Beat heat with cool Pond Tour

Looking for relief from the sticky heat of July? Longing for a cool moment by a gentle waterfall?

This Sunday’s annual Inland Empire Water Garden and Koi Society Pond Tour could be just the thing. The homes featured on the tour belong to society members and offer tour visitors an opportunity to learn about water gardening and caring for koi.

That’s what happened to Dennis and Mary Bates of Spokane. They’ve been involved with the tour since its second year and were inspired to upgrade their own water garden.

“When we started, we just dug a hole in our backyard and thought we had a fish pond,” said Mary. “Then we went on the Pond Tour and realized we had a lot more to learn.”

They joined the Society and graduated from a 250 gallon “hole in the ground” to a 10,000 gallon double pond with waterfall, she said. Today the couple is downsizing to a 3,000 gallon pond in their new home.

“Most people will rebuild their ponds two or three times to get it right,” said Dennis.

He admits he’s hooked. “The longer you have ponds, the more expensive they get because it’s fun to keep adding to them,” he said.

Mary added that beginners need not worry at first about installing elaborate water features. “Die cast models (that you can buy already made) will work fine for goldfish and simple water features and water gardening,” she said.

This year’s tour is one of the biggest yet.

“We have 12 homes on display, including a couple that haven’t been open before,” said Mary, co-chair of the Pond Tour. “The homes offer a variety of yard sizes and water and garden features.”

For example, at one home, visitors should look for the “pottery man in the ivy and a bird cage on top of a dead tree.” In another, creatively-designed yard, check out the imaginative alternative to stump removal.

“One person had a tree trunk carved into a figure rather than have it removed,” she said. Many of the stops along this year’s tour have such whimsical delights.

Chuck and Alice Harmon own one of the homes open to visitors for the tour.

“I’ve been a member of the club for six or seven years,” said Chuck Harmon. “We’ve only been in this house since December 2004.”

The Harmons’s three-story home is rectangular, and when they hired a builder to install a water feature, “he said why don’t you build it to match the house?” recalls Harmon.

The three-level, nearly 10,000 gallon pond features 12 koi, a bog garden, a waterfall and is newly surfaced in basalt rock. “My wife is an artist and a gardener” and is constantly working on the design said Harmon. “It’s fun coming home to see what changes happened while I was at work.”

Bates advises folks to “plan on three to four hours to see everything,” adding, “Lots of families come out after church and make a day of it. They stop for lunch along the way.”

The society is expecting about 1,000 people to join the Pond Tour this year. Money raised from it is used over the year to invite speakers and engage in community service projects. This year the Society volunteered to clean out the koi pond in the Manito Park Japanese Gardens.

“It really needed it,” Mary Bates said. “We think it was the first time it had ever been cleaned out.”