ABOUT JERSEY SHORE PONDSCAPES
When I was in high school, I started working at a local garden center. There, we started to sell water garden supplies. It was a brand new concept back then, and I started to really become interested in it. I started learning a lot about ponds, and I quickly became the guy everyone turned to for help with their ponds there at the garden center. I worked there for 10 years, and the pond department there grew in leaps and bounds. I started building a few small ponds for people on my days off. I later became a manager at a new garden center, where I built two beautiful display ponds. One was a large formal water garden, and the other was a koi pond with a large water fall inside a big tropical garden in a giant greenhouse. But we did not sell any pond supplies. Many people who came to the garden center admired the ponds, and it made me think…. Why am I not building ponds professionally? I could do this …..I’m good at this stuff. So I quit and started my own business Jersey Shore Pondscapes, LLC in 1999.
Now, 20+ years later, I’ve learned and experienced a lot. For the most part, I still build ponds very much the same way as I did when I started, only with a few new tricks that I’ve learned along the way. “If it’s not broke, don’t fix it”. The way that I’ve been building ponds over the years works, so I stick with it. I still visit and maintain ponds that I built twenty years ago, and they are still going strong.
I recently started my own YouTube channel where I have a series of videos on just about every pond topic that you could think of. They go into great depth on so many topics, and I have links on this website to my channel. Check them out, and subscribe to the channel! It really helps me to keep making more new videos. Also, if you have any suggestions on other topics for new videos that you would like to see, please let me know.
Since I worked in garden centers for many years, I have a very good knowledge of plants and landscaping. For many years in my career of building ponds, I’ve done a lot of landscaping as well. I end up doing a lot of landscape work for clients that I put ponds in for. Once they realize that I can design and install landscaping, and that I have an extensive knowledge of plants they ask me to do that as well. However, in the past few years, I’ve had so much pond work that I really don’t have time to do as much landscape work. I’ve really been concentrating on helping people with ponds. I’ve included a heading in this website for landscaping. The purpose is to give you ideas for things to do around your pond, and tell you about some of my favorite plants.