{"id":91,"date":"2026-08-24T19:41:19","date_gmt":"2026-08-24T19:41:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/team.splashsupplyco.com\/?p=91"},"modified":"2026-08-24T20:52:58","modified_gmt":"2026-08-24T20:52:58","slug":"2026-tim-jennings-plant-talk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/team.splashsupplyco.com\/?p=91","title":{"rendered":"2026 Tim Jennings Plant Talk"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I might have been doing this for 35 years, but I still go home and ask myself the same questions you guys ask: When am I going to be able to work in the garden? Why can’t I get this done? Why am I doing this?<\/p>\n

I’m just going to share some of those thoughts with you as we go through. It’ll be fun.<\/p>\n

Before I forget, you all have an open invitation to come to Longwood. If you’re members, you can get in. If you’re not a member, you might want to think about becoming one.<\/p>\n

I’ve already been asked a couple of times when the best time is to come to Longwood to see the water lilies. The peak time for viewing the water lily display is usually from early July through September. It only gets better as the season goes along. What’s here is beautiful, but if you come back in two weeks, you’ll see that it’ll be even better.<\/p>\n

The plants take a little bit of time to get started in the spring, but once we get consistently warm temperatures, these things love it.<\/p>\n

Soil and Fertilizer<\/h2>\n

We’re talking about plants and how to get the most out of them, so I thought we’d take a few minutes to talk about soil, fertilizers, and all the things you’re going to need to do to keep your plants looking good.<\/p>\n

You can buy a plant here that looks really good, take it home, and put it in your garden. But if you don’t take care of it once it’s there, you’re not going to get the most out of it. If you do take care of it, you can keep it going for a long time and extend the season in your garden from now right through September, if you want to.<\/p>\n

Water lilies enjoy growing in a heavy, clay-based soil. That soil has a couple of properties we don’t normally like, but water lilies love that stickiness and heaviness. It helps keep the plants anchored in place when you plant them, versus sandy or gravelly soil.<\/p>\n

All of those soils can grow water lilies, but we’ve found that the best soils are those that are on the heavier clay side.<\/p>\n

I have a friend in New Jersey. You guys know New Jersey\u2014it’s about as sandy as you can get. He adds cat litter to his soil.<\/p>\n

Now, a little caveat: Don’t get clumping or scented cat litter. Get natural cat litter. It’s clay. That’s all natural cat litter is\u2014clay. He incorporates a little bit of clay from inexpensive natural cat litter right into his soil, and he gets amazing results in a very sandy soil.<\/p>\n

The reason is that clay has the ability to hold onto nutrients. If you do any reading about soils, you’ll learn about something called CEC, or cation exchange capacity. That’s really the ability of a soil to hold onto nutrients so they’re not leaching away.<\/p>\n

A good plant always starts with the soil. A lot of people don’t think about that, but the soil is important.<\/p>\n

This bag is pretty heavy, so I would imagine it’s got a good clay-based structure to it. It’s available here. If you have a garden and you can dig soil right out of your garden, you can add it to this and mix it together.<\/p>\n

Just start with a good, heavy soil and you won’t be disappointed.<\/p>\n

Pots and Planting<\/h2>\n

A lot of people talk about pots. Everything you’re going to buy here is going to come in a pot.<\/p>\n

Let’s say you get this plant in a pot. You can take this pot and put it right in the garden as it is right now if you want to. But if you look down in here, you’ll see that it’s probably only about half full.<\/p>\n

Normally, if I was going to keep the plant in the pot I bought it in, I would take my knife and cut around the edges so I could take the whole pot and set it in there.<\/p>\n

But if you want this plant to get even bigger, you’re going to want to think about putting it into a bigger pot\u2014stepping it up.<\/p>\n

Many of you have shelves that run around your ponds. The old-fashioned way of building a pond was to have your liner come in and create a little shelf, maybe a foot wide.<\/p>\n

If you already have that, no worries. I have plenty of tips for you on how to make it work.<\/p>\n

But if you’re thinking about putting in a pond, or if you’re ready to renovate a pond, consider extending those shelf areas out to two or three feet. You’ve given yourself so much more room to add plants and start putting plants together that complement each other.<\/p>\n

You can create textural differences and height differences.<\/p>\n

So don’t worry\u2014either way works. But if you’re thinking about putting in a pond, and maybe this is a question I should have asked before I started rambling, how many of you have ponds?<\/p>\n

Most of you. Great.<\/p>\n

When you put your ponds in, they’re beautiful. You put them in because you want the beauty that comes from these ponds.<\/p>\n

When you start looking at the plantings, that’s where it gets really fun, because now you can start taking some of the same things you think about when you’re planting your perennial garden or your outdoor containers and apply those same principles to your water garden.<\/p>\n

You want to think about textures, colors, forms, and how you put them together.<\/p>\n

Even if you just do a container garden, think about that familiar rule: fillers, spillers, and thrillers.<\/strong><\/p>\n

