To replicate a natural established appearance, a water garden must be in harmony with the larger landscape. Softening and blurring the edges of your water garden with live plants and gradually extending the plantings into the larger landscape helps create a soothing, uniform pond landscape reminiscent of nature.

"Bringing nature to your own backyard" means more than filling a pond with water and adding plants and fish. Creating a healthy and balanced pond or water garden requires a fundamental understanding of pond ecology, or the study of pond life and their interaction with the larger pond environment.

Medicating sick pond fish or quarantining new arrivals in an outdoor pond can be quite challenging. And setting up and maintaining an indoor quarantine tank may not always be a practical alternative. Here is a clever and relatively inexpensive solution to this common challenge of creating a quarantine area for pond fish.