Carter's Nursery Pond & Patio Inc
When we gave them the initial half deposit, they needed some fill dirt (I was going to provide that) and said they would give us a tentative date, estimated about three weeks away. Two weeks later, we call and ask for the tentative date. No return call. Following week, they show up, saying they were going to start the next day. The fill dirt could not be obtained overnight. Had they given us a tentative date, we could have had everything ready, but nothing was ready, so it was scheduled for the following week.The installation went rather smoothly over the two days, although I would have done a few things differently. One concern was that they did not wrap the pond liner up over the top of the berm lip, so that the liner would be higher than the surrounding dirt. They cut the liner edge short, still sloping up, so that any debris from the edge could wash down into the pond or under the liner edge. Another is that they refused to rinse the rock gravel off on the flatbed trailer before shoveling it into the bond bottom. When I suggested this, they replied, "This is the way we do it." They hosed down the rock in the bottom of the pond, removing what water they could with a sump pump, but not all the dust would be removed this way. Shape of the pond was pleasing, but the end result of dirty water is not. Sparkling clean well water was used to fill the pond, but with the filtration system running, it started turning milky white overnight. I believed it was suspended dust from the unwashed rock, which the filter could not remove because it was too fine. The head installer claimed that some rock dust is necessary because it is nutirents for the friendly bacteria until they get settled in the pond. He claimed that bacteria ate rock.I went out and bought a flocculent to clump the fine particles together so that they would sink to the bottom. One treatment helped. A second did not. Now the water was tea-colored, and the fish in the bottom at 3 feet were ghostly images. Complaining to the head installer did nothing. He brought out the head manager, Mark, who had given us the original sales pitch. Mark told me that I did not have them install rocks up along the sides of the pond, so there was not enough area for the bacteria to lodge to work properly. He then suggested the water looked like suspended sediment, like clay (which is what I had claimed), but the head installer claimed there was no clay in the rock. (Western TN has clay all over the state.) Mark was satisfied with the brown water as being "clear," satisfied with the pond as a finished product, and said that the problem was my fault because I did not take his full design (extra $2,000 for more rock). He then explicitely told me that they do not do "koi ponds", they do "water gardens" or "water features." We had signed on because we wanted a "koi pond" and he assured us we would have a clean (I remember the term "sparkling clean", but he says he does not use that term.) koi pond. So we spent basically seven thousand dollars to go from not seeing the fish to not seeing the fish clearly. My recommendation is that if you want a fishless water garden, Carter's Nursery can do it. If you are looking for a "koi pond," look somewhere else, because the head manager, Mark Carter, explicitly said after the install, "We do not do koi ponds." (Even though he sold us on installing one. read less
Robert R.
