How To Make a Container Water Garden

Updated: June 10, 2013

How To Make a Container Water Garden

Container water gardens make for an unique and beautiful home decoration, or as addition to a diverse garden. Water gardens are used to cultivate water plants.

Water plants can be cultivated in ponds, but most house do not have enough space to make a pond in. Ponds can also be very expensive to make. So, if you are interested in water plants, an unique solution would be to make a container water garden. You take a large container, fill it with water, and place water plants in it.

There are plenty of beautiful water plants that are a pleasure to look at. Plants like the water lily and the canna lily have beautiful flowers with colors so vibrant they will make you instant fans. Water Lettuce and Water mint have lush, green foliage that will make for a great looking water garden. Container water gardens can really add to the ambience of a room. If you haven’t thought of making one, you should definitely give it a try. They are easy to make, easy to maintain, and generally give very rewarding results.

But how do you start a container water garden?

The following tips should help you get started with a water garden, and with experience you should soon become a container water garden pro.

Invest in a large, sturdy pot:

Don’t start water gardening on a tin pot hoping to increase size as you get more experienced. Most water plants are rather large in size, and to appreciate them in their full beauty, you have to let them grow out. Large earthenware bowls are ideal for water gardening hobbies. You can also try wine barrels or other large water containers. The trick is to make sure that the bowl itself looks good enough. Try not to use something fragile, as you are bound to drop the pot once or twice during cleaning or maintenance.

Beware of mosquitoes

If you operate a container water garden, you will get a body of fairly stagnant water. This is the perfect breeding place for mosquitoes, who will soon infest your house. Some of these mosquitoes may carry deadly diseases, such as dengue and malaria. So you have to keep the mosquito population in control somehow.

Mosquito dunks are available in nurseries, which, when added to the water in a container water garden, will make the water mosquito resistant. They work without harming your precious water plants.

You can also introduce a system of biological control to keep the mosquitoes out, by introducing fish such as guppies or mollies to the water. These fish feast on mosquitoes and mosquito larvae, making the stagnant water free of mosquitoes. Additionally, they are really easy to tend to, and make great pets.

Mulch up the pots in which you plant the water plants.

You have to use good garden soil to pot water plants, or the soil will just float to the surface. Having planted the water plant, you should mulch the soil – that is, cover the surface of the soil- with stones, gravel, etc.

Bring the pots in for winter

Most water plants are tropical, and not suited to harsh winter weather. Additionally, if the water freezes up, you will end up with dead plants and fish. So you should bring the water pot in for the winter.

The plants will stay dormant in this period. Bring them out again in spring and they should flourish to full bloom again.

Water garden land-(water?)-scaping

To give your container water garden an unique, aesthetic appeal, arrange different plants in different height levels. You can do this by placing bricks or rocks under the pots of those plants you wish to see above others. Use your creativity to come up with great ideas and looks.

Container water gardens are an unique way to explore the gardening hobby. If you are interested in gardening in general but haven’t tried water gardening yet, you must give this a spin. It can be quite addictive, and very rewarding too.

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