When considering a water garden tour that offers 41 stops in multiple North Texas counties, how do you whittle down the options to a manageable number of addresses?

Do you head to Kenneth and Carol Brothers' Plano house, with its 4,000-gallon pond and charming complement of city chickens? To an address in Bedford, home to Lisa and Kevin Heide, with its chain of five ponds?

Lisa Herrick in McKinney constructed her "garden whymsy," as she calls it, on her own. The extra water features, including an antique wringer washing machine filled with goldfish and a fountain made from a farm bucket used to bottle-feed multiple piglets, promise entertaining curiosities. Diane Strickland, on the other hand, regards her Irving pond as a safety valve, a much-needed place of respite and stress relief as a round-the-clock caregiver at home and on the job.

Whatever function you require, the 26th annual North Texas Water Garden Society Pond Tour June 10 and 11 offers inspiration and practical advice for any situation.

Kimberly and Ed Atchley have a pond in the back yard of their Richardson home. (Ron Baselice / Staff Photographer)

Water quality is key

Kimberly Atchley knows a thing or two about water purification, the most critical aspect of raising koi in a backyard pond. With her husband, Ed, she runs Aspen Water Inc. in Richardson. The company manufactures portable water purification systems for military clients and international relief organizations.

Kimberly Atchley planted caladiums in her pond. (Ron Baselice / Staff Photographer)

Koi, ornamental varieties of domesticated common carp, are notoriously finicky about their watery habitat. Chemicals added to a municipal water supply, such as chlorine and ammonia, must be removed.

"Even rainwater in North Texas is highly acidic," says Atchley, and should be treated for the koi's protection.

Koi produce ammonia in their waste, and bacteria occurs naturally from fish waste and other organic matter in the pond. Some algae are expected, but too much is dangerous for the fish.

Koi swim around in Kimberly Atchley's pond in Richardson. (Ron Baselice / Staff Photographer)

Complex chemistry

To keep her cabal of koi alive, Atchley must be vigilant. She regularly measures the pH level in the 1,000-gallon pond she created in her Richardson Heights backyard and tests for ammonia, nitrites, oxygen levels and other life-or-death factors. Heavy rain, such as that experienced June 1, can quickly contaminate the fishes' habitat.

"It's very complex water chemistry," Atchley says. "When you think about purifying drinking water, you are taking everything out. For a pond, you want to balance the pond's chemistry." And, just like in a human gut, you want to kill bad bacteria but retain the so-called good bacteria necessary for digestive functions.

Atchley's job as caretaker is a responsibility fraught with unforeseen dangers. This pond is safe for its nine koi only as long as all the equipment is working. As any consumer knows, one tiny part can fail, meaning death for Atchley's giant fish.

Kimberly and Ed Atchley's pond features two waterfalls. (Ron Baselice / Staff Photographer)

Fish are the stars

It is the fish that are the main attraction in Atchley's backyard. Elsewhere on the annual tour, visitors marvel at the size or number of ponds on a single lot, the Niagara Falls replicas, water lilies in bloom or the full impact of a garden setting.

Snow, Halle, Goldie and their six co-inhabitants are gasp-worthy. Each weighing about 30 pounds, the giant carp are almost as long as the pond is deep, 36 inches. As they placidly swim their arabesque patterns, their iridescent scales glittering, the fish overwhelm the relatively small body of water to seem even bigger.

Taken as a whole, however, the feature's surface dimensions are beautifully in proper scale with the rest of the backyard, including the stone patio, small lawn, chicken habitat and landscape beds.

"It seems balanced compared to the rest of the yard," Atchley says. "It's not the main feature of the yard, it's just another feature. My appeal, people have told me, is the whole environment."

Kimberly Atchley's backyard garden in Richardson includes a chicken coop. (Ron Baselice / Staff Photographer)

As much attention as Atchley devotes to the pond and its fish, she also labors every spring to beautify the rest of the backyard in time for the annual tour.

Kimberly Atchley with Tina Turner, a Polish chicken, in the backyard of her Richardson home. (Ron Baselice / Staff Photographer)

Although her husband enjoys being outdoors and brags about his wife's accomplishments in her backyard kingdom, he does not involve himself in its upkeep. She hired someone to dig the pond, although he proclaimed himself done at 3 feet deep, not the 4 she wanted. She hired another to help her build the poultry habitat, including run expansions and a nesting house rather than a mere nesting box. He promptly retired from the chicken-hut business. When she wanted additional poultry outbuildings, she built them herself: a nursery for chicks and a so-called broody buster, adapted from a rabbit hutch and intended to dissuade hens from setting on unfertilized eggs.

Kimberly Atchley raises several breeds of chickens. (Ron Baselice / Staff Photographer)

Each spring she plants caladium tubers she has wintered over indoors and flats of pink impatiens. Both summer annuals, she has discovered through experimentation, will thrive in pots set in shallow parts of her water garden: the bog, which doubles as a filtration asset, and the upper pond, where she keeps a few goldfish.

Kimberly Atchley placed the stones and planted the flowers in her backyard pond at her Richardson home. (Ron Baselice / Staff Photographer)

Atchley, a member of the North Texas Water Garden Society, opens her property at least one day of the two-day, one-night event and enjoys talking about water chemistry, equipment successes and failures and, of course, the whoppers.

Her favorite part of the self-guided tour is "seeing the amazement on people's faces when they see the size of the fish."

Mariana Greene is the former home and garden editor at The Dallas Morning News. Find her on Facebook.

Kimberly Atchley placed a small fairy village by her backyard pond. (Ron Baselice / Staff Photographer)

If you go

What: 26th Annual Tour of Ponds

When: 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday and Saturday 8-11 p.m.

Tickets: $20. One ticket per carload. The ticket book includes maps to each stop, descriptions of each pond, color photos and pond-related articles. Purchase the book from one of the retail sponsors listed on ntwgs.org.