Every season Full Service Aquatics handles lots of koi pond water garden projects. Our latest koi pond water garden project in Princeton, NJ took place in January which is an unusual time of year for these projects in New Jersey, but with a rare stretch of warm weather during this time the FSA team took advantage to create a beautiful koi pond water garden.

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Seasonal changes can represent challenges for many koi pond and water garden owners. Some pond owners may even have to deal with drastic changes for each season. Sub-zero brutal winter temperatures thawing into the soaking rains of Spring time. Spring time very quickly transforms into a Summer of heat waves, drought, and soaring temperatures. And before Ol’ Man Winter starts bellowing again the Autumn time dumps massive amounts of material into our yards, koi ponds, and water gardens. As pond owners it seems we need to have a game plan every few months!

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HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

Its 2013, the New Year is actually upon us and already rolling along! As we all “de-holidify” and return to our normal routines; many of us think it’s a good time to make changes and resolutions. I like the chance for a resolution because it seems that there is always something in my life that needs to change, or needs improvement. I welcome the chance to get better in every part of life. For me that always means that in the New Year I look how I can do things differently with my pond since that is a huge part of my life. There’s a million things that I want to do and change with my pond and right now is the time for me to think about those and plan to make the changes in 2013 that I can.  Of course I have to consider what I can afford to do, what I need to do, and what I want to do.

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“People who claim they do not let the little things bother them, have never slept in a room with one mosquito.”

“What’s the New Jersey state bird?” …the mosquito.

“The best blood at sometime will get into a fool, or a mosquito.”

“There are only 2 of God’s creations I don’t understand, poison ivy and mosquitoes.”

Shall I go on?….

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Could water gardens be the ultimate and most influential form of art ever created?

Follow me back…

Worlds Fair Paris, France 1889, the Exposition Universelle du 1889. 100 years after the French Revolution the world was changing, and at this very moment Paris was the center of it all.

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The lotus flower, Nelumbo nucifera.

The relationships that are sometimes developed between man and plant can be very fascinating. This definitely holds true for the lotus flower. The lotus flower and human connection goes back well beyond 1000 years, and crosses numerous cultural and geographical boundaries even from ancient times. The lotus is even revered in a spiritual way by several cultures. Still today, lotus is a widely known and popular water garden plant that can be found in about any water garden center, just about anywhere on the planet. The lotus flower has achieved truly an iconic status with its familiar large flower head that is easily identified by even the beginner water garden enthusiasts and chefs.

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The Golden Orfe, or Ide, is a somewhat overlooked choice as a fish to stock your pond and water garden with these days; yet the Orfe is an easy to find and affordable pond and water garden fish. Most pond fish dealers stock the Golden Orfe because they know about its hardiness, interesting behavior, and easy upkeep when it comes to our backyard pond installations.

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These days there is a huge amount of emphasis put onto our carbon footprint and how we can make changes in our lives and communities to lower that environmental impact, and it seems most of us are actually making changes to our lives to reduce our carbon footprint. A greatly overlooked footprint we all contribute to is our water use footprint.

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I’ll deny I said this, but I want to turn your pond green.
As I try to continually steer Full Service Aquatics towards becoming “greener” in our practices and products I sometimes feel like that goal gets a bit farther away with every step forward, but in a good way.

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At 6:30 this morning eastern time, I was splashing a bit of 1/2 and 1/2 in my coffee, looking out my kitchen window at my pond as I do every morning, I must have been looking at it for a good10-15 seconds before I noticed that right before my eyes, standing on one of my big stones, looking into my pond was a Great Blue Heron. The heron blended so well into the scenery and was so still that my eyes did not catch it. This year my pond has been stalked a bit more heavily by the herons than previous years, and typically for my area the heron and the frantic heron phone calls from my customers stop around mid-May, but this year they are stalking the ponds it seems much longer. This heron is not the one that seems to always show up at my pond, and my brother in law’s pond (2 houses away), although still very much looking like a frikkin pterodactyl, it was smaller.

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