You want something that’s going to draw your attention. You want something that’s going to fill in the space around it so you don’t see a lot of the soil. And you want something that’s going to cascade out of the container.<\/p>\n

Those same principles apply in the water garden and in your perennial garden.<\/p>\n

We often have these rules we think we have to follow, but I’m trying to tell you that the same things you do in your garden, you can do in your water garden. It just might take a little more thought about how to go about it.<\/p>\n

Fertilizing Water Lilies<\/h2>\n

Here’s your soil. Now let’s talk about fertilizer.<\/p>\n

In most cases, fertilizer is going to be in pelletized form. These aren’t PondTabs, but they’re similar. Think of them like Job’s fertilizer spikes that you put around fruit trees. They’re essentially the same thing, except they’re formulated for water lilies.<\/p>\n

They’re really efficient at putting nutrients where the plants want them\u2014in the soil.<\/p>\n

You can take one of these, push it into the soil, and put the food right where the roots are going to get it. That’s much better than dropping fertilizer into the water.<\/p>\n

Because what happens when you put fertilizer in the water?<\/p>\n

Algae.<\/p>\n

Getting fertilizer into the soil\u2014and especially into a soil that has a lot of clay\u2014helps hold those nutrients there until the plant can use them.<\/p>\n

At Longwood, we’re fertilizing about every two weeks. One week we’ll fertilize all of our tropical plants, and the next week we’ll fertilize all of our hardy plants. Then we start the cycle again.<\/p>\n

We do that from around mid-June through early September.<\/p>\n

At that point, with your hardy plants, you want to be careful. You don’t want to keep feeding your plants late in the season because fertilizer makes plants grow.<\/p>\n

When the days get shorter and the nights get cooler, that signals the plant that it’s time to start getting ready for winter. If you’re telling the plant to keep growing, you could be doing the opposite of what the plant naturally wants to do.<\/p>\n

Usually by late August or early September, we’re making our last feeding on our hardy plants. That gives them time to slow down and start getting ready for winter.<\/p>\n

These fertilizer tablets can go in as soon as you plant. If you take these plants home today, repot your plant into a bigger pot and put the fertilizer tablets around it.<\/p>\n

Start with whatever the recommended rate is, but understand something about water lilies: They are heavy feeders.<\/strong><\/p>\n

All these plants are amazingly good at using nutrients.<\/p>\n

If you start out with, let’s say, two tablets per eight-inch pot, don’t be afraid later in the season, when they’re really growing, to put four in there. You will not be disappointed.<\/p>\n

These plants love fertilizer.<\/p>\n

In fact, I tell people sometimes that it’s a good thing some of these plants are in water because if they weren’t, they’d be taking over the world.<\/p>\n

Some of these plants can be really aggressive, but the benefit of having them in water is that they can’t go anywhere.<\/p>\n

They’re great plants for filling in very quickly, especially as the heat comes on.<\/p>\n

Planting Bags<\/h2>\n

I see he brought over a couple of planting bags. I brought my own planting bags because I wasn’t sure what you had.<\/p>\n

These are amazing.<\/p>\n

Some plants like to be just moist. Some plants like to be under an inch of water. Some plants, like water lilies, want to be a foot or more under the water.<\/p>\n

With these bags, you don’t have to worry about that anymore.<\/p>\n

What’s nice about these little bags is that they’re kind of like tree bags or nursery bags.<\/p>\n

If you want this on your shelf and your shelf is only six inches deep, you just roll this back to the water level you want, fill it with soil, and it’s going to get covered with whatever happens in your water. That brownish color will naturally fade away, and you won’t even notice it in a couple of weeks.<\/p>\n

You can make it six inches deep, eight inches deep, or whatever depth you want.<\/p>\n

These bags are lifesavers.<\/p>\n

I saw these at a garden once, and we’d never used them at Longwood. I thought, “Wow.” We used to go around cutting pots, and it was a pain. It was ugly.<\/p>\n

This is a very, very good way to go about potting up plants that you get here.<\/p>\n

If you take this hibiscus and put it in this pot, you’re going to have something that’s six or seven feet tall. It’s going to demand your attention in the garden.<\/p>\n

It’s amazing what giving plants a little bit more soil than what they’re sold in can do.<\/p>\n

Remember, these guys need to sell these plants so you can carry them home. You’re not going to find them in these bags because you couldn’t carry them.<\/p>\n

Get the plant home, grab a bag of soil, grab some gravel or something to put on top, pot it up, and water it in.<\/p>\n

Once you put it in the water, you’ll be amazed at how the buoyancy of these things allows you to handle plants that would normally feel like dead weight.<\/p>\n

The bags are lifesavers.<\/p>\n

I would encourage everybody to use these bags for water lilies. You can use them for any of the marginal plants you have around your garden. They come in different sizes.<\/p>\n

Sometimes you might want to think about having a container garden in your water garden. Get one of these bigger bags. This might be made for a lotus or something similar, but there’s no reason why you can’t pretend this is a container on your deck and plant it up the same way we just talked about.<\/p>\n

