Making use of Water Garden Containers to Create an Urban Oasis
For urban dwellers, yard space is at a premium. With apartment houses planted right on the streets and a tiny amount of communal land behind, there’s no way to maintain a garden or cultivate a lot of flowers. You can, however, think on a much smaller scale. If you have a balcony or a deck, or even a fire escape, you can create a water garden in containers that will give you the feeling of an in-ground water feature. You’ll be able to hear the water running and watch tiny fish swimming, grow water plants, and take advantage of the peace nothing but a water garden can give you. Water garden containers give you the starting place for constructing a watery microcosm in very limited space.
Coming up with water garden containers isn’t as hard as choosing exactly what you’d like. A recommended size for a container is 15-25 gallons, and any kind of container in that size range will be okay. You will also need containers to grow your water plants in, because plants should be grown in separate pots and then transplanted into the water-filled container. It’s best to pick a container with a darker interior, because the dark color will provide your pond with the perception of depth. Dark interiors are also more practical in that they won’t provide an attraction for algae and yet they’ll hide the presence of any algae that starts growing.
Your water garden needs to be located in a location where it will get at minimum six hours of sun each day. Many water plants don’t thrive and flower well without at least that much sunlight, even though some bog plants will grow with less sun. The plants you pick for your garden should be varied for the prettiest effect. Choose some that float, a few submerged, and emergent species when selecting the plants you wish to incorporate into your garden. Plants provide the function of shading the water which, once again, diminishes the growth of algae. When you build a new water garden, however, you can expect your water to get cloudy-looking after a couple of weeks. Just hang on, though, and the plants and fish will eventually begin controlling the algae in the pond, and the water will begin to get clearer.
In addition to fish, you need to put a few snails in your water garden containers. Snails are instrumental in eating algae, fish waste matter, and decaying organic matter. Small fish, such as guppies, are recommended for containers that are 20 gallons or less; larger than that you can try a couple of goldfish. Guppies and other types of fish like that are excellent choices, because they handle changes in temperature well, and they gobble up those pesky mosquitoes.