It didn’t take long for me to bond with Anthony Archer-Wills. No more than ten seconds from the time we met. That’s when he started singing the praises of his pond in Spencertown, NY.
“The top layer is 90°,” he told me. “Four feet down it’s 80°. Ten feet down it’s 70°.”
How did he know. “I have a thermometer,” he said matter-of-factly.
Anthony isn’t your average proud local pond owner. He’s one of the world’s leading pond, waterfall and stream designers -- though I believe he prefers the more poetic description of “water garden” to pond.
And one of his specialties is natural swimming pools. 100-percent chemical free pools that are filtered through aquatic plants.
I joined him last week, along with a couple of friends of mine who are considering installing a natural pool of their own. Anthony and his wife Pauline took us on a tour of three recent projects – one large, the second medium, the third small – all of them in the vicinity of West Stockbridge, MA.
He’s created water features all over the world – from Great Britain, where he was born and raised and where gardens and garden design qualifies as something of a fetish, to Switzerland, France, Argentina and Turkey. He was also the host of a three-part series on Animal Planet called “The Pool Master”. And he has pond and pool construction stories of far-flung adventures that start out with recollections such as, “When we were in the Emirates with the prince…”
However, for all his ability to conjure magic from water, plants, artfully placed boulders and a trustworthy pool liner, his own pond – which I haven’t yet had the privilege to visit – is entirely natural, spring fed, and without bio filters. It’s at the mercy, or conversely, the beneficence of nature.
“You know of the shoemaker being the worst shod,” he explained merrily.
His pond’s rugged nature doesn’t seem to affect his enjoyment of it. “We always go in the nude,” he confided. “It’s more sensual.”
I’d have to agree based on the experience of bathing in my own pond. As you travel from warm to cold spots within the distance of a few feet, swimming at eye level with delicate electric blue damsel flies alighting on fallen leaves or other pieces of debris, all of it to the chorus of frogs and the breeze rustling the trees above, you feel profoundly alive, blessed to be part of the cycles of nature.
“It’s death, transformation, rebirth, life and death,” Anthony explained as we prepared to embark on our short journey across the Massachusetts border. “It’s a complete life cycle going on in a small place.”
While the best things in life, at least some of them, are free creating nature from scratch doesn’t come cheap. While Anthony didn’t divulge the price tags on the projects we visited they can run from two to four hundred thousand dollars.
Anthony got his start designing water gardens at his family’s home in Sussex-- apparently somewhat to his grandmother’s chagrin, since creating his first aquatic fantasia required digging up her garden. “It was pretty enough,” he told the British newspaper the The Telegraph of her small patch of paradise. “But there was no mystery, no secret hidden paths, nowhere to play hide-and-seek and, above all, no water.”
Creating mystery and beauty is what motivates his work. “What makes me excited,” he told me simply, “is raising the quality of life for people by giving them water in their garden.”
The first pond we visited easily covered a couple of acres and descended to a depth of eighteen feet. But gradually. “So if the kids fall in they could walk out,” Anthony explained.
There was also a diving rock, which cost several thousand additional dollars because it requires the water beneath it to be extra deep, a scenic dam with stepping-stones that separated the pond from the lower bio-filter, a steel mesh liner to thwart critters such as burrowing muskrats, and an upper bio filter filled with flowering aquatic plants.
“You’re in luck,” said Anthony, whose enthusiasm appears boundless. “You have a lotus out.”
It was a huge yellowish-white blossom rising from a lily pad, one of several varieties decorating the edges of the pond.
Our next pond, a few miles away, was of a more modest size, perhaps no more than a quarter acre. But that doesn’t mean it didn’t cast a spell. It included a perfect lawn that descended to the water’s edge – Anthony explained the effect requires expensive coping with the pool’s liner extending behind it – as well as a scenic waterfall (then again what waterfall isn’t) that had been arranged so that the home’s owners could see and hear it from their bedroom.
Perhaps Anthony’s most remarkable achievement at all three projects we visited was the clarity of the ponds. “You can see diagonally through a hundred feet of water,” he boasted.
In my own pond, and at Anthony’s as well I suspect, the water is essentially opaque, the visibility no more than a few feet. Which may be why I typically have our pond all to myself. The majority of my family members prefer the predictability of our swimming pool.
I asked Anthony whether I had anything to fear from snakes and snapping turtles, among my tiny inland sea’s residents.
“All these creatures try to get away from you,” he explained confidently.
I assumed as much. I just wanted to make sure.
Ralph Gardner, Jr. is a journalist who divides his time between New York City and Columbia County. More of his work can be found at ralphgardner.com
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.
