Pond masters to get national exposure as 'Pond Stars'

Aquascape owner Greg Wittstock plans to make a big splash with his new reality show, "Pond Stars."

"The No. 1 thing that I'm trying to accomplish is to show people what they can accomplish in their yards," said Wittstock in his St. Charles office. "We're artists with stone and water. A pond becomes a focal point. People will sit for hours and feed fish. They won't sit for hours and watch tulips grow."

The show debuts at 9 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 9, on Nat Geo WILD, natgeowild.com, a product of National Geographic.

From Kaneland High School in Maple Park to Florida and California, Wittstock and three of his employees join local crews to build 12 water features in the first season's six episodes.

Of course, every reality series needs challenges and drama.

For example, a moratorium on sales of brown trout complicated the creation of a brown trout stream in the mountains of California. "We couldn't find brown trout anywhere," said Wittstock. "I think we found a creative solution, but you'll have to tune in to learn what it is."

And when they tackled the Maple Park project with the help of high school students it was already the third week of October, and Wittstock knew that meant a deadline of one month of pond-building weather.

You have to understand that Wittstock sees ponds differently than most people. He built his first pond in 1982 in Wheaton when he was 11 and started his business after his junior year at Ohio State. Now his company builds ponds throughout the Chicago area and supplies and educates owners of garden centers and landscape companies across the continent.

When he looks out the window of his office in the company's quarter-million-square-foot building he sees "Colorado." Really in this industrial park is a huge pond built with 6 million pounds of limestone brought from the Ozarks, 50,000 pounds at a time.

Part of the pond is recreational where Wittstock can swim and scuba dive, and everyone can enjoy the "Monet" area where water lilies bloom.

So yes, he will admit to an obsession.

But he thinks the rest of the world is ready to join his passion.

"I believe we're on the precipice of a rebellion against electronics," said the pond guy. "Now more than ever people need that escape from constantly being connected. We need to be able to de-stress and leave the phone inside and get outside in nature and feed the fish."