WATER GARDEN CALENDAR

Please click on a relevant Month to Find the latest Tips.

For those of you desperate for inspiration on the water garden design line check out the Royal Horticultural Society website at www.rhs.org.uk . The RHS organise all the biggest shows in the UK, starting the season off with the Malvern Spring Flower Show. The Malvern Spring Flower Show has just happened but the gem of gems of all flower shows in the world is the Chelsea Flower Show starting on the 20th May. They will have all the major gardens on display on the website and some of them will be in ‘360degree-zoom-in- zoom-out' mode. The Hampton Court Flower Show at the beginning of July is particularly inspirational for water gardeners because there is a special section of display gardens that are exclusively water gardens. As flower shows go, it is probably the biggest in the world.

Jobs for the month.

Keep your eyes peeled for the herons. A lot of my customers and clients are having problems with herons as building developments of flood plains forces them to exploit new habitats. If your fish have disappeared from view and lurk shyly in the bottom of the pool and don't feed, suspect you've had a visit. Look into ‘heron scarers' at Blagdon Water Gardens.

Now you can go to town adding new plants to the pool. A good time to get lilies and or divide them now,
Check new plants for clusters of snail's eggs. You don't want them to end up as fodder for these pests. If you are going to have snails, get the ramshorn shaped ones. There are much less likely to consume your water hawthorn and oxygenators.

Watch for fish spawning. If the pool is highly populated, you could rescue some and hatch it in a tank. It may be lying in amongst the oxygenators.
Now is the time that everything seems literally burgeoning and if the problem of algae does not begin to subside if you do something about it now, you may be able to push the balance over to a more favourable position. Start with ecological solutions like eco-algicides, barley straw and extra plants before the heavy chemicals and the mechanical technology. If you live in a hot sunny part of the world then you will have had to resort to biofilter technology as a routine. I will go into this a little more some time in the future, so be patient especially if you are just starting up. It can take anything up to 6 or 8 weeks to get that old nitrogen cycle rolling.

Plants looking good are the Water Hawthorn (Aponogeton distachyos), Bog Bean (Menyanthes trifoliate), the foliage of Houttynia cordata in all its forms is looking good and there's good looking Hostas out in the bog garden along with the Globe Flower (Trollius europaeus). The double Marsh Marigold (Caltha palustris plena) is following in the wake of its cousin. Lots more to come by the end of the month including some of the Irises.