Dave Kelly knows a thing or two about installing backyard ponds. Since he began working with Batavia, Ill.-based Aquascape Designs in 1996, he has not only installed ponds himself, but he actually has helped a number of landscape contractors with their own installations.
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Kelly is the company’s vice president of technical services, which means he essentially performs as an aquatic “tech support guy.”
“We act as an information source for installers,” Kelly said. “They call in with questions about any of the aspects of installation and we either have to walk them through it or troubleshoot the problem.”
Of course, a picture is worth a thousand words, or so the old saying goes. Kelly wished that he could simply refer all of his callers to a photograph or diagram for them to fully see and understand his explanations.
Kelly got his wish when he, Aquascape Vice President Ed Beaulieu and his four-man technical support team put together The Pond Builder’s Bible, what he called a “physical field guide” to pond building.
“There’s over 700 photographs, diagrams and installation descriptions,” Kelly explained. “This will make our jobs a lot easier.”
Aimed at the professional contractor, The Pond Builder’s Bible is made to not only provide a source of information, but also to stand up to on the job abuse. The pages are made of a synthetic material that is waterproof and tear-proof, and are stored in a tough spiral-bound binder.
“It’s really nice that it’s in a binder because it will lie flat when you’re trying to work and look at it at the same time,” Kelly explained. “And if you drop it in the water or anything, it will still be okay.”
Rick Osbourne, managing editor of Pond Guy Publications, said contractors could trust the advice from Kelly and company.
“Those guys in the technical department have done a lot of hands-on work and had some real in-the-foxhole experience, which always made them more than qualified to help other installers,” Osbourne said.
“They not only wrote from experience, but they also had to do a great deal of research to get everything together for this book,” he said. “It was such a monstrous effort to get all of these voices in there.”
Aquascape Designs offers installations in addition to publications, making it a direct competitor for many other Chicagoland contractors who use the technical support system. Osbourne said that Aquascape designs controls roughly 70 percent of the pond installation market, making it the “800-pound gorilla of the market.”
But this book essentially will help the competition get an edge, Osbourne explained.
“There is a great deal of misinformation in this marketplace and we wanted to throw all of that out the window,” he explained. “We may be the competition, but if you’re in the water gardening market, you could do worse than taking advice from us.”
Kelly agreed that although contractors may not think they need such an information source, it couldn’t hurt.
“We’ve been out there, we’ve made all kinds of mistakes,” Kelly said. “We made those mistakes and found the solutions so they wouldn’t have to.”
For more information, visit www.aquascapedesigns.com.
The author is a contributing editor to Lawn & Landscape magazine and can be reached at mjenkins@lawnandlandscape.com.