Water Garden Tour and Dances With Herons

 Saturday brought the 2011 Water Garden Tour sponsored by Gateway Garden Center and The Delaware Center for Horticulture. My friend Brenda and I were looking for ideas, and they certainly presented themselves courtesy of some hard-working and talented gardeners. The first pond was in Hockessin, Delaware and was designed by a woman who has done professional landscaping. You can see flowering rush, chameleon plant, lobelia and lotus in this rock rimmed pond fed by a waterfall, all very naturalistically. 

The second pond, in Landenberg, Pennsylvania, had a pond with lotus and koi (named King Louie and Kyoko)  all at the base of a waterfall flowing down a high hill in the back, which several of the ponds seemed to have in common. We are in the Piedmont, so these hilly properties on the PA/DE line are characteristic.

The next two gardens are remarkable for different reasons. Yes, they have water running through them, but the location and amount of hard work put into these landscapes is unbelievable. The first is very unexpectedly located in Plum Run, a townhouse community outside of Wilmington. A large drop from the hill at the back of the lot could be considered a problem, but here, a 750 gallon water feature runs down the hill, rocks, plantings, a sequoia tree, 7 goldfish, and statuary (including a fairy village at the bottom)  are staged in 3 tiers down the hill to the townhouse. 

The next pond is just one feature of the native plant landscape put together in Pike Creek by a woman who actually moved all the rocks (and some are very big) herself, and whose doctor apparently has told her to stop moving rocks unaided. The rose mallow hibiscus and coneflowers below attract butterflies to the property.

An unusual use of water  in the next property is a bog garden filled with native carnivorous plants. So these pitcher plants are just waiting for a bug to land. Maybe they eat the mosquitoes too.  The last pond is one located in the City of Wilmington, on a small, narrow lot. The waterfall with the hippo on top seems to pop out the of the shed in back and flows down into a pond filled with happy goldfish. This was the only pond with koi where the owner said he had no trouble with blue herons stealing his fish. Guess they don't like city traffic. We actually did see a heron in the middle of the road just outside the city just before this and thought it was a mirage, until it took flight when a car headed toward it. Pond owners out in the country were trying various methods to keep heron out of ponds, including heavy netting (ugly) and criss-crossed wires across the surface (they reminded me of one of those caper movies where the cat burglars try to avoid laser lights to get to the jewels in a glass case in the center of the room). Watch for this tour next year, and hopefully, it won't be so blisteringly hot next year and more people will come to this fund-raiser for the Delaware Center for Horticulture.