Yep, Michael Smart does have a great deal of experience in this area. He can probably put you on to others who have done similar projects. What you are planning to construct will be fairly costly so you may want to try a small prototype first and see how it works first. This way you can see what plants may work well in addition to testing design. Start small and work your way up to more ambitious projects. I suggest you build a small pvc frame structure, maybe 3'x3' and see what it does. As for the plants, do a little research into what native emergent wetland plants are in the area and plant about 3 to 5 species in the structure. You can do this all in a day and have results in a few months. You will also have something interesting to show off and sell the idea.