There is a movement afoot (mostly in Europe) to design "Natural"
swimming pools with veggie filters (they call it regeneration zones).
They build the pool about 1.5 times the swimming area, build a wall that
is just short of the top of the water in front of the 1/2 and use that
for planting lots of veggies. This allows NO chlorine or other killing
chemicals to be needed for pure clean safe swimming water.

I bought the book (Natural Swimming Pools by Michael Littlewood) that
preached this eco-friendly concept and I am buying into it. It has a
lot to do with this list and your approaches to low-maintenance ponds
with veggie filters. In fact, reading the book is almost like reading
this list. I want both fish and swimming and this seems to fit that to a T.

Now the questions since I had a pool guy out and he raised a few.

1) If I have a 450sq ft surface, how big do I need the veggie filter? I
will have pre-filters for the big stuff.

2) What veggies will survive a PHX summer of 110F days on end? The
water in the veggie filter will get warm if not hot, since it is only
about 3' deep. But I will be drawing water from the 8 1/2' depth with a
bottom drain.

Chip