PREVIEW...CD-ROM and SUBSCRIPTIONS

HOW NOT TO...DO IT YOURSELF (1).

PLEASE NOTE...SOME OF THE WORDS IN THESE PREVIEW BOXES
HAVE BEEN DELETED FROM THE ORIGINAL TEXT ON THE CD-ROM. AND ARE SHOWN LIKE THIS...XXXXXXXXXXXX.

ALSO NOTE THAT MOST OF THE PICTURES ARE NOT IN THE SAME SEQUENCE AS THEY APPEAR ON THE CD-ROM. AND IN MOST CASES THEY DO NOT RELATE TO EACH OTHER IN THESE PREVIEWS.

Here's a few horrors to concentrate the mind.
One of the most important aspects of avoiding building something like this, is how you dig the hole!
The hole...I can almost here you laughing...the hole, all you have to do is dig!
Well yes you do, but it's exactly HOW and WHAT you dig that's important.
This horror shows you the importance of levels...water forms a perfect level and will always catch you out if you haven't dug the rim of your hole level.
In this example the person who built it failed to check out the levels and just guessed.
As you can see, the levels aren't even close and it's only a small space. One side is ON the water level whilst the other is showing all that liner.
And this was built by a so called..."Professional Pond Builder".
So beware if you are going to employ someone to build your Water Garden for you...learn the knowledge and supervise them yourself!

Again all the levels are wrong and this time on a grand scale...if you filled the pool up as much as possible, just as it was about to overflow out of it's left side...to the right you would see 12" of liner and concrete above the water level!
Full details of how to avoid problems like these can be found in the various sections but especially in..."HOW TO DIG THE HOLE".

And this is how I changed it...compare the two!

This is someone's idea of a "Natural Stream". Concrete with a few rocks as token natural waterfalls...terrible!

And this is how it should be done, and yes this is the SAME stream.
This is how I will teach you to do it.

If you look back...the bridge is in the same position in both the pictures.

No don't laugh...this was built by a "Professional Landscaper" to show the "quality" of his work!!!
Really you have to be so careful...it's incredible that there are people out there, and all over the world, that would consider this was GOOD.
We come back to this later because it's a perfect lesson in "How to do everything wrong"!

Speaking of "strata"...if I ran a competition for choosing the very worst rocks to build a "Natural Water Feature"...then whoever chose these would win FIRST PRIZE!
Just terrible.

And then it gets worse...ALL this needs is digging up and starting again.
The mistake here is to use XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX.

That last example XXXXXXXXXXXX, here's the opposite...far too many XXXXXXXX. That's just awful!!!

You could seat about 500 people on those rocks. Again completely unimaginative and far XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX same .
And what's happened in the foreground? It's collapsed because the rainwater has run down the hill and become trapped under the liner, and behind the rockwall. See..."Drainage and Coping with High Groundwater Levels".

Why is it that people still think that concrete is worth considering for a "Natural Water Garden"?
Years ago before high quality liners were available I could understand it, but not any more...but there are still people who have a wierd fixation with concrete...and now I think about it I suppose it's a "man thing"...a certain type of man!

If every picture tells a story...what do you see here?
No, I just cannot bring myself to tell you what I think about this!!!

AND DON'T FORGET MY PHOTOGRAPHIC COMPETITION...I will PAY $1,000 for "THE WORST NATURAL WATER GARDEN of THE YEAR". Send me your pictures, they can be off the Internet, they can be something that you've built yourself or had built for you. The top twenty will be published on the web and the ONE picture judged to be the very worst example I will buy for $1,000.

To finish this chapter...nothing but pure inspiration to follow the methods and build your dream. IGNORE THE METHODS AND BUILD YOUR NIGHTMARE!