Pond Design �
Plant or Rock Edges
Watergardens are flowerbeds
Ralph Cabage
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An odd grouping of pots placed in a pond with various plants is not the way to have a professional looking pond.
What is more pleasing �rocks or plants?
Show a dozen people the same pond when it was brand new, when all you can see is the shoreline rock work, and the same pond a year or two later when the plants have covered the rocks, and 90 percent would prefer the pond with the plants. If you are installing a water garden or having one installed, then you need to be installing plants or finding an installer that understands plants.
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A water garden is a wetland perennial flowerbed.
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It is time to leave the old style rock pit behind and to move into a new, prettier future of water garden pond building.
Plants are what make a water garden pretty, not rocks. If your pond installation (especially the edge) is dominated by rocks, you are not building the prettiest ponds. You are building a flowerbed without flowers.
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Adding more plants and providing them with proper places to grow will mean changing the way you install the water garden pond. Think ahead as to how the plants are going to grow. Before you dig the water garden�s hole, know what water garden plants are going to be used and have a planting plan to work from. Know where the tall plants are going to be installed, so the pond�s hole is prepared for them. It is important to know where the ground cover and flowering annuals are going to be planted.
Think about what dry land plants will be planted along the water garden edge to blend in the whole garden. Wetland and dry land plants that hide the pond�s edge will blend the water garden into the surrounding dry landscape�s view andmake it look like it belongs there.
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Compare this stream shoreline to the other stream. Which one looks better? The large stones are used here as stepping stones and as places to sit and enjoy the stream and mini-waterfall.
Designing and installing wetland flower beds is good for pond installers. You don�t have to carry around so many back breaking rocks. You can use larger plants |
that fill in quickly, instead of small plants that take more time to fill out. You can use more the dry land perennials that go around the pond edge to make the water garden prettier.
The way the pond is constructed will only change slightly. Instead of the same predictable, upside down pyramid shaped hole in the ground that has the same size steps going down all the way around the pond, a natural more natural look to the hole design should be used. Make some shelves narrow and others wide, make some shelves deeper and some shallow. It will depend on which plants will be growing on that shelf. Dig a smalll hole or trench in the bottom of a shelf to create a deeper plant pocket in some shelves so that taller plants will have a deeper more wind resistant root system.
Garden plants are then installed, not all left to languish in the pot. Some pretty garden containers do grow plants for a season or two, and water gardens can have some potted plants, but for a water garden to look its best, plants should be installed in the rocks, on the edge and in the gravel. |
What do you see? The rocky shoreline or the dry land plants behind the stream? Which is nicer? Why not use some wetland plants? It should not look like two landscapers were involved one for the stream and one for the land.
In all climates, there are plenty of shoreline plants that grow well in a variety of conditions. |
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If you take a plant out of the pot and plant it into the gravel, the whole area is available to the plant to grow in to. Some un-potted plants may grow too fast and become weedy. They will try to claim the whole pond as their own huge pot. The same plant that will behave wildly in one pond may not do so in another pond or a different climate. There are plants that cannot be sold in some states because of their weedy tendencies that make wonderful landscape plants in other locations.
Know which water garden plants grow best in your area. Your local dealer can help. The more experience you, your installer, and or dealer have with water garden plants the better your water garden pond design will be and the more satisfied you will be.
For professional level work just having a pond is not an option. You must have a quality dealer to learn from or an installer who builds balanced biological WATERGARDENS not �ponds� The more you learn the more you will enjoy.
Notice in the bottom right corner of the the liner above is visible beyond the gravel. All the stream installer had to do to hide it would have been to pick up a handful of the small boulders along the banks of the stream and install shoreline plants. |
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Not only does an out-of-pot plant look prettier, but it will help prevent algae problems. Gravel areas give un-potted plants the ability to compete with algae for nutrients. The wider the variety of un-potted shoreline plants there are taking up the nutrients, the fewer algae cells there will be. Plants left in pots do less to compete with the algae unless they are planted in the |
mesh style pots. The un-potted plants will make the pond edge look much more natural and therefore the pond will look prettier.
Use 1 to 3˝ diameter gravel so that the roots and water will be able to move freely. There is no need to add topsoil to the gravel areas. The bacteria, dying plant roots, dead leaves and other organic matter will eventually fill many of the nooks and crannies between the rocks.
Aquatic ground cover plants will spread over the shoreline rocks to soften the pond and stream edge. They will often grow towards the dry land flower bed surrounding the water garden pond, helping to blend the wet and dry flower beds together.
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| Eventually, like any perennial, you may want to divide a plant that has been growing in one of these gravel beds. Just drain the water level down below the root area so stirred up organic matter will not cloud the water. Then move aside extra stones and pull the plant while giving it a bit of a shake to loosen more gravel and the plant will pull right out. Divide and replant it as |
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you would any perennial. Be careful of the liner. This is the downside to this planting method but it is not a problem if some routine work is done containing plants throughout the growing season.
Tall potted plants have a hard time standing up. There was plenty of room and rocks to plant in. A lot of expensive work was wasted on placing the large flat stones around this pond. Plants would have made this pond �blend� in better and look more natural. Removing some of the visible rocks and replacing them with plants will help to make the pond edge blend into the surrounding landscape.
A few rocks and boulders make great accents in any landscape. Some areas of the country have mostly rocky ground and outcroppings and so in these areas, more rocks in the view make the pond fit into its surroundings. Even in these locations, plants will still make the pond look more better and more natural.
If you are tired of ponds surrounded by a ring of rocks, it may be time for you to hone your or your installer's skills and take your pond to the next level - Watergardening. You will be glad you did. |
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