How to Buy Water Garden Plants

By eHow Home & Garden Editor

Rate: (0 Ratings)

If you've been planning to buy water garden plants, you'll need to consider both the practical and ornamental qualities of potential purchases. A perfect combination of plants will balance a water garden's ecosystem by providing oxygen for the water and helping keep it algae-free. If you don't overload a water garden with fish and install a good filtration system, you'll have a functional, yet beautiful addition to a work or home landscape.

Flag Article

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Step1

Sketch up a plan for your water garden. The number of plants you'll want will be limited to the size of your garden. Normally, plants shouldn't cover more than 2/3 of the water's surface. Take into consideration small plants will grow and take up more room than when they were small. Too many plants in your water garden can create disease.

Step2

Decide what plants to add to your garden. You'll need some from a variety of groupings, including water lilies. These annuals will be the bright attractions in your garden because lilies come in so many colors, including pink, red, white, yellow, peach, orange and changeable, which begins as a yellow and changes to copper.

Step3

Include water lotus, plants whose flowers are considered sacred by the Buddhists. They're sold as tubers, from 3 to 18 inches long. Lotus flowers can grow up to a foot in diameter, adding a striking element to your water garden.

Step4

Add floating oxygenator pond plants to the mix. These provide the garden with surface cover, shading the water for the fish during hot, sunny days. You'll also want submerged oxygenator plants as they help reduce the amount of algae in your garden which will help keep things clean.

Step5

Remember to add a few tropical water lilies. These are the rock stars of water gardens. They're fragrant and offer a romantic addition to any garden. Perfect as cut flowers, tropical water lilies are annuals, but are considered frost tender.

Step6

Place bog plants in your water garden to give the margins some shape and add more color. Something to keep in mind when purchasing bog plants is the ones grown in pots are less likely to suffer transplant shock.

Tips & Warnings

Find out your "ET." The evapotranspiration (ET) is the rate at which plants use water. This is an important consideration when choosing plants for your water garden. ET is affected by temperature, humidity, wind and light. When watering, replace only the amount of water lost due to ET because adding more can harm your plants.