How Building a Water Feature Benefits the Environment
There are a lot of benefits to having a water feature in your outdoor living space. It adds the relaxing effect of running water to your home. It is a great focus for your landscaping. Water features create a wonderful entertainment space during the warm seasons. It gives you more gardening options by adding water plants. Best of all, building a water feature benefits the environment.
But none of these things are the reason I love my job. I enjoyed my work almost immediately. I have fun being outside every day and playing in the water. It is bonus that I have an excuse to play with fish and frogs and the occasional turtle and get paid for it. But I did not fall in love with my work until I sat through a speech given by my new hero, Ed Beaulieu.
Ed is the chief sustainability officer at Aquascape. Basically, his job is to find new and innovative ways to conserve water. He gave a speech back in August with a special guest, noted researcher and water conservation activist Heiko Bleher, addressing how natural water sources such as the amazon river are being depleted. It was during this talk that I realized my job was so much bigger than I thought it was.
The Bigger Picture
I used to view backyard water features the same as everyone else. As an aesthetically pleasomg thing that people with money to blow added to their landscaping. Sure, I liked them and thought they were pretty. Little did I know how much larger their impact is.
The depletion of large water sources, due mostly to deforestation, is a problem that is hard for most of us to see in our daily lives when all we must do is turn a knob to get all we want of it. But it is a problem. It is even harder for us to know how we can make a difference without dropping our lives and running away to South America or Africa to be an “activist”. All though if you are interested in building wells or donating you can check out this source.
In Your Yard
A self-sustaining water feature is an ecosystem. A water feature benefits plants and wildlife, not just in your yard, but throughout your surrounding area. It creates a safe habitat for fish, frogs, salamanders, newt, turtles, dragonfly larvae, beneficial bacteria, and a myriad of other critters. It also can serve as a water sources for butterflies and bees, and for mammals ranging from squirrels and birds to larger animals like deer. Realizing that caring for these little ecosystems made my job not only fun, but important, has given me a passion for my work. Doing my part to help the environment even on the smallest scale is why I love my job. Call us when you are ready to do your part too.
Catch you downstream.