Look for your thriller plant\u2014the thing that’s going to give you that wow factor. Figure out what you need to fill in around it so you don’t see all the soil, and then put some plants around the edges that are going to creep around.<\/p>\n

Instead of falling over, these plants will float out into the water and create a kind of mosaic pattern on the surface.<\/p>\n

It’s unbelievable what you can do with these bags.<\/p>\n

I’ll never go away from them.<\/p>\n

So that’s the pots, soil, and fertilizing. I can’t overemphasize that these are heavy feeders.<\/p>\n

Sun and Pond Placement<\/h2>\n

When you guys put your ponds in, there are a couple of things to think about.<\/p>\n

In general, most of these plants do their best in full sun.<\/p>\n

That doesn’t mean some won’t grow in shade, but the more sun you can give them, the better.<\/p>\n

If you’re siting your pond, think about that.<\/p>\n

A lot of times people will look out their window and decide, “This is where I want to put a pond,” and there are trees around them that don’t have leaves yet.<\/p>\n

Pretty soon, those trees will have leaves, and they’ll shade out your pond.<\/p>\n

If you’re putting in a pond, or even if you have a small tree, remember that trees get big over time.<\/p>\n

I’ve been at our place for 20 years, and it’s amazing how the garden transforms over time.<\/p>\n

Think about deciduous trees especially. They can be a nuisance to a water garden for a couple of reasons.<\/p>\n

One is the shade they’ll cast in the summertime. Watch the way the sun moves across your property. You might be on the right side of your pond to have a tree.<\/p>\n

But then think about all those leaves that have to drop in the fall.<\/p>\n

We don’t want to make this a hassle for you, but realize that anything that’s going to drop its leaves will drop them into your pond.<\/p>\n

You know how it goes\u2014the wind path is going to be right across your pond.<\/p>\n

Your neighbors’ trees are going to drop their leaves. Your trees are going to drop their leaves.<\/p>\n

Plan ahead for that.<\/p>\n

Get the right-size skimmers. Consider netting. Whatever you need to do, plan for it.<\/p>\n

And don’t forget that the people here are a resource. I can’t tell you how much I’ve learned just talking to Mark.<\/p>\n

I guess I can disclose this: They’re actually going to build our pond.<\/p>\n

We’re getting our first pond. I’ve been working at Longwood for 35 years, and all I have at home is a whiskey barrel.<\/p>\n

But we’re finally putting in a pond because I’m not getting any younger, and I certainly want to keep growing these giant water platters. It’s kind of an obsession.<\/p>\n

So they’re going to put a pond in, and I’ll be able to grow some of these water platters at home.<\/p>\n

It should be fun. I’m looking forward to it.<\/p>\n

But you guys all have ponds, and you know the joy you’re going to get from them.<\/p>\n

Tools for the Water Garden<\/h2>\n

For those of you getting into your pond for the first time\u2014or doing some dividing for the first time\u2014do you have an old handsaw at home? Maybe one you used to chop down limbs from trees that’s getting kind of dull and you don’t know what to do with it?<\/p>\n

This is the perfect time to repurpose that tool into a water lily dividing tool.<\/p>\n

You can take these tools and cut right through your water lilies and the soil to divide them. It doesn’t matter if they’re sharp. In fact, it’s probably better if they’re not.<\/p>\n

You probably already use a hori-hori knife, or Japanese digging knife, in your garden. These are great for cutting through things, too. They have a very coarse serrated edge.<\/p>\n

But probably my favorite\u2014and the only tool I really use in the pond\u2014is a little pocket knife.<\/p>\n

I use it to deadhead flowers and remove old foliage.<\/p>\n

One of my biggest fears with any pond that’s not concrete is getting a hole in the liner.<\/p>\n

You’ll notice I attached a little band to my knife because I’m notorious for dropping things. All I can see is that knife going down and going right into the liner.<\/p>\n

Even at work, where we have concrete pools, our students are always dropping knives and trying to find them in the water. It’s especially difficult when we’ve dyed the water black.<\/p>\n

These knives are amazing, but they come super sharp. When your hands are soft and a knife is sharp, that’s not a good combination.<\/p>\n

I sometimes purposely dull these knives.<\/p>\n

When you’re deadheading water lilies, everything is soft tissue. You can reach in and use the knife gently to clip things off.<\/p>\n

So get yourself a good pocket knife. Repurpose your old pruning saw\u2014or get a new one, because you’ll be much happier when you go to prune things.<\/p>\n

And this little knife will help you in the garden and wherever else you’re working.<\/p>\n

Really, these are the only three tools we use.<\/p>\n

They’re easy tools to get and have on hand when you need them, because the last thing you want to do is hunt for something when you’re ready to get into the water.<\/p>\n

Hardy and Tropical Water Lilies<\/h2>\n

Everybody starts out thinking about plants in their water garden, and they start thinking about water lilies.<\/p>\n

Everybody wants water lilies when they put their pond in. They’re kind of the iconic plant for the water gardener.<\/p>\n

