Do you love the idea of a pond, but don't have an actual yard to place one in? No fear — you can cultivate a mini watery paradise on your balcony or terrace with very little effort by creating a container water garden. By selecting a variety of plants and containers, you can create an customized water garden in any outdoor space that receives six hours of sunlight every day (a little bit less if you are using bog plants).
Small-container water gardens are actually a collection of submerged potted plants, which makes them easy to set up and to rearrange at will. You can use just about any container to start your water garden, but pots with dark interiors give an impression of greater depth, discourage algae growth, and make algae less obvious when it does grow. Best of all, most water plants are tough so the garden is low maintenance, and even those of us with a black thumb have a chance because they are generally hard to kill.
Once you have chosen your display container, use bricks or overturned containers submerged below the surface of the water to allow you to vary the height of your plants to create a lovely landscape. Your local nursery can help with selecting water plants- consider varying tall grasses with cascading plants for interest, and definitely select a couple of water flowers for color. Top up the water in your container every couple of days depending on the rate of evaporation- if you are using city tap water, let it sit first for 48 hours to allow the chlorine to evaporate, or pick up special tablets at the nursery to remove the chlorine.
If you want more information on setting up your own container garden, here are some great sites to get you started:
• University of Illinois Extension - Container Water Gardening
• Colorado State University Extension - Container Water Gardens
• HGTV - Container Water Garden Recipe
(Image: Bart Everson licensed for use under Creative Commons.)
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I think you also need a few goldfish to eat mosquito larvae.
Aha, thanks tasterspoon, I was also wondering about this being a mosquito breeding ground
To deal with mosquitos, you can try simply overfill the garden when adding water (the eggs should wash out) or you should be able to pick up something at the nursery to add to the water to battle the mosquitos.
i had small koi and gold fish in mine so they could eat any eggs/larvae and never had a problem. in colder climate you can either bring them in in the winter or there are cheap and easy heating systems you can use.
or you can do mosquito fish, which are tiny.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosquitofish
the only consideration might be adding some sort of air pump that will aerate the water so that the fish won't die. i've done a water garden before and had a small pump that hung over the lip of the pot and down the side of the inside.
I don't think this would survive a Midwestern winter.
I'd love to see a roundup of small balconies with water gardens :)
I've been thinking about starting one for a long time but decided I should focus on not killing regular plants first!
Eeee I love this idea! Now just finding a container big enough not priced at an arm and a leg :)
I agree with funkia re aeration - plus a little fountain feature might be charming. But I'm pretty sure I read (a long time ago) that if the surface area to water volume ratio is high enough, you don't need to inject additional air. Something to research, to be sure.
In Texas where we have water restrictions frequently during the summer, I feel like this is just wrong.
This would be a mosquito breeding ground in New England. Stagnant water = mosquito heaven.
Love the idea but my little girl would just play in it and destroy it :(
I believe that there are chemicals you can put in the water to kill all of the buglife, but that seems to be going against the spirit of things.
The simple truth, as has already been stated, is that the water garden in the picture would be infested with mosquitos within a week, and they in turn would make life a living hell for anyone in the garden.
Solution: add goldfish, who eat the skeeter eggs and larvae. Unfortunately they also love water lilies. So you need to feed them to distract them from the plants.
Also the six hours of sunlight per day required to keep the water lilies alive will also encourage algae, which suffocate the fish. So you need to add an oxygenating bubbler. This means that you need a power supply running to your water garden, and a power cable lolling over the side.
Eventually your simple zen water garden becomes an energy-consuming (and money-consuming) artificial ecosystem. It may be wiser to simply buy a nice ficus.
When I was growing up, my grandmother had a big iron cauldron (don't recall where she found it) sitting in the middle of her garden. It was about the size of the pot shown above, full of goldfish, elodea, water lilies, and whatever else found its way in there.
It was lovely and low-maintenance, and it was all sorts of fun for us kids, too. I think I'll keep my eye out for just the right vessel..
Mosquito Dunks use the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis to kill mosquito larvae in the garden. They won't harm fish if you choose to have them. Easy to find at the hardware store.
Hello mosquito farm!!!!
Everything planted in water is prohibited in my country!
Throw in some sunnies or small fish and they will eat all the mosquitos, no problem. There are many small species in cold areas that will survive the winter, and if you are really concerned, it is easy to set up a solar heater.
Wow, a lot of negative here. I think this is great. If you don't want fish as the only option for Mosquito removal, add a small solar powered submersible pump. It will give you enough circulation for Mosquito's to not nest, oxygenate the pond if you do want to have fish, and add a bit of a zen to your patio with the gurgle.
I live in a high Mosquito area. I've had a container pond on my patio for years and have never had problems with Mosquitos.
@peahen --- That comment is simply rude and uncalled for. Isn't this community about decor?
ANYWAY... if the thought of dragging a huge pot up three flights of stairs didn't make me want to kill myself, I would do this in a second and pray that my cat wouldn't notice the fish.
May I suggest bettas for container-garden mosquito control? They're carnivores so they won't eat your plants. They're small & pretty & easy to keep indoors over the winter. They're solitary so they're appropriate for the setting.
And it's really cool to watch them jump when they have enough room & time to do so -- we had ours trained to jump out of its fishtank and take bugs out of our hands.
Just please if you change your mind about one, don't release it into the wild, as with any non-native fish.
My county's mosquito abatement program provides free mosquito eaters for any ponds/standing water. It's worthwhile to check out if your area has a similar program (usually housed within a pest control agency).
i come back to this over and over when i am looking for inspiration in my work.
danios, cloud mountains, or mollies would scarf up any bugs in the pond without harming plants and still survive up to 35 degree weather. adding a solar powered heater and some oxygenating plants would make this a self-sufficient patio garden even for a semi shady location. our patio only receives reflected light from the south facing wall across from us, but certainly has enough light for plants and water gardens...
for those concerned about the heavy pot, you can now purchase plastic versions of this pot along with Styrofoam reinforced plastic versions of most pots. line it first and you have a nice water garden. :)