Creating Water Gardens
Plant your water garden after the weather warms in spring. You can plant in bottom mud, but containers allow flexibility in depth and position and make cleaning easier. Use a mix of garden loam and aquatic plant fertilizer. Do not use swamp muck, compost, peat moss, or dry manure.
First, add submerged oxygenating plants: water milfoil, waterweed, underwater grasses. Fill several 5-inch pots or shallow containers with soil, topping off the uppermost inch with sand. Root several oxygenators per pot by pushing them a third of the way into the soil.
Plant only one water lily per 20-inch pot; pygmy varieties need only 8-inch containers. Plant hardy varieties at an angle against the pot side; in harsh winter climates, store them indoors during the cold months.
Plant tropical water lilies only after the nights grow warm. Set each tuber in the center of a pot with the crown at the soil line. Sink pots 6 to 8 inches below the water surface. Treat these plants as annuals and order new roots each year.
Edibles like lotus, water chestnut, and watercress can grow in a pool; cranberry, natal plum, banana, citrus, clump bamboo, sorrel, and many herbs do well on the moist banks. Lotus can be invasive.
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