If you are looking for a garden that is nearly maintenance free and requires no watering, water gardens might be for you. They are the one of the hottest trends in America right now.
You can purchase Water Lilies from your garden centre or some Mail Order Nurseries have them. Lilies come in either containers or as bare root purchases.
You will need:
- Water Lily
- Plastic Pot if it is bare rooted.
- Large half Wine Barrel.
- Heavy Clay Soil
- Fertiliser Tablet
- Gravel
- Additional options: Additional marginal aquatic plants.
The first thing to do is make sure the barrel or tub is waterproof, if not, you can line it with black polythene. Fill it with water and let it sit overnight to get rid of the chlorine, even better let the water sit for 24 hours, the chlorine will evaporate.
It is best to use a very heavy clay like garden soil for potting the lilies. Once the plastic pot is about a quarter full of soil add the fertiliser tablet, then a little more soil. Then carefully put the lily in the pot and gently spread out the roots. Finish filling in with the soil, making sure you don't cover the crown, or it will rot. Then add a layer of gravel to keep the soil in place.
Next place the lily carefully into the barrel. It will not be pretty at first until the leaves relax and assume the positions that come naturally to them and you may disturb some of the soil in the pot if you are not careful, but this will settle over the next couple of days. In the first few weeks the container might get rather slimy, the system generally settles down after a couple of weeks. If you want to add fish wait until this happens. You may also need a small pump to oxygenate the water for the fish and alleviate any algae problems.
The number of plants you add to your container depends on how much space you have, different types of Lilies are different sizes, thus taking up more or less space.
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