If you love the idea of having a backyard pond but don't have the space—or even the yard!—to put one in, a water garden in a container is a deck and balcony-friendly alternative.
Photo by Editor B.
Home and apartment blog Apartment Therapy has a great solution for people craving an outdoor water feature but short on the space to put in even a modest in-ground pond—a container water garden.
Small-container water gardens are actually a collection of submerged potted plants, which makes them easy to set up and to rearrange at will. You can use just about any container to start your water garden, but pots with dark interiors give an impression of greater depth, discourage algae growth, and make algae less obvious when it does grow. Best of all, most water plants are tough so the garden is low maintenance, and even those of us with a black thumb have a chance because they are generally hard to kill.
Check out the full article for additional tips and resources. We have a tip we'd like to tack on for people living in mosquito-infested areas. To keep mosquitoes from turning your outdoor water feature into a breeding ground you should either install a small pump to keep the surface of the water gentle bubbling/rippling—mosquitoes won't land on moving water to lay eggs—or you should put a small goldfish or two in your container. The goldfish will happily eat every mosquito larva they find, just remember to bring them in for the winter if your locale experiences sub-freezing winter weather.
Have a tip or trick to share for tending a water garden? Let's hear about it in the comments.
Making Your Own Container Water Garden [Apartment Therapy]