Friday, May 14, 2010

Pond Plants

Top right: aquatic mint, water clover. Left: sweet flag, Thalia, creeping Jenny. Bottom right: blue pickerel, waterlily, Louisiana iris.

Got paid Thursday. Halleluja! Time to buy some pond plants!

You'll remember that we already had one pond plant, a 'Full Eclipse' Louisiana iris.

Now we've also got some for filtering and oxygenating (the workhorses) and some for prettiness (the divas).

Workhorses:
Shelf plants:
-- Variegated sweet flag - Acorus calamus 'Variegatus'
-- Aquatic mint - Mentha aquatica
-- Creeping jenny - Lysimachia nummularia
-- Water clover - Marselia mutica

Submerged filter plants:
-- some handfuls of water poppy - Hydrocleys nymphoides
-- some handfuls of hornwort - Ceratophyllum sp.
-- some handfuls of Elodea canadensis

Divas:
-- Blue pickerel - Pontederia chordata
-- Thalia dealbata (2. Because they're so pretty.)
-- a nameless tropical waterlily (d'oh! I had meant to only buy hardies-$$-but I pulled from the wrong tank-$$$)

Foreground: Louisiana iris. Middle: tropical water lily. Back: creeping Jenny, variegated sweet flag, Thalia.

This was not a cheap trip to the pond store (especially not when one accidentally buys a tropical waterlily--they're $40 a pop!), but I doubt I've even got 10% of the surface of the pond covered with foliage. The internets (especially the sellers of pond plants--imagine that) recommend 50-70% coverage.

Well, it's quite handsome, anyway. No idea what the flowers will be like. $40 worth of loveliness, I hope.

In other news, the Crinum x powellii is loaded with flowers. I like the decadent dangliness of its spent flowers. It makes me think of an antebellum lady of impeccable breeding with a habit of surreptitiously stepping out of an evening and returning in the wee hours with a rollicking hangover and love bites that she has to cover with her shawl. Refined yet simultaneously raffish. Elegant, but disreputable.

Crinum x powellii and oak-leaf hydrangea

2 comments:

Bob said...

That pond is going to look gorgeous when your through. They don't really look their best until they mature a while.

If you wanted to drive to Lake Georgetown I would give you Red Stemmed Thalia, some other lily starts, a stunning Lotus,[you know how much those cost] and some gold fish. I haven't found a sucker, errr, I mean a beneficiary for all the extra stuff this year.

Elgin_house said...

Thanks Bob! We'd love to! And we have some small roses and a few crinum bulbs we could trade, if you like. Are you free any time this weekend? And what's the best way to reach you?

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