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A water garden seamlessly blends aquatic plants and animals with a habitable water environment.
Learn how to build a water gardena serene focal point for your yard that’s also teeming with life.
What Is a Water Garden?
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Rain Garden
A water garden is an artificial pond stocked with fish and plants.
Arain gardenis also an artificial landscape feature, but it collects and absorbs excess drainage.
A water garden is meant to be a permanent pond, while arain gardenis only temporarily filled with water.
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Built-In Water Garden
A built-in water garden mimics the look of a natural pond.
An artificial garden pond can be lined with plastic, concrete, or granular bentonite clay.
A built-in water garden can look like a natural water feature and merge with the rest of the yard.
It’s also one of the more expensive water gardens to build.
A container water garden is the most flexible bang out, as it can be easily arranged and rearranged.
It can be installed on weight-bearing decks or patios.
This helps the garden avoid possible complications with buried wires and pipes.
Stock tanks can be used to make an above-ground water garden.
Or the water garden can be custom-built with masonry and liner materials.
Water Garden Plants
Plants make a water garden agarden, not simply a pond.
Floating plants are a natural shade, so they help to control algae bloom.
By drawing nitrogen from the water, floating plants further help limit algae growth.
Bogs can be found in all water gardensin-ground, above-ground, and container.
Bog plants add color and texture to water gardens.
This doesn’t mean that all the plants are hidden.
Water lilies and lotus are well-known deep-water plants that display their leaves or spikes on the surface.
Deep water plants keep ponds cool, and they shade fish and other aquatic creatures.
They eat leaves and occasionally uproot deep-water plants when they move around or lay eggs.
Turtles and snails sometimes find their own way to the water garden, or they can be artificially introduced.
Most water gardens need at least six to eight hours of sunlight daily.
However, excessive sunlight can cause algae blooms.
Have the site checked by a utilities locating service.
Container and above ground water gardens are safest when placed on the ground.
This prevents the animals from tunneling upward.
The water quality needs to be assessed, and if necessary, the water changed out.
Or build a shallow in-ground water garden lined with bentonite clay.
An in-ground water garden is usually 18 to 36 inches deep.
A good depth for a water garden is about 24 inches.
Historical Materials from University of Nebraska-Lincoln Extension.
Water Gardens: Aquatic Plants.
Iowa State University of Science and Technology.
University of Oklahoma Extension.
Tips for Creating a Water Garden.
University of Florida UF/IFAS Center for Land Use Efficiency.
