A water garden and a hydroponics garden are very similar

It seems like everyone has a water garden. They are everywhere I look; the paper, TV ads, billboards... I see advertisements for them. So what are they and are they the same as hydroponics? Usually they are gardens based on water in a small pool with some natural landscaping features added.

These are filled with 'koi', a goldfish relative and various aquatic pond and bog plants such as water lettuce, water hyacinth and water lillies to name just a few. Line the pool with a pool-liner and add in a submersible water pump to provide some kind of small waterfall and you have a backyard pool.

In theory, such gardens are supposed to be complete ecological systems in that the water is oxygenated by the waterfall helping the aquatic plants to grow, the koi and other scavengers will clean the pool of algae and a good source of sunlight will keep the plants growing. Such a garden will also soon attract frogs and, I hate to say it, racoons.

Is this hydroponics? In theory, yes, because the plants do not grow in soil and obtain all nutrients from the water. Except...the plants are aquatic plants adapted by many years of natural selection to live in the water.

Therefore it is not really hydroponics as I see it. These gardens are merely for decoration and not food production.

I suppose you could float some low-growing vegetables such as lettuce in the pond to grow but you would need to add nutrient to make it work. Water gardens are nice to have and nice to look at but are definitely not hydroponics... at least in my opinion.

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