Our first official meeting of the Central Iowa Water Garden Association (hereafter referred to as WGA) was a resounding success.We had over 70 ponderers in attendance and almost all signed up to be members.All of these members will be referred to as charter members of the WGA.We will extend that designation to anyone else who becomes a member during this first year of our organization.

Owen Tweet from Water Creations (a Des Moines wholesaler that supplies water garden centers across the nation) gave a very informative talk on the latest gadgets and gizmos for water gardeners.I was particularly interested in the solar powered stuff.These products have a lot of potential for us.I am looking forward to future developments in energy saving gizmos.

The rest of the meeting was spent going over some of the projects that we are going to be involved with.A list of possible programs was passed around so that additional ideas could have been added.Lots of great ideas and there will not be a lack of topics for programs - however, there may be a lack of presenters that are willing to get up in front of us crazy ponderers.You may want to do a program on some aspect of water gardening or water features.Please contact me or any member of the committee for your ideas or simply bring your program ideas to the next meeting.

One aspect of this organization that is important is that this is your organization and your ideas are strongly encouraged.These ideas will make us unique among the growing number of water garden groups.I am also very hopeful that many of you will step forward to help out running the organization.I was very happy about the volunteers that came forward at the meeting.In particular, Lisa Harmison has agreed to be the Editor of our newsletter that you are reading right now.Thank You Lisa!!This is a big job but one that can be an easy one if we all pitch in and help.Make sure that you do something for the organization.We had some people step forward and volunteered that night but we can use more - so let us know.

We would like for our membership to come up with one article/month to be published in our newsletter.It doesn't have to be the best or longest - actually a short version of some kind of pond experience is good.If you have a technique that works for you - please share it with everybody.I will be glad to help you write it, if you prefer.

An idea that I had was to combine our newsletter with the other two water garden organizations in the state.Of course, we will be sharing articles and news of what our organization is doing.This should reduce the effort that our Editor will have in coming up with some substance for the newsletter.We are not anticipating any problems especially in these days of electronic mail.

A benefit that we will be setting up for our members is a 10 percent discount at area retailers that cater to water gardeners.You will need to present your membership card at the business in order to qualify, so hang on to those cards.We will list these businesses in our newsletter when we get this program set up, so stay tuned.One retailer likes the idea so much that he is thinking of offering a monthly discount on certain items that would be in addition to the 10 percent.Remember, we haven't finalized this yet so please don't pester the retailers yet.

The Central Iowa Pond Tour this year will be structured in a different way.We are joining with the Story County Master Gardeners (who has sponsored the tour for the 5 years that the tour has been in existence) to sponsor the tour.We are also coordinating our tour with the other two water garden associations in the state so that our separate tours do not overlap and compete with each other.As a matter of fact, we are pretty certain that we can actually enhance each tour by calling it the All-Iowa Pond Tour.We are going to have gardens from Central, Northern and Eastern Iowa on the tour.We have set up the tour dates in July as follows:Eastern's will be the 2nd Sunday (July 8); Central’s will be the 2nd full weekend (July 14th and 15th); and Northern's will be the 4th Sunday (July 22).This is different than what I announced at the meeting, so mark your calendars.We are going to advertise and bill this as an All- Iowa event and it will be the first and only state to have a statewide water garden tour.This may allow us to include a lot of smaller towns that otherwise would be too far off the "beaten path".Everything will still need the approval of the other two water garden associations during their meetings coming in the next month -- so things may change a little.We are hoping to draw people from the entire Midwest to attend our tour.This means advertising in the national media as well as local media.

Each organization will be responsible for its own tour area.Ours will be a two-day tour and the others will be one-day tours.We will be including Des Moines in the tour for the first time (and it's about time - right?).Ames area gardens will be open on Saturday and Des Moines area gardens will be open on Sunday.

Again, both the Story County Master Gardeners and the WGA will be hosting our tour.It's going to take a lot of volunteers to run this thing and both organizations should participate equally since we will be sharing in the profits equally.

Lisa Harmison had taken the bull (rush) by the horns and has started a web page for us (www.geocities.com/ciwga/).This should be a great place to learn about our organization.If you have something that you want posted or have any ideas please contact Lisa.

One last item -- the committee has decided for the Des Moines area ponderers to have a separate meeting in Des Moines to see if we can get more ponderers from that area to become interested in our organization.We will have a program to make it interesting.Also, anybody from our Association that wants to come is welcome.Tentatively the meeting is scheduled for sometime in April.This will be in addition to our normal April meeting, which will be in Ames.We are going to need names of Des Moines and surrounding area ponderers to let them know of the meeting.If you know of anybody, please call or e-mail Doug Riech (515-244-2862 or drgardener@aol.com).Doug, who is one of our committee members, lives in Des Moines and will be the organizer for the meeting.More on this in our March newsletter.

That's all for this month,

Your KING KOI (acting like a President), Jamie