Project Pond – Part 3 – Planting
Before planting the pond, there were a few adjustments that needed to be made. The water level was a little lower than I wanted. The liner under the ‘jetty’ seemed to be the low point so the jetty needed raising a little. This was a fairly easy fix, Next stage was to continue with the landscaping and start adding some plants.
I was going to order some online, but you’re never quite sure what you’re getting when buying plants online. So, seeing as it was a Bank Holiday weekend we decided it was the perfect opportunity for a visit to our favourite garden centre – Derwen Garden Centre just outside Welshpool. It was pretty miserable weather-wise to be honest, but we’d probably spend most of our time there in the restaurant and we had an umbrella for the outdoor plant shopping parts!
Shopping List
My shopping list included:
- Oxygenating plants
- Floating Plants
- Marginal Plants
- A Water Lily
- Pebbles
- Planting baskets
- Planting medium
- Hessian
I was fairly confident they’d have everything we needed, despite never having looked at the aquatic plants here before. Sure enough, once we were there we found pretty much everything we needed and then decided it was time to head to the restaurant for lunch and decide what we’d actually buy.
Lunch was delicious as ever and the staff friendly. We do like this garden centre – I think it must be a sign of middle age that we even have a ‘favourite garden centre’! It’s definitely worth a visit though, it has everything you need and we are always inspired when we come here. We could easily buy loads! The restaurant is nice with really good food and a huge selection too. The little show gardens and the maze are always fun as well. Although we didn’t spend much time in these today as it was still raining.
Plants
With lunch eaten it was back out into a slightly less wet garden centre to start filling our trolley. Aquatic compost and 3 bags of pebbles soon made it heavy to move. Next was a Water Lilly. They had a nice selection at the garden centre but as the pond is only small I was after a smaller variety. This limited our choice to about 3 different ones and in the end I went with one called Perry’s Baby Red. It doesn’t look like much yet but hopefully, it’ll grow and soon be flowering nicely.
As for the oxygenators I was hoping for some Hornwort as a floating plant and some Ivy-leaved Crowfoot (Ranunculus hederaceus) My plan was to go for British native plants where possible as this was supposed to be a wildlife pond. Although, I do want it to look nice as well as being attractive to wildlife, so there was always room for some artistic license if needed. The only thing on my list that they didn’t have was the hornwort, but I should be able to find some of that from someone else’s pond without too much trouble.
I wasn’t really sure which marginals I wanted. I had Water Mint (Mentha aquatic) on my mind. It’s a good choice for small ponds, is easy to grow, attracts lot of wildlife, the flowers are a magnet to honey bees, and we can use it in cooking. I already had Marsh Marigolds (Caltha palustris) and some bits of Crepping Jenny (Lysimachia nummularia) so didn’t need those. Other than that I was open to whatever they had available.
The garden centre had some ready-potted pond plant collections. The larger of these were in kidney-shaped baskets and looked ideal. There were a few to choose from, so we discarded the ones with marsh marigolds and looked at the ones that contained water mint. We found one that along with the water mint had some Water Forget-me-Knots (Myosotis scorpioides), what I think is a type of Acorus sp. and some Square-stalked Willowherb (Epilobium tetragonum). Some of these could be quite vigorous and invasive but all are native to the UK and if I keep them in their basket they should be quite controllable.
I also bought a Water Plantain (Alisma plantago-aquatica) which again is native to the UK and should look nice along the back of the pond where it can soften the pond edges.
More Landscaping and Planting
Leaving the garden centre behind we took an alternative route home, the highlight of which was coming across some pigs grazing along the roadside!!
Back at home the sun had made an appearance so I set to washing the new pebbles and gravel, re-potting some of the plants and placing them all into the pond.
The Marsh Marigold that I had was already growing by the old water feature so I had dug it up and put it in a pot while the pond was constructed. I planned to divide it and hopefully end up with two clumps on the sunny side of the pond. The Creeping Jenny was also around the water feature previously. Much of it had been removed during the excavation but I had some elsewhere and would introduce a few bits on the shadier side of the pond.
Elswhere around the pond there was already quite a few Yellow-Flag Irises. These will be a little too large and boisterous for the pond really so I’ve removed most of them. I did leave a few smaller ones but will keep them under control. We have stands of Yellow Flags elsewhere in the garden as well so we won’t be losing them completely.
There were also lots of Crocosmia and willowherb, along with some weeds! Most have been a little trampled during the construction of the pond but have been left to recover. Hopefully, they’ll soon blend in with the pond itself and as they grow will hide any bits of the membrane that are still showing.
A few more pebbles here and there finished it off nicely and the pebbly beach at the far end looks nice too.
I’ll add some Hornwort when I can get some and maybe some other plants as time progresses. Maybe some frogbit will turn up on its own. I’ll also sink the lily a little deeper as it grows. Other than that it’s now time to let everything settle in and hopefully see some wildlife start to use it. No doubt there will be some tweaking needed here and there and probably algal blooms and lots of clearing needed but mostly I’ll let it do its own thing and see what happens.
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Wow looks amazing, Trudi has taken screenshot of list of plants !
Morgan looked as if he was having fun too lol x