Water Gardening: Rambling tale of plants and ponds and dreams., 1 by tropicbreeze

tropicbreeze wrote:
This is the story about a dream, an elusive plant, a plant's long journey, a continuing story.

It all started many years ago with an obsession of mine to get a Giant Swamp Taro, Cyrtosperma chamissonis. For years I drew a blank, hardly anyone had even heard of it. Then one day in a nursery I saw a small plant that resembled it. I asked and the answer actually was probably whatever it took to sell me the plant.

Anyway, soon my hot little hand was on that plant and the adventure began. Like so many of my projects I jump in and then try to decide what I have to do and how to do it. In this case I had a water plant but not the suitable place to put it.

As it turns out, I have a dam in my garden (garden edge). Water was running off the lawn and eroding the side. The dam doesn't hold water all year. Late dry season it's dry. Had been toying with the idea of putting in a pond to regulate the water flow into the dam, and at the same time to have a permanent pool with waterplants and fish.

So February of 2005 I began digging the start of a pond. The photo is the first bit of hole with a Colocasia esculenta in the foreground, behind it my new Typhonodorum disguised as what I thought was my Giant Swamp Taro.
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