Using Water Garden Containers to Design an Urban Oasis
For big city dwellers, yard space is an unheard of luxury. With apartment houses constructed right on the streets and a small amount of communal land in back of the buildings, there’s no way to grow a garden or cultivate a lot of flowers. You can, however, think small. If you have a balcony or a deck, or even a fire escape, you can produce a water garden in containers that will give you the aura of an in-ground water feature. You’ll be able to enjoy sounds of the water gurgling and observe tiny fish swimming, grow water plants, and take advantage of the serenity nothing but a water garden can offer. Water garden containers give you the starting place for developing a watery environment in very little space.
Coming up with water garden containers isn’t as confusing as deciding exactly what you’d like. A recommended capacity for a container is 15-25 gallons, and any kind of container in that size range will be okay. You will also require containers to plant your water plants in, because plants have to be grown in separate pots and then put into the water-filled container. It’s better to select a container with a dark interior, because the dark color will provide your pond with the look of depth. Dark interiors are also more environmentally-friendly in that they won’t attract algae and yet they’ll mask the presence of any algae that starts to grow.
Your water garden needs to be located where it will get at least six hours of sun every day. Many water plants don’t grow and flower well without at least that much sunlight, although some bog plants will be all right with less sun. The plants you select for your garden need to be varied for the best effect. Choose some floating, a few that grow under water, and emergent species when selecting the plants you wish to include. Plants provide the function of shading the water which, once again, diminishes the growth of algae. When you create a new water garden, however, you can expect your water to get cloudy after a couple of weeks. Just hang on, though, and the plants and fish will slowly but surely begin controlling the algae population, 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 products, and decaying organic matter. Really 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 ideal choices, because they adapt to changes in temperature well, and they eat those pesky mosquitoes.