Water lilies come in two broad categories: hardy and tropical.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Hardy water lilies are like your perennials. They’re going to die back and come back next year. They’ll occasionally need to be divided.<\/p>\n

Eventually, you’re probably going to have to get rid of them or divide them because they creep like an iris in your garden. They’ll climb around, climb right out of their pot, and sometimes root into the mud on the bottom of your pond.<\/p>\n

Occasionally dividing them helps keep that clump under control.<\/p>\n

Hardy water lilies are pretty unique, and they have one trait you all need to know about: They have the most unique bloom time.<\/strong><\/p>\n

They open around 9:00 and close around four or five o’clock.<\/p>\n

Does anybody here work?<\/p>\n

Not anymore?<\/p>\n

Well, I’m close to you, but I’m not there yet. I’m still leaving work before I see any water lilies blooming.<\/p>\n

For those of you who work, it’s a good thing we have tropical plants for a couple of reasons.<\/p>\n

Hardy water lilies are going to be a staple plant in your garden. They come in white, yellow, pink, and red.<\/p>\n

If you think of Monet’s work, many of his paintings were of hardy water lilies. Those pastel colors that blend together and create that impressionistic look are what you can expect from a hardy water lily.<\/p>\n

On the tropical side, you get the opposite.<\/p>\n

You get this very loud, in-your-face, “I’m here\u2014take a look at me!” kind of plant.<\/p>\n

Everything about tropical water lilies is bigger. Everything about tropical water lilies is more vibrant.<\/p>\n

The two complement each other.<\/p>\n

You might think, “I want a pink garden,” or “I want a red garden,” or “I want a white garden.” People often categorize gardens by color.<\/p>\n

But in a water garden, almost anything goes.<\/p>\n

You can’t go wrong with the colors. Maybe I wouldn’t put orange right next to pink, but generally, you can’t go wrong because water lilies have such unique qualities that allow them to blend together.<\/p>\n

You can even put a blue tropical water lily in your pond.<\/p>\n

In fact, you can buy a blue water lily that might be hardy in your pond now. They’re kind of on the blue-purple side because breeders have started crossing hardy and tropical water lilies.<\/p>\n

Everybody wants a hardy blue water lily.<\/p>\n

There’s one back here called “Detective Erika.” It was one of the winners in our competition that Mark was talking about. It was one of the most prolific bloomers and is still one of the plants that draws the most attention.<\/p>\n

We leave it in the water. Just take it and put it down at the bottom of your pond with your other water lilies.<\/p>\n

In the spring, when it starts to put up new growth, bring it back up to the surface where it can get more light.<\/p>\n

There are more and more options coming along. They’re called intersubgeneric hybrids because the water lily family includes hardy water lilies, tropical day bloomers, and tropical night bloomers, each in their own subgenus.<\/p>\n

Tropical Night-Blooming Water Lilies<\/h2>\n

Let’s switch gears.<\/p>\n

Everybody here needs a tropical night-blooming water lily.<\/p>\n

If you have room in your pond, you will not be disappointed if you put one in.<\/p>\n

The day-blooming tropicals are much more vibrant. Their flowers come way out of the water, and their leaves can be absolutely gorgeous with their markings.<\/p>\n

You don’t need many. One plant can give you the wow factor you’re looking for.<\/p>\n

By incorporating hardy water lilies, tropical day-blooming water lilies, and one tropical night bloomer, you get a great combination.<\/p>\n

Why do you want a tropical night bloomer?<\/p>\n

Because it blooms at night.<\/p>\n

Their color ranges are more limited. You generally get pink, red, and white.<\/p>\n

But if you incorporate one tropical night bloomer into your pond, you’ve taken your pond from being a daytime pond to something where you can literally have something in bloom around the clock.<\/p>\n

At dusk, the night bloomers open as your other water lilies are closing.<\/p>\n

And the surprising thing is, it doesn’t matter if you’re a morning person or a night person.<\/p>\n

I’m a morning person. You can take a cup of coffee out to your pond in the morning and see the most gorgeous water lilies wide open, as if they just opened.<\/p>\n

They’re amazing.<\/p>\n

The bees go in and out of the flowers at Longwood. When I go there, they’re covered in pollen.<\/p>\n

If you’re a night person, take a glass of wine out to your pond. You can view your pond at night, and you can view it again in the morning.<\/p>\n

You can let your day bloomers bloom while you’re working. You might catch a glimpse of them when you come home, but you’ll have them on the weekends to enjoy.<\/p>\n

Try to incorporate everything that’s available in water lilies because you want to expand your viewing pleasure.<\/p>\n

If water lilies are what you like, why not make the season as long as possible?<\/p>\n

And if you take the price of a tropical water lily and divide it by the number of days of enjoyment you get from it, it’s pennies a day.<\/p>\n

It’s really not that expensive.<\/p>\n

You don’t need to put in ten tropical night bloomers. One will give you an impact. One tropical day bloomer will give you an impact.<\/p>\n

