Effortless Water Garden

One day, I plan to have a very large water garden. Several, in fact! Two large ponds plus a waterfall and a stream to connect them all in the backyard.

In front, a small pond, with, of course, a waterfall and a stream. It’s all well noted in my 47-year development plan, which I’ve kept preciously… in my head.

If I can’t get there any faster, it’s because I have a major problem. My land is made up of around 15 to 25 cm of topsoil laid on a vast mass of rocky slabs. You have to dig to make a water garden. Granted, it’s pretty crumbly rock, but rock nonetheless. So that means hours and hours standing with the jackhammer, then all the shattered rock to collect. Just thinking about it gives me a stiff neck!

My Container Water Garden

But, in fact, I already have a water garden. In fact, I’ve had it since my first summer here. You see, my water garden is in a container.

The first was in a half barrel that I bought for about twenty dollars. I didn’t put any protective coating on it, even though I knew it was sold expressly for that purpose. Because, after all, the barrel is specifically designed to hold liquid, right?

Here’s how, as a good laidback gardener, I created my container water garden. I filled the half-barrel with water almost to the brim and flanked it with a few aquatic plants. You can copy my instructions without paying me royalties: I’m very generous by nature.

My current water garden is mobile. It spends the summer outside and the winter inside the house. Granted, you rarely hear of an indoor water garden, but why not? It’s no baffling than trying to grow zone 7 and 8 roses (the famous hybrid tea roses) in Quebec (zones 1 to 5), as so many gardeners who like to complicate their lives do.

An Indoor Water Garden

My wife gave me quite a look when she saw me bring the water garden in the first winter, but not anymore. No, she acclimatized well to the indoor water garden, especially when the water lily decided to bloom at Christmas (water lilies in the snow, who could have imagined?). If she was unhappy, it was because she claimed the container was leaking.

First of all, I’m not convinced there was a leak. Rather, I claim it was the fish, Roger, who was making the splashes (he would get upset in the evenings). Also, as I explained (to my wife, not Roger), the floor under the water garden is ceramic, not wood. A little water on tile can’t hurt! Even so, in the third year, I wisely decided to replace the half-barrel with a plastic tub. Since Roger died one fine morning (he was almost two years old, which is almost a record for a guppy), I’ll never know who was responsible for the so-called “water damage”, Roger or a small leak. Still, the “new” water garden, now in its second year, doesn’t leak at all.

Easy to Maintain

The nice thing about a container water garden is that it’s virtually maintenance-free. When it’s outside, I fill it with water at the start of the season. After that, the water rises, the water falls, depending on the vagaries of the climate. But the amount of water never decreases enough for me to have to get up and add more. In fact, it usually stays filled to within 10 cm (4 inches) of the rim, which, as far as I’m concerned, is enough.

In the house, I still have to add water from time to time, as it doesn’t rain much at home (except in my office, which is under the water garden, but that’s another story). Since I water my houseplants with a hose (I’ll have to explain that to you sometime too), adding a little water to the pond in passing isn’t a problem.

Effortless Aquatic Plants

As for the plants, their care is minimal too. I know I’m supposed to insert water plant fertilizer tablets into the pot of my ‘Blue Danube’, a tropical mini water lily, but I keep forgetting. And since it blooms regularly, I’m not worried. I experiment with other plants, always tropical (after all, my water garden spends its winter in the house) and, so far, everything’s succeeding perfectly: papyrus, water hyacinth, water lettuce, colocasia and so on.

Then there are the floating ferns (Salvinia auriculata and Azolla filiculoides). They’re tiny, barely larger than duckweed, but much prettier. They multiply rapidly and quickly cover the entire surface of the water, creating a lovely frothy appearance. What I like about these ferns is that they don’t let too much light into the tank, preventing algae from developing. From time to time, I fish out the surplus and put it in the water garden at the Roger Van den Hende Garden (permission granted). Or I give lots of little bags to friends. Or I throw them into the flower beds as mulch.

The biggest effort with my water garden is bringing it in every autumn and taking it out every spring. Even when it’s almost empty of water (I use an aquarium hose as a siphon to drain it three-quarters of the way), the tub is very heavy. And you have to go up and down six steps each time. Come to think of it, why don’t I buy a second tub? That way, I’d have an indoor water garden, an outdoor water garden… and nothing to transport. But to do that, I’d have to get up, go to the store and pick out a planter, and that’s still an effort…

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Larry Hodgson published thousands of articles and 65 books over the course of his career, in both French and English. His son, Mathieu, has made it his mission to make his father’s writings accessible to the public. This text was originally published in June 2000 in Fleurs, plantes et jardins.