Our wildlife pond and bog garden at the allotment is looking really good now. Over the last few weeks I have been gradually planting around the pond and in the boggy area next to it. It really is very squelchy around the pond, I think we chose the right place for it.
I spent some time looking up which plants would be good for growing in very moist conditions and realised that I had quite a few suitable plants in my own garden which I could lift and divide to take to the allotment.
I've planted some hostas around the edges of the pond. I'm not sure how much wet hostas like, but if they survive then they should look really good softening the edges where the stones are. The boggy ground is a sort of triangle shape and here I've planted a rodgersia in the corner with astilbes in front. The astilbes suffered a bit of frost damage when it was really cold last week but they seem to be recovering now. In another corner is a meadowsweet. Also planted are some blue irises and I salvaged some of the yellow flag irises which had completely taken over when we first moved on to the allotment. I shall have to keep them under control now. There are two types of grasses, a carex elata aurea and another which I have had in my garden for years but I don't know the name of. I found a ragged robin plant at my local garden centre which was described as a bog garden plant and at the plant fair last Sunday I bought a pale yellow trollius. The label said grow in soil which never dries out. That seemed to fit the description of our soil.
In the pond I put a marsh marigold, a blue iris, a grass and a water forget me not. There are also a couple of underwater plants. I would like to put a floating plant in, most water lilies would be too big for our little tin bath pond, but there are some varieties which I know are suitable for small ponds, so I will keep looking.
So that was a lot of plants but for very little cost as most of them came from my own garden. It's looking very good now and should be even better once the plants are established and in flower.
The good news is we have some tadpoles in the pond which we rescued after finding them in the drain at the top of the plot. They must have come down the pipe which drains the water from the plot above us. I hope they like their new home, it is a much safer place. The duck you see in the photo, is a rescue duck, we found it in the mud at the bottom of the old pond. It seems to be very happy in its new home.
