Water Gardening: Pond Edge Planting Suggestions, 1 by keving98

keving98 wrote:
Hi.
I just finished (actually filled the pond on 7/4/11) my new pond. It is a 32' x 20', roughly 6,500 gallon sodium bentonite clay-lined pond. The shallow end starts out at 0" and ends at 42" at the deep end. The edge around the pond extends about 18" from the clay liner and tapers down to about 10" on average over the clay liner throughout the rest of the pond (English: most of the pond has 10" of screened dirt over the clay, the edges have about 18"). With the clay liner on one side of it and the pond on the other, the edge of the pond will be saturated with pond water at all times (about 18"). Effectively, I have a 18" bog ribbon around the entire pond. I was hoping someone had some suggestions for a grass-like cascading plant that I can plant in this bog/edge area that would be fast growing as the #1 problem I'm having now is a lot of edge soil runoff during heavy rains. I'm worried about going into the fall/winter/spring with mostly bare dirt. It would also be nice to have plants with an extensive root system to shore up the edge of the pond.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

p.s. The pond was the end result of a project to combat a bad Japanese Knotweed problem. I put together a collection of photos (with photos of the edging before I filled the pond) of the whole project here: http://www.claypond.org

Thanks