Water Gardening Magazines

There used to be the "Essential Water Gardening" magazine on sale in the shops but I have recently discovered they have stopped publishing a couple of years ago.

Does anyone know of any other magazines you can buy that deal only or mainly with water gardens? I cannot find a single one!

Regards,
Maz


Water gardening magazines

In the UK there was a huge battle for readership between 5 different magazines that dealt either exclusively or had large sections devoted to water gardening. The oldest on the scene was 'Aquarist and Pondkeeper' which dealt with all manner of fishy things including herpatology and tropical. This actually spawned 'the Water Gardener Magazine', which was the inspiration of John Dawes the editor at the time of 'A&P'. (I am indebted to John for giving me my first commission for a magazine).
The success of 'The Water Gardener Magazine' meant that several other publishers produced journals attempting to cash in on what was seen a fairly lucrative advertising market. So very soon the was 'Essential Water Gardening' , 'Water Gardening' and 'Koi Ponds and Gardens'. The relatively small readership of just about 80,000 had to be shared out amongst these journal and it just wasn't sustainable. Very soon 'Water Gardening' closed up. 'Aquarist and Pondkeeper' played safe by concentrating more on the tropical side of things and changes its name to 'Today's Fishkeeper'. 'Essential Water Gardening' bought out 'The Water Gardener Magazine' and briefly changed its name to Popular Water Gardening' or something for some unknown reason. Eventually it quite literally turned itself into a vegetable growing and kitchen garden magazine almost over night. The same staff, editor and everything suddenly became experts in vegetable growing as though they had been like that all their short careers.
The only one that is still going is 'Koi, Ponds and Gardens', which did attempt a makeover by dropping any mention of gardens, even dropping it from the name, i.e. just calling themselves 'Koi'as in the fish and dealing exclusively with the seriously serious koi fraternity. This temporarily confused the readers of 'Koi Carp' magazine, similarly serious, but now both magazines exist in a certain harmony. But for you these magazines are probably a little too orientated towards the very expensive and all consuming hobby of koi keeping.
There are some good magazines in the States, but they have a different way of approaching 'back yard ponds', as they the call garden ponds or water gardens. Some of the products they use are just not available here and the some that we use are not available there. However it is interesting to communicate with them and there used to be a very erudite magazine produced by the international Water Gardening Society (that used to be the International Water Lily Society). Unfortunately, due to costs this magazine is only produced online now. There is also Water Gardeners International which is a sort of splinter group of the former from which there is plenty of news, but again all on line.
But what's the problem? You've got this magazine! If there's something you want included right away, just say and we'll do our best to cover it asap.

Post new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.