Need to plant ideas for large neighborhood ponds.

Good evening everyone. Somehow I have managed to get myself volunteered to help make the ponds in our neighborhood beautiful and less of unattractive pits of water. We are in zone 5b so I really need ideas on plants that are hardy. The goal is to add color to the ponds and my first thought is hardy water lily, but I am by no means an expert on them. I would also like to plant some of the edges and create a natural bilological filter. Any help and ideas would be more than welcome. The ponds are all at least an acre, none are larger than 3 acres. Thanks!

Stephanie

I am in zone 5 also. Are you concerned about certain types of plants taking over? If not, you might want to plant bog iris, lizard tail or lotus. I have the yellow bog iris and it is a nice bright lemon yellow. The lotus has a lot to recommend it. The leaves, blooms and seed pods are all very decorative. Both of these can take over a pond though. If you go to the garden watchdog section of the site there is a drop down menu for companies that sell water garden supplies. You can get an idea of what you like by browsing their sites just to see what kind of plants are available. Even though they are not hardy here, you might want to consider getting water hyacinth and water lettuce. They are pretty inexpensive and multiply rapidly and make a good biological filter with their long feathery roots. I do not know if you have fish in the ponds, but they also make a great nursery for the babies. The water hyacinth has lovely bloom stalks that remind me of the eye of a peacock feather.

I would rather stay away from something that is going to spread aggresively. In one of the ponds there is a large amount of cattail and it is going to be way too much money and effort to try to deal with that ths year. I know that I do not want to have another cattail like situation on our hands. I know that we do have fish. Someone use to stock it a few years ago and it is still quite the fishing draw.

Steph

Why not contact your county extension office or local university and get some recommendations for native plants or non-natives that won't become invasive. You might be able to plant native terrestrial orchids, native iris, etc. You don't want to have to maintain these like a garden pond, do you?