Customer Reviews

The Stream Garden: Create Your Own Natural-Looking Water Feature

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The Stream Garden is a truly inspirational book designed to help the gardener design and create a stream garden. The photographs are superb and excellent examples. Clear direction is given for building the stream and there are plenty of plant suggestions to make the stream look natural. This book complements Water in the Garden by James Allison - which in my opinion is the best pond book on the market. Both of these books combine inspirational photographs with practical knowledgeable directions.

I can't complain too much because I got this from a seller on Amazon literally for one penny. Had I not, I probably wouldn't be nearly as happy though.

I am in the process of creating a backyard utopia, as a do-it-yourselfer. Because we have the misfortunate of having a very sloped yard, I thought I'd turn that into fortune and utilize its slope for a flowing waterfall that looks natural.

This is a very thin book and, although it does offer some good information, it has very few pictures and less information as compared to just simple free instructions I found on the internet.

However, if you are looking for what plants are best to put around your pond or waterfall, this would be helpful as almost half the book is just about plants, in spite of its small size.

I can't say I won't utilize any of the information as it had some useful notes...mainly in the plant section, and with a few tips, however, we went to Home Depot the next day and I started flipping through one of their own do-it-yourself books on ponds and found more information than I'd located anywhere on the net, or in this book. So I made a second purchase.

This book is more sketches and line drawings or type, than photographs of the steps and how it should look and some may prefer that. However, I'm a better learner with visuals in addition to the written explanations...I find that more easily understood in do-it-yourself steps I've never done before. And this has mostly black and white drawings in addition to the type.

Conclusion: It was worth it for the price I paid from a used book seller on Amazon, but if I'd gone to Home Depot first I probably would have skipped this purchase all together.

Now pray for me that I don't kill a bunch of goldfish in the near future. That's my biggest fear of this pond building...there will be small lives at stake to test how well I do. My neighbor's fish have been romancing one another too often for their small pond so we're getting lots of free babies.

Tip: If you are looking for inexpensive pond supplies, check Craigslist. We found a fiberglass pond form for our base that was HUGE and only 35 bucks...also free stone, a used pump, new liner, etc. It's a good place to start. But be wary of the pumps...most we have found are too small for a large pond and we've been unable to find a pump/filter combo which is what we really want so I think we may pass on the pumps from there.