Backyard Water Gardens: How to Build, Plant & Maintain Ponds, Streams & Fountains

Veronica Fowler’s comprehensive step-by-step manual shows you not only how to install your water garden, but maintain it entirely on your own.

Backyard Water Gardens teaches you how to install liners, pre-formed shapes, containers, and aboveground pools and fountains. From there, it helps you choose plants, add them to your garden, fertilize, prune, divide, and ward off pests and diseases. But Fowler’s book goes far beyond the basics, covering all the maintenance and troubleshooting of water feature hardscapes—from a rip in a liner, to a damaged pool, to maintaining equipment and filters (including seasonal maintenance for winter care). Veronica Fowler’s Backyard Water Gardens allows you to fully enjoy the convenience and versatility of water gardening, all while maintaining it with ease for years to come.

Backyard Water Gardens is truly an all-inclusive manual, encompassing every style, type, and size of water feature imaginable. No matter the “feel” you wish to convey in your garden—casual, formal, or whimsical—Fowler’s book enables you to create it with confidence. Your range of hardscape options is incredibly vast, from small, container-sized fountains that complement any space with added sound and movement, to large in-ground or aboveground ponds and streams. Larger installations not only provide soothing, rejuvenating sights and sounds; they can also house fish and plants and passively attract natural wildlife to your backyard.