Austin Pond Society

The 2010 Pond Tour was held on June 12-13th, a month earlier than past tours in an effort to avoid the peak summer heat. The tour featured 26 ponds (here is the tour guide).

An excellent site with photos and reviews of several ponds is at Annie in Austin's web blog here:

 Part One with the 9 south ponds  Annie visited:
http://annieinaustin.blogspot.com/2010/06/austin-pond-tour-2010-part-1.html

And Part Two for the 4 north ponds visted:
http://annieinaustin.blogspot.com/2010/06/austin-pond-tour-2010-part-2.html

The 2009 Pond Tour featured 16 ponds during the day of Saturday July 18th, 4 ponds that evening and 12 on Sunday July 19th.  A variety of water features were exhibited including small ponds all the way up to those handling tens of thousands of gallons per day.  As expected, visitors were as interested in "works in progress" as in established and mature water gardens.

The geographic area covered was even wider than in previous years, a testimony to the growth of the Austin metro area.  Georgetown, Manor, Round Rock, Pflugerville, Liberty Hill, Leander, Cedar Park, Westlake and projects in the city of Austin were all represented.  The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center participated in this year's tour.

The summer of ’09 had some the highest temperatures in years.  While that may have held down overall attendance at the Tour, those who participated made frequent comment on how "cooling" the presence and sound of water can be.  

Tour Catalog - Locations, Photos, and Descriptions of the 2009 Pond Tour Ponds

The Austin Pond Society's 2009 Pond Tour was featured on the PBS television program "The Central Texas Gardener" hosted by Tom Spencer.

Information on the 2008 Pond Tour

The 2008 Pond Tour has concluded, with hundreds of delighted visitors, smiling pond owners, hot 'n happy volunteers, and a relieved committee.

Zanthan Gardens has a nice 2 part article written on their blog...

Part 1 and Part 2

The 2007 Pond Tour featured 30 ponds July 14 and 15 on an unusually 'not as hot as normal' weekend. Saturday started the weekend off on a wet note, but by noon, most of the rains had passed and the remainder of the event was clear and sunny. We highlighted three stunning waterscaped yards on the Saturday night tour and even had a bus shuttling attendees to one of the ponds to ease traffic congestion (as we learned from last year).

New to this year were wristbands instead of paper tickets, making the task of spotting paid attendees easier for our volunteers. We sold 959 wristbands, representing over 11,200 individual visits to the ponds. Average attendance at the ponds was 373 people. One of our ponds had 933 visitors!

Wonderful volunteers, festive blue shirts and our special guests the Austin Bonsai Society and the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center all made the tour one for the record books.

Photos courtesy of Betty Korts and Merrill Rottmann. 

The 2006 Pond Tour brought back the night tour, which proved to be very popular again with over 500 attendees at only two houses in just three hours. July 15th and 16th turned out to be pleasant, sunny days and with 949 tickets sold, we were able to contribute $3,000 of the proceeds towards the refurbishing of the Zilker Botanical Garden Center Koi Pond.
2006 also marked the first time we produced black commemorative T-shirts. These were hot in more than one way, as we had to re-order to fill all the un-expected shirt sales to tour attendees.
The Heart of Texas G-Guagers helped set up a railroad town at N13 in Leander, the Hoover Dam was replicated at N14 in Liberty Hill and a bit of the tropics were present at S2 in South Austin. Twenty-seven ponds presented to over 10,000 individual visits over a busy, fun weekend.

Photos courtesy of Merrill Rottmann and Diane Harder 

See what Annie, one of Austin's 'Divas of the Dirt' has to say about her two days at the 2006 Pond Tour ...at N14 in Liberty Hill and at N13 in Leander