Water Garden Plant Varieties

Water Garden Plant Varieties

First learning about your water garden, the fish and the plants can all seem a bit overwhelming at first, but after you have successfully enjoyed your first year water gardening you will find the process so much easier. Here we are going to discuss semi hardy plants for your water garden.

Many of the water garden plants that you see in the spring are marginal plants, coming to life as soon as the spring months break. Semi hardy plants are water garden plants that more often don’t fully mature until about a month after other plants have begun growing and thriving in the water garden.

One semi hardy plant that is great in the water garden is the cardinal flower. This is a plant that does survive some of the colder winters, where the temperatures do not go below twenty five degrees. If you live in a very cold zone, you can keep the cardinal flower in the cold frame or in the greenhouse over the winter months to ‘save’ it for next year if you live in a very cold area. All you have to do is bury the pot and all in the dirt for great results and then in the spring pull it back out and put it back in the water garden.

Arrowhead is one of the water garden plants that is definitely semi hardy as it does not come back to life until about a month after other water garden plants have already started growing in the spring months. This is a plant that can withstand cold temperatures to about twenty degrees, and sometimes a bit colder under the right conditions. In the spring months, after you think your plant should be growing and it isn’t, you can dig up this plant and then pull away all the dead portions of the plant replanting the tubulars or roots that are not mushy or rotten to start your plant off again.

Reed grass is a water garden plant that is known to take over your water garden, not appearing until later in the summer months, this is a very easy to ‘keep’ plant that will come back year after year but it is not a plant that you can use in the container garden in the water garden because it will grow up to ten feet tall, and sometime even taller!

Pickerel Weed is another plant that you can use in the water garden that can survive the mild winters in the water garden, even when the water is frozen. If you feel that you live in an area that is too cold, you can bring this plant in doors or in the greenhouse over the winter and take it to dormancy and back by limiting the water that you give it over the water months, and then replanting again in the spring thaw months.