The soothing sound of water: Pond Society tour visits several water gardens

Now that the weather is suitably warmed up for the summer solstice on Sunday, and the days are at their longest, and rain is out of the forecast, the pond tour with its cooling waters is perfectly timed for this weekend.

Eight home water gardens in Wichita, Maize, Derby and Mulvane, along with a couple of garden centers, Botanica and WaterWalk, are on the Kansas Pond Society’s annual tour Saturday and Sunday. Admission is $10 per carload; you can pick up a ticket – which includes the addresses, maps and descriptions of the gardens – at garden centers and Botanica in Wichita, at Atwoods in Andover, and at Easton Sod Farm and Tails & Scales in Derby.

During the tour, you can get ideas for building or improving a pond, glean inspiration from gardens, or just be a nature tourist.

And, if you haven’t been exposed to the phenomenon of the 17-year cicada, you can hear all about it in Derby. Along with the sound of running water.

“You can’t hardly get around us without the sound of running water – the creek, the pond, the fountains,” said the owner of one of the ponds on the tour, Eric Fischer of Derby. His yard is enormous – three acres – and Spring Creek runs behind it. Fischer and his wife, Angie, had a pond built in an unusual spot – 275 feet to the west of the front yard, toward the end of their cul-de-sac and up against Derby city park property.

The wildlife living along the creek – which sends up trickling sounds from down below – sometimes visit the man-made water feature. Mallard ducks come up to the pond – “they’re just family,” Eric Fischer says – as do hungry blue herons that are not as welcome, as they sometimes snatch fish out of the pond for breakfast, lunch or dinner.

Scenic Landscapes overhauled and expanded the pond last year with a waterfall. There are nice views all the way around it, and large rocks are set into the hill; their shapes have inspired the Fischers to compose a quiz asking tourgoers to match the rock to what it looks like.

Their yard also has other water features – fountains coming out of rocks, and a swimming pool – as well as stones embedded with lights by sculptor Tobin Rupe of Wichita.

One of the gardens on the tour is open only on Saturday – as are the garden centers on the tour, Scenic Landscapes and Hong’s – while the tour stop in Mulvane will be open until 10 p.m. Saturday so that people can get the full effect of pond lighting. If you visit Botanica on Sunday, the Father’s Day Kite Festival will be going on, and hours are 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. (See more details in the Gardener’s Almanac on Page 2C.) Botanica is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday.

If you make the trek to Derby, you’ll not only hear water, you’ll likely hear and see cicadas. While Wichita doesn’t get the 17-year plague that other eastern parts of the state have had, Derby has been deafening during certain parts of the day, particularly late afternoon, Eric Fischer says, and you can see holes in the Fischers’ yard from which the phantoms emerge every 17 years like clockwork.

Among others on the tour are Floanna Crowley, a master gardener and floral designer and judge who was last on a garden tour in 2005.

“I have changed a few things, and some things have really grown,” Crowley said of the last decade in her yard, which has some unusual specimens because she likes to push Wichita’s climate boundaries and bring back plants from her travels. That also means that she’s lost some plants, too, and taken some out because she’s gotten tired of them.

“I have a lot of stuff planted, but I really have a lot of daylilies, and they’re blooming like fury because next year I’ll be on the regional (daylily) tour,” so Crowley didn’t want to divide them this year.

People who take the tour also will notice her Arizona cypress, and some ram’s horn willows. Still growing since our inventory in 2005: Sky Pencil hollies, Green Bun and Contorta white pines, and Mary Nell hollies. The false cypresses that Crowley loves so and has tried again and again to grow have not been successful, though. “Our dry wind really does a number on them. They need more humidity,” Crowley said resignedly.

Her pond hasn’t changed much in the 10 years – but her koi have grown. “My fish are really big. I’d hate to get slapped with one of them. They’re maybe 20 inches, and they really fill the pond.”

The Fischers have put in a blue-heron decoy to try to keep the real thing away from their fish. The Fischers keep their pond running all year. The moving water keeps it from freezing over most of the time, Eric Fischer said, but if things get too cold, they add a heater.

Just remember that as you celebrate the summer solstice at 11:30 a.m. Sunday, along with sunshine and temperatures in the 90s this weekend.

This story was originally published June 19, 2015 at 3:47 PM with the headline "The soothing sound of water: Pond Society tour visits several water gardens."