Create a backyard oasis with garden ponds, bogs

WEST VALLEY CITY — As the dog days of summer drag on, many gardeners are looking for ways to give their plants a break.

You could move farther north, install an outdoor air conditioner — or maybe add an oasis in your backyard landscape.

If that sounds like a good idea, but you're not sure how to go about it, the Utah Water Garden Club is ready to help. The nonprofit organization was founded in 2000 to help people learn and perfect the art and science of creating a personal oasis, and its members want to share their expertise.

Matt Gusta, the organization's president, is one of those pond enthusiasts. Gusta, who joined the club in 2002, has a pond that takes up almost half his back yard. It measures 12 feet by 20 feet and holds about 3,000 gallons of water.

Ponds allow homeowners to create fascinating ecosystems. "I built my garden for fish, because that is what I like to do," Gusta said. "Other members use them to create gardens where they grow many of their favorite plants."

Gusta created his own bog garden as a part of that ecosystem, which "serves as a filter to help clean up the water for my fish," he said.

"A bog garden is just a big, shallow area for water plants. It serves as my biofilter to remove nitrates, which are bad for the fish."

Gusta's pond is a nice little biosystem. Water is circulated through the bog using a series of four waterfalls and then back into the pond.

"I then water my garden with some water out of the pond. The fish are good because their waste helps feed the plants. Doing this also helps because then I can add fresh water to the pond to replace what I take out."

Ponds, filters, pumps, bogs and fish all thrown together might seem complicated to the average gardener, but Gusta said he considers water gardening to be 10 times easier than regular gardening.

"With water gardening, the soil is never a problem and I get no weeds," he said, adding that his pond takes less water than his lawn.

"As pond enthusiasts, we are very water conscious because we realize that without water we cannot have ponds. In my own garden, I am trying to replace plants with those that will withstand the heat and the drought."

When asked for advice for a beginning water gardener, Gusta said to "build your pond as big as you can, because you will always want it to be bigger. Bigger ponds are easier to take care of biologically.

"Don't make it too small. Don't get too many fish, and avoid koi in a very small pond," he said. "They will get a couple of feet long in a few years and will outgrow the pond. If you have too many fish in a small pond, you start to get diseases in them."