Situate your pond where it’ll get at least 6 hours of sun daily. Pond plants flower better in full sun. The first step in installing most any water feature is setting up an impermeable basin to hold the water. For a small space, bury a preformed liner. Get your water from a natural pond. Pond plants grow better without the chlorine found in tap water. If you can’t get pond water, rainwater is fine. Install a fountain if space permits. The sound of cascading water is soothing. Install a pump to move the water and avoid stagnation. Choose plants with a variety of textures and forms. Coarse-textured Rodgersia contrasts sharply with papyrus, for example. Corkscrew rush, horsetail, and papyrus boast architectural forms. Favor vegetation over flowers. Although it’s possible to calculate the sequence of bloom in such a way as to have one plant come into bloom right after another, it’s easier to achieve continuous visual interest by selecting pond plants with nice foliage, which lasts longer.
Deep-Water Plants: Pot them up and sink the pots to the bottom. Submerged Plants: The plants are entirely submerged. Floating Plants: They need no soil; roots obtain nutrients from the water. Marginal Plants: Their roots can be in the water but don’t have to be. Bog Plants: They thrive in much wetter conditions than do most plants.
Don’t be scared off by the “deep” in “deep-water plants.” Even in a small pond (say, seven inches deep), you can still grow a water lily. But there’s a trick to growing pond plants that need to grow in soil but will have their roots underwater. Do not pour soil into the preformed liner to try to form an actual pond bottom; it’s much easier to grow these water garden plants in pots. Your main challenge is this: if you put dirt in a container and sink that container into the water, you’re going to muddy the water. But there are steps you can take to alleviate the problem. First of all, don’t use a potting mix, because it’s too light and fluffy and won’t want to remain submerged. Instead, opt for a soil that is a mix of sand and clay. After installing your plants in their pots, mulch with gravel or small crushed stones before placing the pots in the water. Floating plants, such as water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes), are the easiest to incorporate. If, after installing all of your other plants, there’s room left on the surface of your pond, you can fill in that empty space with floating plants. Water hyacinth is an invasive plant, so do not dispose of it in the wild. Using blue flag as a pond plant allows you to inject floral color into your water garden. So does yellow flag (Iris pseudacorus), but the latter is invasive. Papyrus will do well planted in a bit of water. But it can also be grown in the ground (or in a container) the way you would grow any other specimen, as long as you give it plenty of water. Papyrus provides enough visual interest to serve as a focal point of a water feature. When your papyrus gets too big, divide it, place one of the divisions back in your pond, and use the other divisions elsewhere. For example, some homeowners like to grow papyrus in pots on a patio.
