If you have a pond which are your favourite pond plants?

[HasaDigaEebowai]

Im just waiting for my wildlife pond to fill and Im online plant shopping but the choice is enormous. I need quite a few so I'm looking for inspiration and recommendations.

Ideally looking at whites and blues/purples since the garden is quite dark but open to all suggestions.

I like my water mint - it has pale purple flowers, it's aromatic, and bombproof. I don't know how well it behaves, it's on its own in my pond. I also have miniature bullrushes, but they've never flowered because DS(2) has always been a bit fixated on pulling them up. I wish they would though.

I also have miniature waterlilies. Pond is a raised tank about 60 x 120 cm and 70cm deep, so not huge, but they seem happy and are very pretty in flower.

Water mint sounds just the sort of thing I'm looking for. Purple flowers, scented and bombproof tick all my boxes.

Now according to my pond plants website I just need another 5 water lilies, 8 deep marginals, 36 marginals, 90 oxygenators and 12 floating plants..

Cotton grass for sure. It's so pretty and flowers for ages.

Wow you need a lot of plants! How big is your pond? I’m sure they don’t all have to be different, lots of plants will spread very quickly (like the water mint)

In my old house I had a lovely water lilly, water mint, marsh marigold, cotton grass, other random grasses, water hawthorn and others I forget. Yellow irises in the bog to the side. I do like the marsh marigold as it’s so bright at the start of spring.

I got a very small water forget-me-not plant online (amazon- it arrived in a little plastic bag). It should look pretty eventually but is lost in all the grass at the moment.

Cotton grass seems to be popular so I'll definitely add that. The pond is pretty big - about 75 square metres (12 x 7 at its widest ) so I need a lot to fill it out and to plant on the banks around it.

I did an online order yesterday and bought a couple of lilies, water forget-me-not, bog bean, water mint, some ranunculus aquatilis (oxygenator plants) and a few hostas and irises for the banks. I have a lot more space to fill though so keep the suggestions coming!

You also need to stock up on aquatic soil and baskets.

I bought the 'wildlife plants for medium ponds' collections from wetland plants (£167 I think) which included lots of plants and baskets some which had runners so I was able to separate them and pot them up separately and already had a lot of new growth and flowers and theyve only been in a month.

Oh but to answer your question my favourite is the Corkscrew rush, I love the shape of the leaves/stems.

If you like blues and whites:

Pickerel weed (Pontedaria)
Alligator flag (Thalia)
Arrowhead (Sagittaria)
Bog arum
White skunk cabbage (Lysichiton)
Marsh cinquefoil
Marsh woundwort

And how about some Water Soldier as a semi submerged floating aquatic?

Water forget-me-not increases well, and has a long flowering period. Newts love it for egg laying.

In a big pond bog bean has pretty pale pink fringed flowers (oh, I see you already have that)

If you want rushes, I can't see any reason not to have flowering rush (Butomus)

marsh marigolds for spring, for around the pond. Yellow, but invaluable for the time of flowering.

For later in the year around the pond - purple loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria) (pinky purple flowers), Great willowherb (Epilobium hirsutum) (might be a bit pink for you), water mint, meadowsweet (Filipendula ulmaria). Stinking iris - subtle purple flushed flowers, followed if you're lucky by orange berries in autumn.

Since you're not sticking to natives, then candelabra primroses. But they're pinks and oranges and yellows.

Ooh ok, big! I remember seeing in my RHS magazine someone using these long rolls of soil and sacking which were impregnated with aquatic plants-you strap them round the edge of the pond. Sorry I can’t be more specific but it seemed like a really good idea.

Water lilies are lovely but consider when you will be home-some open early in the morning, some in the evening-try to chose the variety that suits your day.

Thanks everyone this is all really helpful. I'm going to get googling!

Water mint is pretty but will go mad (like any kind of mint).

You could check out British water plants and use those instead of imported/non-native ones. See

www.wetland-plants.co.uk/product-category/pond-plants/

I like arum lily, lilies (they are very different sizes so check the size of your pond), sedge, and willow moss is a good oxygenating plant.

You'll need a mix of plants depending on water depth. Some like to have their feet wet, some like to be submerged.

I have a zebra grass, which has tall thin shoots with a stripe on them

Here's what i put in my new pond this year, based on what had worked well in other ponds i've had in other houses

aponogeton distachyos (fast growing and large)
yellow iris pseudoacorus
white large water lily
caltha palustris
hottouynia cordata chaemeleon
sagittaria granulata
myosotis scorpioides (water forget-me-not - invasive)
menyanthes trifoliata (bog bean)
mentha aquatica (water mint - invasive)
myriophyllus brasiliensis (oxygenator)

I wouldn't have regarded water forget-me-not as invasive. OK it can spread from one bunch to the whole pond in a season, but because it's growing in the water it's easy to hoick out. You do have to make sure that you allow all the creatures to get back into the water - it holds a lot of wildlife. And I never clear it during the summer because of all the newt eggs rolled up in its leaves.

Bog bean, on the other hand - it walked straight across my pond, over a flower bed, and into the next pond. I was going to get rid of it all, but the damned thing is flowering - i can't get rid of flowers that beautiful.

Waterlillies - in our largest pond (about 5.5m x 2.5m) we put a standard sized water lily and a small variety intended for small ponds. We've had to remove large chunks of the standard size, but just had to divide the miniature. So my advice on waterlilies would be to go for one that you think is too small for your pond

Aponogaton distachyos is also known as water hawthorn, and has a lovely fragrance.