Then all the hardy ones that come back year after year will help fill in the space around them and complement them.<\/p>\n

Add all three and you won’t be disappointed.<\/p>\n

Adding Vertical Elements<\/h2>\n

If you look out at your pond and think, “It’s awful flat,” with water lilies sitting on the surface and maybe a few flowers sticking up here and there, this is where the fun comes in.<\/p>\n

Look around and tell me what your eye immediately goes to.<\/p>\n

Height. Vertical elements.<\/strong><\/p>\n

By adding vertical elements to the garden, you stop your eye.<\/p>\n

If you have a flat pond and look across it, your eye is going to go right to the other side.<\/p>\n

But if you want to see things in your pond, stick a couple of vertical elements in there. You don’t even have to think about it. Your eye goes right to them and stops.<\/p>\n

That’s what your eye does.<\/p>\n

We already use vertical elements in our landscapes. You put up hedges so you don’t see your neighbor’s old boat in his yard.<\/p>\n

But sometimes we forget about using vertical elements right in the pond.<\/p>\n

Put a night bloomer here, and if you’re viewing it from this direction, put something vertical somewhere behind it.<\/p>\n

All you’re doing is stopping your eye.<\/p>\n

It doesn’t have to be big. It can be a cattail, a canna, or almost anything.<\/p>\n

Your eye will hit that vertical element, then move down, and you’ll focus right on what you wanted to see\u2014the night-blooming or day-blooming water lilies.<\/p>\n

Use vertical elements to your advantage. They break up that plane of flatness you can sometimes get from having only water lilies.<\/p>\n

Marginal Plants<\/h2>\n

Now I’m going to show you a couple of my favorite plants.<\/p>\n

There are hardy and tropical miscellaneous marginal plants. Sometimes people refer to them as bog plants, but a bog is really a different thing. It relates more to insectivorous plants.<\/p>\n

Think of marginal plants as plants you might see along the edges of banks where the soil stays moist, perhaps under a couple of inches of water.<\/p>\n

When you’re thinking about where in your pond you’re going to put water lilies, there’s another thing to consider.<\/p>\n

I’m sorry I’m jumping around on you. These things are just coming to mind.<\/p>\n

I tend to be a very spontaneous gardener as well as a spontaneous speaker, so I will jump around on you. But we’ll be here to answer any questions you have.<\/p>\n

That reminds me: Everybody has waterfalls in their pond.<\/p>\n

When you’re putting your plants in, keep them out of the way of the waterfall.<\/p>\n

Most of these plants do not like running water. They don’t like current or splashing water.<\/p>\n

You’re going to have your pond with your waterfall off to the left or right. The areas in front and off to the sides are where your plants are going to do the best.<\/p>\n

That will also allow your waterfall to be more visible and enjoyable.<\/p>\n

You don’t want to throw all these plants around your waterfall and have the waterfall push them all over the place. They’re never going to look as good.<\/p>\n

Find the still parts of your pond, where there’s the least amount of current, and your plants will do much better.<\/p>\n

Papyrus<\/h2>\n

One of my favorite tropical accents in the garden is papyrus.<\/p>\n

They come in all different sizes.<\/p>\n

This is the Egyptian paper plant. This one is going to get six to eight feet tall, maybe taller than I am.<\/p>\n

It’s going to have this airy, grassy texture to it. It’s actually a member of the sedge family.<\/p>\n

Do you guys know what makes a sedge a sedge?<\/p>\n

If you take plant identification courses, one of the things you’ll learn about is the difference between sedges, rushes, and grasses.<\/p>\n

One of the sayings you learn in school is:<\/p>\n

“Sedges have edges.”<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you run your finger around this plant, you’ll see that it’s very triangular.<\/p>\n

Sedges have edges. Rushes are round. I don’t remember what the saying for grasses was.<\/p>\n

For me, sedges have these triangular edges.<\/p>\n

This is the Egyptian paper plant.<\/p>\n

You can actually make your own paper from it.<\/p>\n

Let’s talk about that for a minute.<\/p>\n

Does anybody have an antique that you sometimes see around? You used to take clothes and put them through two rollers and spin the rollers. I think it was called a ringer.<\/p>\n

If you have one, you have the perfect papyrus paper-making machine.<\/p>\n

If you don’t, I’ve just given all of you a reason to buy antiques.<\/p>\n

Papyrus paper is easy to make.<\/p>\n

These stems get to be maybe the size of a half dollar, and they’re very triangular.<\/p>\n

You cut off the outside and expose the pulpy middle of the plant.<\/p>\n

Take that pulpy middle and slice it into thin layers and put them in a bowl of water.<\/p>\n

The water is going to get a little milky because lignins are being released from the tissue. You can think of lignins as plant glue.<\/p>\n

Take those slivers, put them in the water at right angles, run them through your ringer a couple of times, hang them on a clothesline, and you’ve made papyrus paper.<\/p>\n

Maybe you’re not going to do it, and that’s okay. It’s just fun to know how.<\/p>\n

We have volunteers who have made papyrus paper, and that’s how they did it.<\/p>\n

What a great vertical plant.<\/p>\n

Before I leave this plant, though, can you tell me where the flowers are?<\/p>\n

They’re that thing at the top.<\/p>\n

How many plants do you know where everything is green?<\/p>\n

The stems are green. This fluffy part at the top, which is going to be the flower, is green. And these coarse, blade-like, grassy-looking structures are called bracts.<\/p>\n

Do you know poinsettias?<\/p>\n

Bracts are the colorful part of a poinsettia.<\/p>\n

When you buy a poinsettia, you’re not buying petals that are red. You’re buying bracts that are red.<\/p>\n

Bracts are modified leaves right below a group of flowers.<\/p>\n

So the flowers are green, the bracts are green, and the stems are green.<\/p>\n

This plant doesn’t need anything else.<\/p>\n

It’s a great plant.<\/p>\n

You can have it in your water, but you can also plant it outside in the garden right next to your pond.<\/p>\n

Softening the Pond’s Hardscape<\/h2>\n

Why do that?<\/p>\n

Ponds are notoriously known for being hardscaped.<\/p>\n

Hardscaping is beautiful, but the more we can soften it with plants, the better we’re going to be.<\/p>\n

What better way to soften it than with the same plants you can grow in your pond and outside your pond?<\/p>\n

Three feet away from your pond, dig a hole and plant this in the ground.<\/p>\n

You’re going to have to bring your hose over to fill your pond from time to time. When you do, give this plant a good drink.<\/p>\n

Put it behind your pond. Put it beside your pond.<\/p>\n

Think about some of these plants that can grow outside the pond as well as inside.<\/p>\n

They’ll soften the transition from a rock-surrounded garden into a much more natural-looking garden.<\/p>\n

So enough about papyrus.<\/p>\n

Just remember, you can get them from 12 inches to two feet, three feet, six feet, and beyond.<\/p>\n

Container gardens, pond shelves, or outside the pond\u2014what a great plant.<\/p>\n

As it warms up, this plant is going to go from maybe three feet high right now to six-plus feet and three or four times as wide.<\/p>\n

They’re incredible growers.<\/p>\n

A lot of times people say, “Well, I don’t want to throw it away in the fall.”<\/p>\n

Most of these plants are so easy and fast-growing that buying them in the spring and treating them as annuals makes sense.<\/p>\n

You can save some of them over, but trying to overwinter something like this when it gets to six feet tall is notoriously difficult.<\/p>\n

It’ll be fine for about a month, then it’ll start getting bugs, then it’ll start getting gnats, and eventually you’ll throw it out.<\/p>\n

Why not save yourself the trouble?<\/p>\n

Let it go until frost. It’ll grow right until it gets hit by frost, and then come back next year and get another one.<\/p>\n

It’s worth it.<\/p>\n

Cannas<\/h2>\n

Water cannas\u2014everybody knows there are cannas that grow in water, right?<\/p>\n

They’re the same terrestrial cannas you grow in the ground.<\/p>\n

Let’s take a look at the same idea we just talked about.<\/p>\n

Get a canna for the water.<\/p>\n

Water cannas probably want to be more in the water than in the ground. They don’t like to dry out as much because of their background.<\/p>\n

They come from areas where they have wet conditions.<\/p>\n

There’s actually an aquatic canna that’s been crossed with our terrestrial cannas, and that gives you all these different kinds of cannas.<\/p>\n

Some cannas prefer to be in water and some don’t.<\/p>\n

Why not get some regular cannas that you would normally plant in a bed and put some around your pond, then put a water canna in the pond?<\/p>\n

It’s another way of transitioning plants in your pond to plants outside your pond.<\/p>\n

Foliage and Spontaneous Gardening<\/h2>\n

Don’t think of cannas just as flowers, though.<\/p>\n

I got this one on purpose because of its dark foliage.<\/p>\n

Let me ask you guys a question.<\/p>\n

Do you go to a garden center with a plant list?<\/p>\n

Sometimes I do.<\/p>\n

Do you leave with the stuff that’s on your plant list?<\/p>\n

Sometimes you do, but sometimes you don’t.<\/p>\n

That’s the spontaneity of gardening. That’s what’s fun about gardening.<\/p>\n

You can have somebody design your garden for you and get everything planted, but then you’re going to go to a garden center, see something you want, and have to bring it home and figure out where it goes.<\/p>\n

And that’s okay.<\/p>\n

As you’re walking around, you’re going to see a water lily that you’ve never seen in that color before, and you’re going to want it.<\/p>\n

So get that water lily and add it to your collection.<\/p>\n

Here’s the fun thing: If you get 25 water lilies in your pond, you can register your water lily with the Water Lily Society.<\/p>\n

You won’t get 25 water lilies in your pond\u2014I’m just kidding.<\/p>\n

But if you see something you like, don’t be afraid to change things out.<\/p>\n

You might be able to take a water lily you bought when you originally put your pond in and give it to somebody else who’s starting a water garden.<\/p>\n

