Water Gardening: Pond Images, 1 by Carolyn22

Carolyn22 wrote:
Frilly

There is a way -when we built our pond (this is our 3rd one), instead of the conventional shelving, we put in one shelf and then foamed in rocks standing on end. When the foam was hardened, that whole area was filled with pea gravel and then we planted directly into the pea gravel.

We call it a bog, although it is not a true bog in that sense. What is really great about this, is that this whole area filters the water as well. We ended up doing this on all 4 sides with a bit of rock on the sides in between bog areas. In the larger of the 4 areas, DH has a small pump running through it to help filter the water.

You can see in my picture where the water celery has taken over - which is not a bad thing. The roots of the water celery are excellent for filtration, however the downside to the water celery is that it is pushing everything else growing out. As you can see, I have water iris in this bog as well and every year the water iris diminishes. I expect the water iris in this bog to be totally gone either this year or next. We just cut all the plants back in November when we shut everything down.

This has worked very well for us over the 5 or 6 years we have had this pond (our last one for this house). This helps to hide liner, it helps to hide the proverbial rock necklace and the fish love the water celery.

It is fun to watch the fish pull at the water celery with all their might. I know others have talked about fish eating their plants - I don't care if they eat the water celery as it grows like crazy and I just love watching the determination of these fish.

If you want more info on it, let me know .