There are endless ways to plant. I have a corkscrew rush that has happilly lived in just a plain plastic pot for a few years. I put water lilies in an oil pan (you didn't mention water lilies but I just threw that in there). I have some plants in the plastic mesh containers. I also have floating islands that I have made (do a search on floating islands and you'll get all kinds of ideas).

There was also a pattern for making planting containers from landscaping fabric but I can't find the thread. Maybe someone else can find it.

Good luck and be sure to post pictures in the Gallery!!! We love pictures.
Anne

Thanks pashta for the info. Last fall I found "noodles" marked down to almost nothing and have intentions of making floating pots out of them for early season shade and cover for the fish.
I have tried posting a few pics....keeping my fingers crossed I did it right :)

Here is a link that might be useful: My pond in it's first year 2010

OH, that is so lovely. Thanks

BEAUTIFUL pond!!! Thanks for posting some pics! What kind of lilies are those? They are so pretty and perfect, they look fake!!ha!They must be tropicals?

Yes calamity j, they are tropicals. Unfortunately I cannot remember the name of the purple one, but the peachy/pink one is an Albert Greenberg. I am lucky enough to have quite a large pond store within several miles of me. After their yearly lily festival, they mark all of the tropicals way down. Fully grown, potted and blooming for $14. It bloomed quite nicely for the couple of months till the season ended. Now I have them both in my basement in a small "pond" w/ heater and light hoping to overwinter them.
Thanks to both you and pashta for the nice compliments!

I am new to water and bog gardening and am not clear on how/when to use the mesh or fabric pots. we have some hardy lilies just waking up and poking out and want to repot them in something bigger. I also have several bog lilies and a spider. I have heard the mesh and plastic are good but do you just put the garden soil in them, do I need to line them with something. Opinions?

I use the plasticized woven bags that some feed comes in--chicken feed, catfish feed, rabbit feed...you get the idea.

Either stand them on the bottom of the pond and roll down the top of the bag to appropriate height OR roll the top of the bag around 2/3 of a pool noodle for a floating pot. Fill with unscented clay kitty litter and fertilizer tabs or your favorite planting medium. If it floats too high in the water, add a rock or two at the bottom.

The kitty litter is made of bentonite, also used for lining natural ponds and is safe for fish and plants--just make sure you get unscented. Special Kitty, the cheapest stuff from Walmart, works fine.

Your pond is quite beautiful just the way you have it set-up now.

I've used many of the same aquatic plants you've mentioned. I suppose my strategy is very similar to Pashta's.

Use mesh pots in the biological filtration basin if it's open air (open to sunlight). This way water flows through to the roots and gets the benefit of filtering. I use rocks as a media for these -- as small as you can go without causing erosion and having'em run off to cloud your water.

Like Pashta I use low but wide (diameter) pans for water lilies... I've not used oil pans but similarly I found round feed pans you can find at country / farm stores, like Tractor Supply, work well -- the base color is almost always black so they're perfect for the bottom of the water garden.

Any submerged aquatic plant I put in media that is part sand and part clay and use solid black pots or containers that I buy from the water garden store here locally. Since they are not mesh you'll get minimal cloudy-runoff. Most often I top these with medium sized decorative rock. and they're placed just below the water level.

Of course I have plenty of floating plants like lettuce and water hyacinths. They really like the heat and sunshine.

This post was edited by pondbucket on Tue, Apr 2, 13 at 2:38