Outdoor Water Gardens

Hi everyone! I'm Vidya from Whats Ur Home Story, where I blog about how my family of four is adding character and style to our cookie cutter home with easy on the budget, no hard core DIYing, and no major renovation projects. I am so thrilled to guest post on Stuff I Love for the very talented Cat. Lately I've been called the ‘water garden’ lady so many times that I thought I would share my container water garden project with you. Even if you are short on outdoor space you can have one as long as you have a sunny spot. I have it on my deck.

Here is how you go about it:

• A medium to large size container works best. I used a plastic wine barrel planter.
• To add interest choose plants with different visual heights. Use marginals like canna lilies, dwarf papyrus, taro for height. The water lilies or lotuses of course. Their leaves will cover much of the water surface from sunlight preventing algae growth. Don’t forget the floaters; water hyacinth, water lettuce. You could add cascading plants like water mint too that would fall over the container’s edge. I didn’t add it to mine as I felt that my container was already getting pretty crowded.
• In order to prevent it from becoming a mosquito breeding haven, you'd need one of the following; a pond pump kit (I tried using an aquarium kit, didn't work) or mosquito dunks or fish.
• I ended up choosing the third option, 3 $0.25 mollies from Walmart.

• Plant your marginals and lilies in pots that will fit into the container. You can add some height to your lilies by placing the pots on rocks. You've to use garden soil not the peat mossy kind to plant or else the soil will just float on the water. I skimped on buying aquatic fertilizer and just added some Miracle-Gro to my soil.
• Add some rocks as the top layer in your pots. Again to stop the soil from floating to the top.
• Arrange the pots in the container. Add water, your floaters, and your mosquito dunk.
• If you are adding fish, wait for 2-3 days so that the chlorine in the water settles down/ evaporates.
• Now you are good to go! Wait patiently for your plants to fill out. Soon you'll get to enjoy these beauties.

 

Maintenance wise, if you have fish then you'd need to change the water maybe once in 10 days. When you change the water, make sure to pour 1/3rd of the old water back into the garden so the fish do not get water change shock. You can feed the fish once in 2 days. The algae was not at all a problem once I added the fish. If you are using only the mosquito dunk then you will have to clean the container every time you change the water too. Hope I've inspired y'all to give it a shot too.