark green algae in the gravel. This was totally perplexing to me because gravel is an excellent medium to go into the pond as it has just the right space for beneficial bacteria to colonize and therefore usually looks really good. I hardly ever see algae issues on gravel.
We headed over to our clients’ place and pressure washed that algae away. We treated it with more beneficial bacteria and it looked great.
2 days later this stubborn algae was back! We washed it out again and treated it with an algae killer. I though we could start up the beneficial bacteria within a few days. Guess what – it was back 2 days later!!
This was ridiculous and our client was not happy.
Despite pressure washing the rocks multiple times, the algae kept reappearing within days.
Finally, as I was moving the gravel around in the water to see what kicked up, I realized that although it wasn’t obvious, it was FULL of mulch.
We meticulously began picking out all the mulch pieces. As we grabbed handfuls of the stuff (not all at once mind you, splinter by splinter) we realized that the shreds and even mulch dust was being circulated throughout the system. Just picking out the chunks was not going to solve the problem. I was relieved that the pump hadn’t already gotten clogged.
We took another tactic.
Starting at the top of the feature, we removed the gravel rock by rock and put it into a bucket with holes in it to rinse it. We also took a super fine mesh aquarium net and placed it just right, so that water washing down the waterfall would have to go through it and it could catch the miniscule pieces that could not be picked out by hand.
We worked our way down the feature continually running the water and filtering it, meticulously picking out everything we could.
After removing the mulch debris, dust, particles, shreds and clumps (and remember 98% of this could not be seen by just looking at the feature), we FINALLY beat the persistent algae! We have a clean and beautiful waterfall as well as a happy client!
The moral of the story? Don’t put mulch anywhere near the pond or water feature!
Want to learn more about ALGAE and what may be causing it? Click HERE.
Kristi's Tips
No mulch within 10 feet of the pond. Maybe even further..
Do not put cobbles stone all around the pond either! Why? It’s an ankle breaker.
Put rocks that are easy to walk on and add clumps of flowering plants or bushes for greenery. 3/4″ gravel is also easy to walk on!
* This blog was NOT written by AI. This was written by me. I am not a professional writer, I am a pond person. Therefore, if you see a typo, please forgive me!
*No koi were harmed in the making of this content.