If you ask any gardener what would he take out of his list of duties in the garden, he will probably tell you watering the plants. Watering plants is boring, nagging and takes a lot of time which people mainly don’t have. So, what would the ideal way of gardening be? Would it include a way for replacing the watering process, a simple way of getting rid of weed and minimum care? It definitely does include all these things. The latest trend in gardening is creating ponds in pots: you have water, beautiful water plants and no need to think about preventing weed from destroying your plants.
Plus, aren’t ponds magical? All those big trees around a small water surface with grass surrounding it and very little light breaching in? Mosquitoes, insects and the deafening peaceful silence? Yes, but don’t get too carried away, you won’t make a real pond in your garden, but a small version of it.
So, how to create a pond in a pot? First you need to get a suitable pot. The pot can be made of different materials like ceramic, plastic, sealed cement, porcelain or metal. Great pond pots can also be made of Old crocks and wash tubs or old plastic pots . Once you choose the pot you’d use for creating the pond , you can be creative and design it as you wish, just make sure you pick a pot that’s large enough because you know, you’re trying to do a beautiful magical thing here! Another important thing when choosing the pot is to avoid wood. As beautiful as wood may appear in this picture, it’s not suitable nor recommended; wood retains moisture and can easily become home for bacteria that are harmful to both plants and fish.
The next step is choosing what to put in the pond pot. Generally, the art of creating pond pots is based on using floating leaf aquatics, oxygenating grasses, bog and some water plant species:
● Floaters such as lettuce or water hyacinth are good looking and help reduce algae in the same time. Hyacinths tend to reproduce very rapidly, so you may need to clean your pond from time to time. Otherwise, they’re amazing.
● To maintain the proper PH value of the water, you should put oxygenating grass in your pond. This grass tends to stay at the bottom of the pond but sometimes it happens to float on the surface of the water, so this also gives an artistic nuance to your pond.
● Bog plants grow naturally in shallow water in a pond’s perimeter. You could place them on top of rocks or small inverted pots to get that effect.
● You can also add some marginal plants to the picture; they grow only up to 30 centimeters underwater and usually sit at the bottom of the pond. A great example of marginal plants are horsetail and yellow iris.
And now the best thing about pond pots: they require minimum maintenance! Once you set everything up, all you need is to make sure there’s always enough water in it, and that the water is clean. When winter hits, just place the pond indoors to prevent freezing of water and the plants. Once in a while you may need to add fertilizer to refresh the soil. Also, you may look for a solution to mosquitoes, since you know, that’s their natural habitat. One option are the mosquito dunks; they float on the water and keep mosquitoes away.
All in all, water ponds are an amazing, easy and affordable way of having a water garden in your house. If you’re into new and exotic gardening styles, don’t hesitate to try this; you’ll love it!
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