Pond Boss Forums AQUATIC VEGETATION Balance of plants in the environment Please Help With Plant Choices

mach316 - Here are my thoughts about your plants. Firstly eelgrass is an underwater submerged plant that lives its entire life basically under water. Great bulrush is an emergent plant which grows rooted in shallow water and the bulk of the plant is above water similar to cattails. Bulrush has round stems versus the flat stems for cattails. Also Bulrush may not grow quite as dense or compact stems as the cattails. Both of these emergent plants can grow up to 3-4ft deep in good soil conditions with 3ft-5ft sticking above water.

Eel grass will be okay for your pond but since you are in the south make sure that you plant only corkscrew eelgrass aka spiral eelgrass(tapegrass). I can't emphasize this too much for your situation. Spiral eelgrass is a much better underwater rooted plant for a smaller pond. It is supposed to only grow to 10"-14" tall as an underwater weed bed. If you don't like the spiral eelgrass after a few years you can always plant the regular form of eelgrass later.

Regular eelgrass can easily grow to 3ft to 8 ft tall in optimum clear water conditons. Most other species of underwater plants will grow 3ft to 7 ft tall which is actually too tall for a small pond and they are likely to need severe thinning or drastic weed control in a small pond.


Another alternative OR in addition to spiral eelgrass is dwarf Sagittaria (aka dwarf arrowhead). This also grows primarily underwater similar to eelgrass but dwarf Sagattaria only grows to about 4"- 6" tall. So if you want planted areas with a short dense carpet like growth, then plant some dwarf Sagattaria.

Since you are in a "warm state" (FL?) and you probably have a fairly shallow average depth pond, then I think it is again importrant to initially stay with the shorter forms and smaller spreading water lilies. Start by only planting the dwarf types. The place where yo ubuy your lilies should be abe to help you with proper selection of speices. Just specify you need dwarf species. As time goes by and you decide you need more water lily coverage then you can plant some of the larger spreading species / forms.

Plant the proper species or forms and the only thing you will basically need to do for the first several years is to watch them grow and remove or control the wild competing weeds.

Keep us informed of your progress and and how well the plants are growing for you. A couple photos would be nice once things get growing. Good luck with growing some beneficial plants.