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My Name is Zac deGarmeaux, I am a lifelong water gardener and I work in the water garden industry. If you really want to know about me I will include that after the blog “about” section. We find, test, and research ways to grow the best aquatic pond plants and waterlilies and we provide these plants and the growing methods to Nurseries, Garden Centers, and home owners. There is plenty of information already available on the web from the International Waterlily and Water Garden Society, growers pages, Auburn Lotus Project, Water Gardner’s International and hundreds more including a fast number of international sites and researchers.
I have found that the industry, led for many by landscapers, is largely lacking good resources central locations of information, there are too few places on the Internet providing quality resources on the correct way to plant, care for and treat water gardens and the aquatic species in the water garden. For a number of QUALITY resources outside our page simply look to the right hand side of any page on this blog and note our Blog Roll.
Here, I want to invite gardeners, enthusiasts, industry experts, and garden clubs to include their voices in the proper water gardening techniques. The industry has exploded over the last 20 years and we have been flooded with information, much of it confusing. Water gardening and proper techniques have been well documented going back to the late 1800s.
I find most new gardeners confused, and new nurseries who are getting into water gardening, are confused as well. Gardening is not supposed to be a hobby filled with products, testing the water weekly, chemicals and a costly endeavors. You can and should spend less time messing with a water garden than a vegetable garden. Removing a few spent leaves, flowers, and occasional fertilizing is all you should be doing. If you have constant algae blooms, lackluster plants, test your water all the time, think you spend too much money on chemicals, you have stumbled upon one of a few great sources to figure out what may be going wrong and how to prevent these hassles.
There is also a lack of knowledge of exactly how many aquatic species/hybrid varieties are available. Weeds and tubers are sold at big box stores in small containers –but the true water gardening experience encompasses hundreds of species and new hybrids are developed each year. We will go over each variety, one at a time, and find out how easy this pastime can be. No more cleaning ponds or chemicals for your water garden, it’s simple. It’s really simple. Lets take a look. . .
Zac: My bio:
A young guy in relative terms, 28 years old at the moment. I dug my first pond as a kid at about age 10, which included a grey tarp, two 8″ comets that were $5 each and my first water lily came out of the same 55 gallon fish tank at Pet’s Unlimited, Moundsville, WV in 1990.
The following year after some library research (back when parents drug there kids to libraries after school) I installed 2 ponds flowing into one another with pond liner and at the time I think a 500 gph pump. By early 1990s and an 11 year old standards it was as good as anything. I do remember my dads friend Bo Tribbet had a pond or 2 in their yard and kudos to him and his family for helping get me started.
t As a 12 year old I got my first job at the Myers Drugstore garden center. No ponds were involved in this but plants. I was however involved in Mail order catalogs. I think Van Ness, Lily Pons, and Trickers were the 3 annual selections to choose from. At 16 I got my license and a job as a pond consultant at a nice local pet store. I began installing ponds for friends and locals during the year on the side and made frequent day long trips to Ohio to pick out plants a Trickers and Lily blooms. By 18 my home ponds were huge and I had become a local pond go to person for the northern panhandal of WV.
In college I worked for Lily Blooms a growing pond retailer and installed ponds with friends from 2000-2005. In 2005 I setup some online sites and became a broker for online pond plants and nurseries providing direct sales to customers. In 2008 I bought 2 copies of Robert Sawyers Book “Water Gardens & Goldfish”. An interesting story that goes along with Sawyer is the spread of the word of water gardening from the late 1800s with William Tricker’s design for the distribution and care of the Water Garden industry. The book lays out the possibilities of a Water Garden industry. Sawyers boss William Tricker was of course not to happy with the book as it lays out everything Tricker basically had a monopoly no during the Victorian era. Water gardens are nothing new they were quite popular 100 years ago.
So began a love of the “History” of water lilies and water gardening. Now enter my first IWGS symposium in 2009. More history from some legendary people (in my mind and others), some stories and advice from many and you begin to have a greater love for the plants. No longer just an interest in growing and blooming but the stories of hybridizing, recording, care, and production. The explorers who travel the world rescuing species and finding new ones. Talking to caretakers of anchient gardens and ponds in the East. There is much to learn. There is much to be respected. In the end you kind of find a love for it all.
In 2010 I hope to share stories with friends at the International Waterlily Collection and LilyFest. Explore ponds this summer in Texas, visit a new lotus Nursery, and wither this year or next travel to some anchient gardens in China.
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