Pond Garden Redo

In 2010, Rob and I dug a little goldfish pond in our backyard and surrounded it with a picket fence that we stained dark green. Since the first day of its existence, the pond has been a big success. Very soon it was brimming with tadpoles, frogs, snails, and dragonfly nymphs—so much life! But the garden around it was just kind of jungly and crazy and not all that pretty.

So, finally, in 2018 I decided to revamp the whole thing. In October of that year, I had just finished building a new stone path all the way around the pond when Hurricane Michael struck. A gigantic pine tree, as wide as an elephant, fell across the garden. It smashed the picket fence and crushed dozens of plants.

It took four months to remove the fallen giant, and another six months after that to rebuild and repaint the fence. But even a year after the hurricane, the garden still looked kind of damaged and broken.

When Covid hit in March 2020, my office shut down and I started working from home. Without my daily commute (which was 45 minutes each way), I had extra time for yard work—and I made improving the pond garden my top project. I mulched the whole area with wood chips and planted coonties, beautyberry, lady ferns, autumn ferns, and Shi-Shi Gashira sasanquas. I added birdbaths and statues, along with blue-glazed pots of annuals (caladiums in summer and cyclamen in winter). I expanded the stone path around the pond and kept it carefully swept.

In the evenings, as soon as my workday had ended, I’d head right out and open the dark-green gate. I’d kneel among the ferns and patiently weed. Or maybe I’d rearrange the seashells and stones around the water’s edge. I’d sweep the path and talk to the trees (lol), an old habit from childhood.

During this difficult year, the pond garden has given me so much to look forward to and be interested in—new fish hatching, tadpoles getting their legs. . . . It keeps me busy because I always have plants to water and weeds to pull. And I’m never lonely there, with the fish and dragonflies and mockingbirds and box turtles and (of course) my tree friends to keep me company. Gardening really is the best kind of therapy.

The pond is between the two chairs and the bench, but you can’t really see it because of all the ferns around it: