Popular Pond Plants For Backyard Ponds

Pond plants do not help in adding a beautiful touch to your indoor water bodies, but these are also essential for living ecosystems all over the world. From flowering meadows to rainforests to oceans and your backyard pond, plants play a very important role. They provide vital habitat to all the water organisms like frogs, fish, and snails and perform many services for the pond.

In this post, we have listed some of the popular pond plants that will make your backyard pond look beautiful and also helps to create a well-balanced ecosystem.

Let’s dive right into the list!

Pond Plants Categories

Pond plants can be divided into five different categories. 

• Deep-Water Plants
• Submerged Plants
• Floating Plants
• Marginal Plants
• Bog Plants

Popular Pond Plants For Indoor Ponds:

Below we have listed different types of popular water garden plants that are beginner-friendly and also some koi pond friendly. These pond plants will definitely add a pop of color and greenery to your pond. 

Pitcher Plant

A purple pitcher is one of the most popular water garden pond plants. It is a type of bog plant and can be installed in the area around the pond. If you have a shallow pond, you can even grow pitcher plants in a pot and then keep the pot inside the pond. A pitcher plant gives interesting foliage as well as flowers.

Water Lilies

A water lily is also another popular example of floating pond plants that is perfect for deep ponds. The beautiful lily pads that grow along with the flower will make an interesting display.

Although water lily is a deep-water plant, it makes an equally interesting decoration for small ponds that are seven inches deep. 

However, you need to keep one trick in mind when growing soil based pond plants. Do not put the soil into a liner to form an actual pond bottom, instead grow them in pots, this way; it will be much easier for you to grow lilies. 

Corkscrew Rush

Another type of water plant for ponds is Corkscrew Rush. It has a twisting stem that looks like it’s having a bad hair day. Anyway, this is a kind of messy hair that is beautiful to look at. Even though this does not bloom beautiful flowers, it gives an interesting visual display to your pond. 

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Horsetail Rush

It is also a kind of bog water garden plants that usually grow in masses and multiply by itself. Horsetail rush has straight stems, unlike coiled and crooked stems of a corkscrew rush. If you have small ground space near the pond, avoid growing this aggressive plant. Instead, put them into pots. 

Rodgers Flower

Rodger flowers also make pretty pond plants with flowers and beautiful foliage. If your pond is somewhere near a wall, then growing a Rodger flower will give a pleasuring view with a suitable backdrop. 

For instance, grow a Rodger flower plant at the very end of the pond. This decent-sized perennial will offer bid, attractive and abundant leaves. Such bog plants are perfect for backgrounds that are bigger than your usual house walls.

Northern Blue Flag

These are a type of marginal pond plant. To install any marginal plant in a pond, you need to make some adjustments to the depth at which you will keep the pot. This is done to avoid it from drowning in the water. 

If you have a large pond, you will have to build shelves to house marginal plants. But if you have a small pond, all you need to do is pot the plants on bricks.

Floating pond plants like water-hyacinth are much easier to grow in ponds. After you are done installing all your plants, you see space on your pond’s surface; you can cover it by growing floating pond plants.

Blue flag plants will add a burst of color to your water garden.

Golden Sweet Flag

Another popular marginal water garden plants are Organ Golden. This is a grass-like plant with varied color leaves. These plants are used as ornamental grasses that can tolerate wet soils. However, these do not belong to the grass family; they are from the Poaceae family. This plant will add a beautiful charm to your water bodies.

Mosquito Fern

Mosquito fern is among the most beginner-friendly floating pond plants. It gets its name from its quality to cover the surface quickly, which helps prevent insects and mosquitoes from laying their eggs in water.

This is a small pond plant species with a length of only 1 inch; it has two tiny rows of leaves on both sides of the stem. Mosquito fern can quickly propagate and double up within 7-10 days. Because the water garden plants are aggressive growers, they need less care, which makes them beginner-friendly. 

However, if you have fish in your pond, avoid growing this as it can reduce the oxygen level.

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Creeping Jenny

Also known as Moneywort because of its small penny size succulent like green leaves. The leaves of Creeping jenny branch from the main stems and can grow 12 inches tall. This plant also produces yellow/white flowers that attract bees and butterflies to the water garden making the environment so serene to look at. Creeping Jenny is like marginal plants that prefer wet substrate and 2-3 inches deep water to provide shade for baby fishes.

It is very simple to grow creepy jenny. As it grows bigger, it will produce white roots along with the leaf nodes. When they grow a couple of inches in length, cut the stem, leave one inch below the root system and replant the cuttings elsewhere. 

Parrots Feather

Another popular among those pond plants are parrots feather. These water garden plants have an underwater root system that can be anchored into substrates or simply absorb the nutrients from the water column. This plant gets the name because of its tiny green feather-like leaves that branch out from the stems. 

These leaves remain open during the daytime to absorb sunlight and do photosynthesis. However, as the sun sets, these leaves close together to respire. This is an invasive plant species because it grows super fast with its stems and shoots, competing with native species. 

Blue Iris

If you want your pond to be surrounded by beautiful flowers, then grow blue iris. Blue iris is a bog/semi-aquatic plant that grows perfectly well in shallow water that adorns the ponds throughout the year.

These pond plants can also be grown in wet soil around the pond border. You will have to repot this plant every few years to encourage its growth. If you want your plant to bloom beautiful flowers, then use a general water fertilizer or maybe a slow-release fertilizer rock. This particular species can grow upto 5 feet tall with the help of the right fertilizers.

Sweet Flag

Sweet flag is a beautiful perennial herb that can grow as high as 60 inches. This plant has three edge stems with a green base and dark tip. The leaves of these plants are shaped like a sword with wavy edges. 

A sweet flag can be grown along the west border of the ponds or into the margins. These are the only pond plants that can grow flowers growing in the margins. It is a self-propagating plant with creeping roots which produce rhizomes that can be used to grow another sweet flag.

Pickerel

Another popular type of pond flowers is from pickerel plant. This plant belongs to a perennial species and can grow upto 4 feet high. The leaves look like spearheads in bright green color with a maximum of 7 inches in length.

Pickerel usually blooms flowers during early fall or late summers. The flowers of these pond plants are small in size with a tubular shape and deep blue color. When growing, these plants always plant them in baskets with fertile clay, humus, and sand along the margins of shallow ponds that receive direct sunlight. 

Water Smartweed

Water smartweed is one of the most popular Koi pond plants that grow on the muddy surface of shallow water regions. The best part about water smartweed is that it can even float on the surface of your koi pond. 

It has a thick stem with alternate dagger-like leaves that protrude. You will see a beautiful bright pink cluster of flowers on the tip of the stem. 

Water Hyacinth

Water hyacinth is a water plant from South America. This is classified among the aggressive and invasive pond plant species which can inhabit slow-flowing ponds and water bodies.

These are beautiful floating pond plants that thrive best under direct sunlight. It has large green leaves that float on the surface of the pond and an erect stem system that blooms with beautiful blue and purple flowers and a yellow center.

Under the water surface, its root in the dark black color spread upto 12 inches deep, providing a perfect habitat for fishes to hide in. This is a very beginner-friendly pond plant that you will not regret.

Water Clover

Water clover is also among the popular floating koi pond plants, which looks similar to four-leaf clovers in appearance. It produces rhizomes that can spread along the pond edges through the substrate in sunny regions. You can cut these rhizomes and replant them in different areas.

Water clover helps to provide decent shade to your Koi fishes and protect them from heat while giving required filtration to water. These plants do not cover the entire water surface; instead, they take small spaces of different areas.

Some prefer deep water; others prefer shallow water, which gives them a lot of space to grow and spread. Water cloves absorb all the essential nutrients from the water, which would otherwise be consumed by algae making your entire pond green. 

Final Words:

Water plants can cover a lot of different areas of your pond. Some submerge under the water completely while others free float on the surface. Some pond plants prefer shallow water, while others love deep water levels giving them more room to grow.

The water garden plants listed in this post perform different functions for the pond’s ecosystem. Some provide shade to the fishes, while some help in water filtration and other act as a home for the fishes to lay eggs. Whatever be the purpose, these plants surely add a beautiful touch to ponds.

 Now you are all set to pick the right plants for your house pond. If you like this article, do not forget to leave a comment below!