My name is Tina Plant and I have a confession: I wasn't a rock or pond nerd until I joined Hedberg Landscape & Masonry Supplies four years ago. Until then, I enjoyed time at the lake, time in the woods and time in my backyard as distinct experiences. I didn't realize you could put it all together and enjoy it whenever you wanted. Then I went on my first Parade of Ponds Tour and saw up close the amazingly beautiful projects our contractors are installing in Minnesota backyards.

Hedberg is an awesome organization to work for and I'm honored to be the company's Chief Marketing Officer, Chairperson of the Twin Cities Pond and Landscape Tour and Membership Chair for BlueThumb.org. Hedberg's mission is "To help our customers be more successful." We do this by having vast inventories of pond kits, accessories, pumps, liner, fish, plants and rock - tons and tons of rock. All sizes, shapes and colors. You want purple? We've go purple. You want enormous outcroppings? We have 'em. Stones as big as cars? We can deliver them. We provide a tremendous amount of training for contractors, particularly for selling, building and maintaining water features. My favorite days each March are our Indoor Build A Pond days, where dozens of contractors - and me along with them! - learn how to build ponds right.

The only pond in my yard at this point is a huge DNR protected wetland. Native grasses and cattails provide a healthy buffer between our yard and the pond, and the range of wildlife we get for being in a suburb is delightful. It's a riot to sit on the flagstone patio and watch a fox saunter across the yard, or sip coffee and count 20 or more egrets standing in the shallows. Muskrats aren't my favorites, but it's still fun to see them glide through the water, and in the spring you should hear the frog chorus! Between them and the Canada geese, I have to close the windows to fall asleep!

It's just a matter of time before I bring home a pondless waterfall kit. I know where the bog is going, I know just how I want the falls set up. I can feel the water glancing off my shoulders as I sit on the smooth river rocks beneath the falls on a 90 degree day.

Through a mix of professionally installation and DIY sweat, we've converted our backyard from dull to fun, a great place to entertain, with a lovely Belgard paver patio, stone steps, a flagstone "overlook" patio and a heritage garden I love because it's a functional raingarden and it contains a lot of flowers from my mother's garden. We'll be adding more - the pondless waterfall -- in the coming years. It's fun to design and create!

How did you hear about Aquascape?
Hedberg Landscape & Masonry Supplies is an Authorized Aquascape Pro Distributor. http://www.hedbergrocks.com. We also have three retail pond shops, Aquatic Addiction by Hedberg.