I have a small garden with a mix of emp's, cp's, and dh's. I have the plants real close to the pond. And a large area spell actually covers all the plot and even touches the brick walled pond when I cast it. But the deadly helephant ears on the far side aren't seeing the pond as a like. It's as if the distance of being a like is from the center of the pond. If it is instead of along the edge you lose a lot of "like" coverage because of it.
Glitch your garden plots to "float" them (like a single-layer stacked garden), then place the pond beneath the plots. If you don't know how, there are lots of youtube videos showing how to float/stack garden plots.
I'd rather not glitch them. This just should be looked at by KI.
Okay, but since it's not a major problem I expect it won't be changed for a long while, if at all. In the meantime, you're probably better off floating your plots as I suggested. It's easy to do and KI has no problem with us doing it.