You can give them a starter plant, and that will make room for another plant.<\/p>\n

Gardeners love to share plants, too.<\/p>\n

Just keep that in mind as we’re going along.<\/p>\n

Planning Your Pond for Plants<\/h2>\n

More importantly, let’s talk about the difference between a water garden and a perennial garden.<\/p>\n

I’ve said they’re very similar this whole time, but there’s one caveat.<\/p>\n

When you build your pond, that’s it, right?<\/p>\n

If you make a perennial bed and want to add more perennials, you just dig up a little more grass and add plants.<\/p>\n

You cannot do that with a pond.<\/p>\n

It is very difficult to add onto a pond.<\/p>\n

It can be done, but either you have to put another pond in or find a way to connect the two ponds.<\/p>\n

You’re pretty much buying the size of pond you have for everything you want to grow.<\/p>\n

So if you’re really into plants, build your pond as big as you can for your budget and the size of the space you have.<\/p>\n

Make sure you have enough room because, like I said before, when you go to a garden center, you’re going to see something you want, buy it, and then not have room for it.<\/p>\n

I have that trouble at home all the time.<\/p>\n

I can’t go to a garden center or plant sale without coming home with stuff I have no idea where I’m going to put.<\/p>\n

Taro<\/h2>\n

What you can do in a water garden is start paying attention to foliage.<\/p>\n

Everybody focuses on flowers.<\/p>\n

If you look around here, you don’t see too many flowers right now, do you?<\/p>\n

What a great way to start looking at plants.<\/p>\n

The flowers aren’t here to suck you in. Now you can start looking at foliage.<\/p>\n

One of my favorite foliage plants is taro.<\/p>\n

Anybody grow taro or elephant ears?<\/p>\n

Have you ever bought that big bulb\u2014the big green one in the netted container\u2014and planted it around the foundation of your house? You get those great big elephant ears.<\/p>\n

Well, there are aquatic versions of them.<\/p>\n

This is one of them.<\/p>\n

This is the straight Colocasia esculenta<\/em>, the violet-stemmed one.<\/p>\n

It’s a great foliage plant.<\/p>\n

It has interesting flowers, but you don’t grow it for the flowers. You grow it for the foliage.<\/p>\n

Two of my favorites\u2014I don’t see Mojito here\u2014are these.<\/p>\n

This is another one with mottled leaves.<\/p>\n

There are some that are all gold. Some are black. Some are shiny. Some are matte.<\/p>\n

There is so much breeding going on with taros, just like with water lilies, that you can find a taro for almost every use.<\/p>\n

Again, almost all these taros do well in pots, in water, or in the ground.<\/p>\n

These are multi-use plants that we should take advantage of in how we use them.<\/p>\n

One of my favorites is this one.<\/p>\n

How can you not like that quilted leaf?<\/p>\n

It’s only going to get bigger. These things can get four or five feet tall in a season.<\/p>\n

Wind and Plant Stability<\/h2>\n

While we’re talking about tall plants and looking at how windy it is today, one thing you need to keep in mind is the engineering of things.<\/p>\n

This pot in the wind is going to fall over.<\/p>\n

This plant in a bag that’s wider than it is tall is going to stay more stable.<\/p>\n

You need shallow, wide pots when you’re planting things on your shelves.<\/p>\n

It may do perfectly fine early in the season, but when it’s at its best later in the summer and fall and the winds start picking up, you’re going to be picking up your plant every day.<\/p>\n

Think ahead.<\/p>\n

Looking toward late summer and fall, when everything is at its peak, shallow, wide pots are much better than tall, skinny ones.<\/p>\n

The wind on these taller, especially broad-textured plants, is going to cause problems in your pond.<\/p>\n

Plant in shallow pots and you won’t be disappointed.<\/p>\n

Taro as Food<\/h2>\n

Plant a taro and you won’t be disappointed.<\/p>\n

Anybody ever had poi? Anybody ever go to Hawaii?<\/p>\n

Ever eat poi?<\/p>\n

Did you like it?<\/p>\n

You either like it or you don’t.<\/p>\n

It’s been described to me as wallpaper paste.<\/p>\n

It’s a staple food in Hawaii. It’s made from the roots of the taro plant, which are mashed and cooked.<\/p>\n

Do you like vegetable gardening?<\/p>\n

Do you want plants in your garden that you might be able to eat that you haven’t tried before?<\/p>\n

A taro plant would be a great one to try, with one warning:<\/p>\n

You cannot eat it raw.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It contains tiny crystals called oxalates, which are like glass. If you eat it raw, it can irritate the lining of your throat.<\/p>\n

So you have to cook it.<\/p>\n

You don’t even have to like poi to like taro.<\/p>\n

Anybody ever have taro chips?<\/p>\n

You can go to the gourmet section of your grocery store and buy taro chips.<\/p>\n

They’re made from that same tuber, sliced up and fried or baked into chips.<\/p>\n

