Yesterday I set up my container “pond” on my deck so I thought I’d say a few words about the joys of water gardening. For years I thought longingly of having a pond in my garden but was put off by the work it takes to dig it, line it, set up the pump, plus the expense of the plants and fish to fill it, and then the maintenance…it all seems too much. My sister, Nora, already cited as a gardening inspiration to me, has a beautiful pond that she dug and set up all by herself many years ago. So, I know it can be done, and whenever I visit her place I get the old longing back. My son urges me every year to do it. Dig that pond (he’ll help, he says!)! Maybe some day we will do it, but in the meantime I have my modest little container water feature that gives me lots of joy without all the work. The photo below, with our dog, Abe, drinking, shows my first attempt at a water feature. I got the grassy plant, (name unknown, but possibly a kind of papyrus) from Nora; it’s a great plant because it loves the water and is very hard to kill. I’ve brought it inside for about 5 winters now, without a problem. The problem with the ceramic pot in the pic is that it has a hole in the bottom for drainage that I tried to plug, but it always leaked and I gave up. It’s a lovely container, though, and now it’s full of annuals. It’s best to buy a big container that has no holes so you don’t have to worry about leakage, or if you have a container you like that is not necessarily meant to be a pot for plants, you can use just about anything (that has no holes!) to make a water ‘feature’. For mine I bought a little pump so that I could keep the water surface moving and make that zen bubbly-water noise. You don’t want to have still water lying around because mosquitoes will breed on it.
I recently went to a perennial plant sale in the Dorval where I bought two plants the vender told me would work in a pond. One is called “Golden Dwarf Sweet Flag” Grass, the other is a “Blue Flag” Iris. They have to be sitting on a shelf in the water, though, so the whole plant is not completely submerged. The papyrus plant, or whatever it is, can be happily submerged in the water, but I have it in a container that has holes in it, so water can flow freely but the earth in which it’s planted doesn’t all escape into the water and make it muddy. It’s also good to have some floating plants in your container, they look lovely. There are many options at a place like Jasmin, but they ain’t cheap; that’s why I’m glad to put in a plant that I’ve over-wintered and a couple I’ve found cheaply at a perennial sale! I may add some floating plants if I get up to Jasmin this week. So far I’ve put off the trip because traffic is so bad!
If you want to create a water garden, here’s the process in a nutshell:
1) Obtain a container, without holes, big enough to run a small pump, preferably, so you’re not leaving standing water (encourages mosquitoes). If you’d rather not bother with a pump, make sure you buy some floating plants that grow rapidly and will cover the water so the mosquitoes can’t lay their eggs.
2)Fill your container with water and let stand for 24 hours to allow the chlorine to evaporate. Find some bricks or rocks you can arrange inside the container to create shelves of varying heights to hold your potted water plants.
3)Buy a pump, a bit of clear hose (check the diameter your pump will need) and something that you can pump the water through to make a fountain. Lots of options at the nursery, or possibly you can improvise. My water conduit is a decorative frog that used to be a sprinkler (see photo).
4) Buy some plants and even some goldfish, if you like. The floating plants you can put in as soon as you get home. The ones in pots need to be placed carefully on the shelves you’ve already arranged.
5) Connect your pump, hose and fountain object and submerge the pump. Then plug it in and voila!
If this isn’t clear, feel free to ask questions! It’s late and I’ve probably forgotten something. Hope you enjoy your water garden as much as I enjoy mine.
I recently rediscovered my old Stan Rogers albums. Here he is with “Dark Eyed Molly”.
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