This issue’s cover pond is not a permanent pond at all. It was built by Blades and Blossoms as our joint display garden at the recent Southeastern Flower Show. The 3000-gallon koi Utopia took five days to build and only 2 days to demolish. During its short life it inspired, delighted and entertained over 65,000 people. Our garden’s theme was “Precious Gems — Jewels of the Garden”. Koi are often called “Living Jewels” and they glittered like diamonds as they swam around under the building’s florescent lighting.

The garden was constructed inside a building on a floor which meant we had to raise it high enough to create the 24” depth needed for the koi. A totally unique and awesome arbor waterfall was engineered by Neil Boyce of Blades and Blossoms to create splashing music while providing eye-candy to capture the imagination. Giant boulders, a large umbrella palm and a fountain of a classic couple holding an umbrella added height and interest to the middle of the pond’s surface. Flowering camellias, azaleas and pansies added color to the gardens surrounding the pond as did a couple of very popular Coral Bark Japanese Maples.

A strainer was used instead of a bottom drain through which the external 1.5 hp pump pulled 4000 gph of water and pushed it through a ProBead biofilter to the top of the arbor. This was the first arbor waterfall of its kind and there was a lot of trial and error involved but it all came together beautifully.

Long exhaustive hours spent on this project paid off when the garden won the very first Lynn Dowden Trophy for “Best Use of Water in a Garden Setting” and the Chairman’s Award for being chosen by the Show Chairman as her favorite in our classification. The Lynn Dowden Trophy is on display at the store now along with a plaque for the Chairman’s Award. It paid off big for Blades and Blossoms. Obviously folks liked what they saw. He’s been booked on jobs since the show.

When The Doc told me he wanted to take Smokey Jo and other koi from our personal collection to the show I recoiled in horror! What if something happened to them during transport? Moving fish causes them to stress badly. What if they got sick because our vanity of wanting to “show them off”? He assured me that he would take good care of my babies.

He’s The Doc and he knows what he’s doing so I reluctantly agreed to allow him to take our babies to the show. I am really glad now that we took them because they kept us entertained from the very first moment they arrived.

We received calls during judging that the koi appeared to be trapped in the plants. How would the judges know that they were just playing…

The pond was built so that the koi had plenty of places to hide and get away from all the activity. Funny thing — all they wanted to do was play with the people. For being such good children we offered “junk” food such as white bread and croissants. One little boy fed them Cheetos — I knew who had partaken by who had the tell-tell orange mouths.

The koi couldn’t get their fill of both food and attention. Rarely did they venture from the crowd. Smokey Jo was, by far, the crowd’s favorite and never missed a chance to meet new arrivals to the display. We think they actually got bored when people weren’t around to entertain them. Every morning we’d find that the floating globes had moved across the pond during the night.

The water quality held up quite well throughout the whole show in spite of all the goodies fed to the koi. We can attribute that to the fine filtration system that was installed.

The Doc worried that bacteria from all the different people who had their hands in the water was harming the fish. The koi must not have shared his worry, however, because they kept coming back for more chin tickles. Just to be on the safe side, however, once we got them back to their pond at the store we treated ran them through a series of PP treatments.

It was tough for them to leave all the glitz and glamour of stardom but it had to end. The party was over. It was time to go home. After undergoing weeks of detoxification from all the Cheetos they are finally back to their pre-showbiz selves.