Quote:
Originally Posted by blueash
I asked about the "floating" island at maintenance and was told it is multipurpose. It is a safe area for birds, and gators, it is attractive, and importantly it has the plant life which extracts nutrients from the pond which helps to reduce algae blooms and unwanted effects of the pollution from ground water runoff containing fertilizers and pesticides. Don't know if it is true, but that's what I was told. I was asking about adding more islands and was told no, the island size is based on the lake size and its benefit is related to the ratio of island mass to water mass. Sounded good
|
Blue, I heard the same thing about the island extracting nutrients from the pond. We have a floating island on our pond, and it's been there since we moved here 3 1/2 years ago. Maybe ours was a test case? The island is much larger than it was, and the plantlife and the birds that use it have changed, too. Herry (heron) and Whitey (big white bird) used to share the island, but the redwing blackbirds moved in and made life miserable for the water birds, so they moved on. Now the crows are trying to take over from the redwings. The turtles and the gators also love it.
The plants used to be much smaller, and they bloomed. The plants are about 4' tall now, and they don't bloom anymore, but the island still looks lovely. We can't see the rubber mat anymore due to the plant growth, so they must be extracting plenty of nutrients!
I think our island was originally tethered on both ends, but now it only has one tether, so it moves according to the wind. It's fun when we have houseguests and they notice that the island isn't where it was an hour ago.
