You have about 470 gallons of water in your pond, if I figured it right, for healthy fish you can have only a certain amount of fish because of ammonia and waste production. (I have just gone thru this quandry this spring and rehomed all of my koi because they grew out of their space in 2 years. They were butterfly koi and the most beautiful fish babies but they could not remain healthy in the pond I had.) See this article- http://splendorkoipond.blogspot.com/2012/03/how-many-fish-can-i-have-in-my-pond.html The koi will grow quickly and are big waste producers. You will need to buy a kit and test the water for their health. I installed a trickle filter to help with cleaning up their water but it was only adequate for 1 year and could not keep up with their size/waste production. I now have comets, shubunkins and 2 yellow gold fish. They are satisfying my need for color and are very friendly like the koi. I wish you luck with your fish and know how attached you can get to them and the sadness of having to rehome them. Many other fish lovers on this site will help you with information on caring for your new babies.

HI Erin! Welcome to the wonderful fun of gardening and also, bless you in your new home! Where are you located? Are you thinking of only planting hostas or are you thinking of having a few other plants in there with them? Some contrast and especially color when the hostas are not blooming makes everything look really nice. Hostas are quite happy to have friends among them. My lot is .1 acre and that includes the house. So I do not not get hundreds of hostas or anything else (except slugs). It is pretty shady from my neighbors' trees though the bed in front of the house is in full sun. That is where daylilies and irises go. But I do have at least 25 cultivars of hostas and am planning some more. The advantage to a small garden is you have to plan what you put in it -- or else be prepared to pull out things to give away so you can make room for new acquisitions. And divisions from your older plants! The fun is, you don't get everything at once that you will ever have. Wait a while and put things in a few at a time (annuals will do to fill in places) and then you can have the pleasure of learning about new species and cultivars and acquiring them as the years go by. You will get different plants, hostas or otherwise, from various sources and they will always remind you of the person who gave it to you, swapped with you, or the trip you took when you bought one or another plant(s). I like to have some color spotted here & there so I use impatiens (I can hear the perennial people groaning) and I also have some Heron's Pirouette perennial begonias---these get about 2.5-3" tall when they bloom and have long lasting scapes ( flower stalks), arching gracefully --- here, from Aug till frost. In May, there is old fashioned bleeding heart -- both white and pink/white. These die back in the heat of summer so the hostas, which are getting big, fill in the bare spots the bleeding hearts left. I have a few liriope here & there because they are OK with dry shade & tree roots, and they are not boring if you only use a couple. You can get them with several shades of variegated foliage, and white or medium or dark blue flowers. And they bloom in very late summer/fall when not much else does, in the shady garden. I live in NJ overlooking the Delaware R just north of Trenton. I use astilbe, too--from white to pink to deep red frothy flowers in late spring and early summer. They are also beautiful with the hostas. Right now there are crocuses that have just opened yesterday (when it was sunny) and there will be squills and grape hyacinths, and daffodils are in the sunnier spots. I don't bother with tulips---though I love them, they are an expensive way to feed deer. I have lily of valley under the Norway spruce tree (which has had its lower branches removed to give sun to the bed under it) this is a rather dry shade bed---however the trunk of the spruce is ringed with Gold Standard hostas that are quite happy. The bed gets compost thrown over it every spring and it has sweet woodruff in there along with the hostas, and little spring bulbs such as crocuses & squills, and bigger ones ie English bluebells. Lily of the valley would like to take over the world, but there is easy way to stop it---dig some out. After it blooms, so you can have the wonderful flowers! I try to always have something blooming somewhere in the yard. It does not have to be a lot, just a bit--some white or pink flowered thing next to a dark leaved hosta brightens the corner. I have scilla Hispanica which is "wood hyacinths" -- you can get them in pink, white or blue, and they are very shade tolerant. They will bloom in May (here) and do very well next to hostas too. When the hosta leaves get bigger, the scilla is dying back for the summer. In our yard we have red shale which breaks down to clay in some parts, and what the locals call "the brown sand" in the other areas. In one little lot! Some kind of interesting geology was going on here a long time ago! We now have dark black soil over both, after years of digging in manure, leaves, & compost. You can ameliorate clay quite a lot with gypsum. We dig our yard's leaves right into our beds, around the plants, in fall. When we make a new bed, which we did a lot of after we got the new septic system, we take three years to do this digging, instead of planting things right away. The soil in those beds is wonderful. We also have a compost bin in the back corner---this is not rocket science and do not let compost hobbyists scare you! All you have to do is make a circle a yard or more across with sturdy wire, and throw in the leaves, weeds, and the non-meat kitchen scraps. Also grass clippings if you do not put weed killer and poisons on the lawn. Kitchen stuff meaning plant material such as peels, rinds, stems, leftover salad or other veggies that waited too long in the fridge to be eaten, and cut up toilet paper rollers. Turn it twice a year and when you turn it, take the well-composted stuff out & use it in your garden. When the ground is warm in summer, we just take the kitchen compost bowl out & dig the stuff right into the garden next to the plants. It breaks down very quickly in summer and the nutrition goes right into the plants. You said you have children---by all means, set aside a place for their own garden! Especially if you can make it in a sunny area. Let them plant veggies (then they will eat them) and make it easy ones such as lettuce and beans. You can grow beans as a little tent to save space. Or you can make a taller "tepee" with poles and leave an opening for the kids to crawl in under the beans. You can take a potato from the farmer's market (the organic stand; it won't have been sprayed with anti-sprouting stuff) and cut it up so the pieces have eyes. Just stick them in the ground a few feet apart. Then the kids can have their own potato plants. Well, you have heard enough from me! Once again, welcome to years & years of great fun!

OK, the pictures are good. I would definitely pull the cutting to look at the stem below soil level. If there is rot, cut back to white wood, let it sit in the dark for a week or so, wet the stem end and add Rootone or other rooting/cloning compound with fungicide, repot and water once. Another test you could also do is to use a pin and puncture the branches to see if latex flows from the hole. If so, the branch is still alive. If not, it may be dead. The white, pithy stuff at the tips is the core of the branch. The presence of bugs in the core is not a good sign. I would recut the tips to white wood, but at a 45* angle. Then apply a layer of latex caulk to seal the cut end. This will keep water and bugs out of the tips. Since you have no growth tips on the plant, it is essentially a "center" cutting, and will take longer to root and produce leaves. Be patient. You won't get claws on this plant since it has no tips. New growth will appear at the sides of the cut tips. Look for small "bumps" anywhere from the tip down about an inch or two at an old leaf scar. This will tell you the plant is recovering and should survive. I would clear the pea gravel away from the stem so it doesn't touch the stem. The gravel can get hot in the sun and burn the stem, killing the plant. If the soil gets very dry, you can dig a moat around the edge of the pot and add a little water around the edge, staying away from the stem itself. What you are trying to do is add moisture without getting the stem wet. Good Luck. Let us know what happens.

Were you planning to present your letter by snail mail or in person? Any fabricator worth his weight would be able to accomplish what you ask, but there are too many variables to handle by mail. Your last sentence says it all. That sentence can be handled by a phone call to prospective fabricators of your choosing. Then you can go from there with the takers...I would expect all of them to say "Yes". JMO