Customer Reviews

The Master Book of the Water Garden

5 star:		(7)
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3 star:		(1)
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When my husband & I bought a house recently, it came complete with a man-made pond, stream, and waterfall.

I borrowed every book about ponds and water features from the library. They didn't own The Master Book of the Water Garden. Too bad. This is the most complete book on the subject I've come across.

To begin with, it has wonderful pictures and makes a great coffee table book, even if you're not looking for water garden information.

There are two indices: one that's general and one that's specifically for plants. Throughout the book are "Problem Solving" asides. Sometimes entire pages are dedicated to answering questions about fish, plant depth, water quality, and much more.

But I thought its strength was the amount of very specific information on the subjects it covers. Other books dealt with just ponds, or waterfalls, or wet and dry streams. This book covers all that as well as fountains, water meadows, bogs, and containers.

Discussions include bridges, decking, walkways, lighting, filters, propagating plants, & the various kinds of liners. Cleaning and maintaining the water feature is included, as well as seasonal upkeep. Designing your water garden, picking plants, choosing a location, & deciding on size are just a few of the subjects covered. And fish subjects aren't limited to just koi and goldfish.

I was most interested in how to drain and repair a leaking pond. This has been difficult information to find. Swindells even tells you what to do with the fish while you're making repairs or changes to the pond.

My only criticism is that the plant index uses the Latin names for the plants. Though it does include common names, in many instances, if you're not sure what you're looking for, a specific plant may be a bit difficult to find. I must admit that there are full color pictures of the plants in the book, though my favorite water plant, horsetails, isn't included.

This book is already well thumbed and the pages wrinkled from where they've been wet. In other words, it's useful and used.

This Book has GREAT content. Not only does it have clear, and easy to understand diagrams of plants, but it supplied me with information to build my own pond. Now, my pond is filled with koi that rest underneath some waterlilies . The water hyacinths, (which I did not know about until reading this book) , smell soooo wonderful. My pond would never be complete without this book. I say you buy it, because it is worth it's price!

This is an excellent book for building water gardens, ponds, pools and streams. The subject is covered thoroughly with detailed descriptions about installing fountains, lighting, islands, and landscaping. There are lots of lovely photos that will let your imagination grow as to the kinds of ponds you can design and build. You are only limited by the size of your yard. There is a large section about adding different types of water plants to specific areas of the pond. Plus, there is good coverage about adding fish, attracting wildlife, and performing seasonal maintenance. Construction techniques vary from simple to more complex designs, including waterfalls and ripple effects. Another book, Nash's The Complete Pond Builder, seems to have slightly better construction detail and also more examples of smaller ponds. However, Swindells' book is much more comprehensive and it contains a lot more information about maintenance, fish, and plants.

This author describes the historical aspect of ponds, the current trends of ponds and the types of plants and animals found in each type of pond. He lists problems and solutions. Very insightful. I like the ID stuff at the end listing each important plants and animals found in a pond. (He doesn't have turtles though).

This book is beautiful to look at but not really very helpful at the nuts and bolts. Its design advice is mostly in generalities, and though its building advice is pretty good, I've found more detailed information elsewhere. The discussion of plants is useful up to a point because it has lots of nice pictures, but it, too, is short on practical specifics. For example, it doesn't define "hardy" by referring to USDA hardiness zones, nor does it explain just exactly how to plant. It will say something like 'Depth: moist soil to 6",' but what does that MEAN? For step-by-step advice on building a pond, I'd recommend the Ortho book All About Garden Pools and Fountains. I wish I could recommend a better book on the plant side of water gardening, but I haven't found it yet!

This book has all the information needed to build and maintain a pond. There is everything you need to know from A-Z including maintaince, plants, fish, etc. A must have.

I found this book quite helpful in designing and building my first pond. While I can consider very few books perfect representations of their topics this book helped me make intelligent decisions. Regardless of what book you pick on the subject you will find that there is a lot to learn in pondkeeping that is simply not addressed adequately in books, but rather by "trial and error". Regarding this book, I found the section on fish is not very detailed, so those interested in koi keeping will benefit from a book such as The Essential Book of Koi: A Complete Guide to Keeping and Care,which is quite good.

We recently "inherited" a small pond when we moved to a new home and this has been a great resource to maintain the pond