Maple trees look great next to a pond garden. They're hardy, they're native, they grow full and lush in the spring and summer, and a ripe, rich red in the Autumn. Then they dump their leaves into the pond, making for an pump-clogging breeding ground of algae and bacteria. Spending an hour each day with the net, ladling maple leaves and algae clumps out like some sort of chlorophyll soup, have led me to a new solution; a thin, mold-resistant net over the second basin with gaps wide enough to allow frogs and fish to pass through, but to catch the leaves as they fall.

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