Pool Plantings Getting the Most Pleasure from the Least Work

When we found ourselves with a 7 foot retaining wall, necessary but threatening to look like a grim fortress, we decided to use it as a backdrop for a water garden.

During the long winter evenings before starting to build our water landscape we studied books, magazines and even catalogues and but for this, very little work has gone into it.

We learned from our advance reading that to bloom well plants in and around the sides of the pool need full sun. Except for this point of agreement each plant has its individual preferences.

A natural stream is not necessary for a pool. A hose can supply all the water, and this only once a year. Water lilies like still water, not rippling brooks. They want no more than 6 to 10 inches of it over their crowns. So, too, the wonderful lotus.

Bog plants, on the other hand, like to be barely covered with water. Some charming plants want to grow on dry edges of pools sending their roots down to wet levels while others dislike moisture at their roots but revel in constant evaporation around them.

Under the no longer forbidding stone wall, we made a semi-circular pool, 7 by 14 feet and 28 inches at its deepest point, with permanent shelves under the water level capable of supporting several pots heavy with soil. Some shelves were made from flat slabs of rock set in the walls at the right depth; others were built up from the bottom.

Once the pool was constructed and planted we discovered that our water garden bloomed and flourished through the years almost by itself, but it did so only because we had thought out everything ahead before the pool was constructed and planted.

We buy certain plants new each year already started in pots of rich soil. Among these are dayblooming water lilies for small ponds and tropical night—blooming plants for the shelves under water.

Water-lilies shiny, leather-like leaves float on the surface of the pool while the flowers peer just above it. Lotus raises its large undulating velvety leaves a foot or more out of the water and its beautiful white, pink and yellow flowers a yard above it. Later, its huge seedpods are decorative until fall.

One of the most spectacular flowers we ever had was an ordinary canna. It was bought as a single root, planted in a pot of rich soil and sunk below the water about 4 inches.

It made a huge clump of many roots and sent up as many stalks with tropical looking leaves and brilliant flowers. It bloomed and bloomed until it burst its pot. But the most amazing thing about it was that although Japanese beetles feasted on nearby cannas, they didn’t cross the water to bother it.

Poolside Plants

To accommodate the likes and dislikes of various marginal plants, we built several kinds of pockets with stone around the pool. Some are dry, some moist and others deep in water. The greater number of the poolside plants are perennials demanding little attention.

In a dry pocket, at the foot of the wall, Japanese primroses bloom in June and Japanese iris in July. Farther on, in a wet pocket, myosotis blooms all summer and August brings flowers to a Lobelia cardinalis.

Bog conditions prevail in a large wet pocket barely covered with water that runs along the back of the pool. Here we planted a graceful cattail which “cats” all summer to show how happy it is. Since we bought it five years ago, we haven’t touched it.

A shallow pocket at one end of the pool contains arrowhead which, when once planted, comes up unaided year after year. At the other end, a pocket formed by a stone shelf 2 inches under water holds an ancient Chinese glazed pot in which a new imperial Taro is set each year. This is the only plant we know that has navy blue velvet leaves.

Three dry pockets border the front of the pool. It is possible to have continuous bloom on low growing plants in these from May to September. Small azaleas are interplanted with Dutch iris and campanula Blue Carpet. Yellow dianthus gives color all summer long.

Between these we poke tigridia bulbs wherever we see a bit of space in spring. When hot months come, these open a brilliant new fabulously designed flower every morning.

Another dry pocket holds three dwarf shrubs of Cotoneaster apiculata with shiny red berries twice the size of the better known Cotoneaster horizontalis. Plumbago larpentae is planted in spaces between the low growing shrubs mingling with them its gentian blue flowers from August until frost.

Softened Stone

Against the wall behind the pool, we planted two vines. One of them, the true Climbing Hydrangea, clings to the wall by tendrils. When mature, it decorates the stones with beautiful white blossoms in summer.

The other vine, Euonymus radicans, has minute leaves which turn a fine color in the fall. It is also self clinging and has grown without direction from us. Indeed, no man could have given it the perfect design it chose for its growth at the base of the niche in the wall and around it.

Every year we buy a few Water Hyacinths to plant down in the muck at the bottom of a pocket 8 inches deep. There we always find the secret recesses already occupied.

Glittering Fish

The goldfish we bought some time ago have long since found this pocket to be an ideal nursery. Several times a year it is swarming with shiny, tiny babies. In their second year their protective brown changes to gold, silver and red. We have learned just the right amount of food to give them. To vary the diet we provide, they eat as many mosquito larvae as they can find.

In this they compete with frogs. We never bought a frog nor fed one. Yet, we have them every summer. Where they come from we don’t know but as soon as nights get warm they appear from their hiding places and “unk-unk” in the darkness.

When Winter Comes

Frogs disappear as mysteriously as they came as cold weather nears. Then, pots of waterlilies are sunk down to the floor of the pool and a few large logs are thrown in to protect the sides from expanding ice. `When the pool freezes over, as it does in New York, we break the ice to let air in for the fish below.

Emptying the pool to clean it is the only chore that is bothersome. But this is done only every second year. Fish are caught and put in large containers filled with pool water and potted plants are brought up, kept wet and covered with burlap. The empty pool is cleaned, examined for possible leaks and coated with a crack-sealing paint. When it is dry, it’s refilled and, after the water is sufficiently warm, the fish and plants are put back.

Except for replacing some of the water plants, our work is done. The sun brings our water garden to life with no more help from us. The vines etch the stone wall with leaves, marginal plants bud and soon the pool blooms with lily, lotus and reflected blossoms.

by F Kline

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