Water Gardening: The Pond is Coming Into Its Own, 1 by Happenstance

Happenstance wrote:
Thanks for all the nice compliments on my pond.....it is a real joy, but wasn't always. The first couple of years were a constant battle with algae and goooo. It's been in 5 years come summer and is beginning to look like I imagined it.

The little mounds at the back edge of the pond Jean? That's common Mimulus guttatus http://plantsdatabase.com/go/37920/index.html

It can be very invasive, but is easy to rip out and does the best job of anything I've tried in protecting the butyl liner where it is exposed at the rim of the pond. It forms an extremely dense mat of roots that resembles the cocoa fiber liners for hanging baskets. Very thick and tough, but can be easily cut with big clippers when you need to trim it back.

It is evergreen here in 9b, forms a dense low growing mat of foliage in the winter. Come Spring it shoots up like that when it gets ready to flower. I prune it all back several times a year and compost many wheelbarrows full during a season.

Shoulda, woulda, coulda......my number one tip for anyone tempted to build a pond: make it BIG, that empty hole looks huge, but once you get plants in and the surrounding plants fill in it becomes visually smaller. :-)

And my #2 tip for ponds (this is the voice of someone who didn't do it right the first or second try) is to buy a BIG filtration system, the best you can afford. My pond almost became a rose garden after the first year and the language I used was very unpleasant a good portion of that whole year! LOL

But I digress.....here's the Monkey Flower in bloom on another portion of the rim: