Spring Plant Care

Re-potting and overall care of your water plants is very important to pond health and ease of maintenance. If you don't at least take a look at your lilies, marginals, and/or lotus you will kick yourself down the road.

Not dividing your lilies drastically changes their appearance and health. Lilies can very quickly jump their pot and grow into the other strata of your pond. Trust me, as someone who does maintenance, you don't want to mess with this. Especially if you rocked the bottom of your pond. Not dividing will also change the appearance of your lilies. As they crowd the pot, and each other, the leaves will stand out of the water and the plant will not bloom nearly as often or as well.


Lotus are a less common water plant, but are so stunning they should be in every water garden. There are multiple sizes of this plant, so even with a small pond, you can find a complimentary lotus. Propagation of lotus can be difficult due to very delicate growth tips. You must find the 'knuckles' behind the tubers and cut behind that narrowing point, than replant and cover the tuber. It doesn't sound that difficult, but care must be taken.


Marginals are usually much easier to re-pot than the other water plants, but many of them are aggressive and just as important to care for. Unless you are going to keep a yearly eye on certain marginals, I would suggest not even putting them in your pond. Make sure to check how aggressive or invasive certain plants are if they are planted directly into your pond or if you will not be cutting them back at least once a year. There are so many different plants that can be called marginal I won't go into specifics, but most can simply be divided and re-potted. The one point I will focus on is if these marginals are exceptionally good filter plants, consider potting them in a mesh pot with pea gravel alone. If a great filter plant, such as pickerel or thalia, is planted directly into pea gravel the roots have even more contact with water and filter that much better. As I said before, make sure the plants you use are not too aggressive if you aren't going to tend to them during the year.

Make sure to talk to a local specialist or contact us for more in depth information about plant maintenance. Also consider fertilization, especially with lotus and lilies, due the their heavy feeding habits. Good luck with your spring ponding.