They’re really good.<\/p>\n

Combining Hardy and Tropical Plants<\/h2>\n

We’ve talked about a lot of bold-texture plants, but there are perennial plants as well.<\/p>\n

You can combine hardy and tropical plants just like you do in your gardens at home.<\/p>\n

You put annuals in with perennials.<\/p>\n

Do the same thing in your pond.<\/p>\n

This is a water iris.<\/p>\n

It’s gorgeous when it’s in bloom with that purple flower, but it doesn’t bloom all season.<\/p>\n

Earlier, we talked about the importance of foliage.<\/p>\n

You can pick plants that have interest after their flowers are gone.<\/p>\n

That gives you more value for your money.<\/p>\n

When you’re out in the pond looking at a plant with variegated, striped leaves, it’s pretty even when it’s not in flower.<\/p>\n

Keep something like that in mind.<\/p>\n

This is another sedge.<\/p>\n

If I were to twist my finger around this, I’d see that little triangular stem.<\/p>\n

This is an Acorus<\/em>, or sweet flag, and it’s also golden and variegated.<\/p>\n

There are white ones and green ones.<\/p>\n

You can think of these as grasses, like the perennial grasses you put in your garden.<\/p>\n

Use them as grasses.<\/p>\n

Put one at the edge of a pot, put something taller behind it, and you’ve got a little mini display.<\/p>\n

I love all of the sweet flags. There are some really fun ones to play with.<\/p>\n

Planting in Layers<\/h2>\n

When you’re thinking about where to put these things in your pond, you guys are sitting in the perfect spot.<\/p>\n

I’m going to place these plants so that you will enjoy them.<\/p>\n

This is going to be elementary, but it’s sometimes forgotten:<\/p>\n

Work in layers.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Tall stuff in the back.<\/p>\n

Medium stuff in the middle.<\/p>\n

Short stuff in the front.<\/p>\n

If your view is from this direction, arrange them accordingly.<\/p>\n

When you’re planting something, think about how you plant containers at home.<\/p>\n

How do you view them?<\/p>\n

Where are your benches?<\/p>\n

Where is the sunlight?<\/p>\n

Some of these plants can be backlit by sunlight and actually glow.<\/p>\n

If the sun is hitting them from the front, they’ll look flatter and you won’t see as much of their architecture.<\/p>\n

Sometimes you can play with where the sun is in your garden.<\/p>\n

Sometimes you can play with where you’re sitting and how you’re viewing the pond.<\/p>\n

Let’s talk about what we’re doing here.<\/p>\n

This bag is probably 15 to 18 inches in diameter.<\/p>\n

It has handles so you can carry it around until you get it into the water. Once it’s in the water, it will float down.<\/p>\n

What I want to think about is how I can put these plants together and how many flowers I have.<\/p>\n

None.<\/p>\n

The interest in this planting comes from the fact that you have this grassy-looking, textured plant that’s going to get tall.<\/p>\n

You have this very coarse-textured taro, which contrasts with the finer texture of the other plant.<\/p>\n

It doesn’t matter if I use that taro, another taro, or a canna.<\/p>\n

The idea of putting something coarse next to something fine-textured is something you can’t go wrong with.<\/p>\n

When you add flowers, that’s a bonus.<\/p>\n

Let’s say this is going to be our trailer\u2014or our thriller.<\/p>\n

This could be considered a filler or a thriller.<\/p>\n

These are your spillers. One is going to come out, but instead of spilling, they’re going to float.<\/p>\n

Now I’m going to grab one more thing.<\/p>\n

This is the aquatic version of the obedient plant.<\/p>\n

What if we wanted to add a little bit of color?<\/p>\n

Take this pink color and look at how it looks next to that.<\/p>\n

Now instead of this, maybe you do this.<\/p>\n

The fun part is that you can walk around here with a bag and put all your plants in it, and then you have something to carry home.<\/p>\n

This is one of my favorite new plants.<\/p>\n

Mark, have you ever grown frog fruit?<\/p>\n

A couple of years ago, we found this plant.<\/p>\n

It has the most delicate little whorls of flowers that get maybe twice that size when they’re growing.<\/p>\n

It’s a great ground-cover plant and is easy to grow from cuttings.<\/p>\n

That could go in there.<\/p>\n

This dark foliage with these dark stems goes really well together.<\/p>\n

This pink flower with that leaf goes really well together.<\/p>\n

There are so many neat ways of combining things.<\/p>\n

Maybe you want this variegated foliage.<\/p>\n

And that’s the spontaneity of gardening again.<\/p>\n

I don’t have to decide what I want until I’m ready to plant it.<\/p>\n

Maybe I do this because I know this is going to get this tall and this is going to stay here.<\/p>\n

Now you’ve got three different heights.<\/p>\n

Then maybe I put something spilling out of the front.<\/p>\n

Maybe I want gold with it.<\/p>\n

Just do whatever really works for you.<\/p>\n

You guys are so fortunate to have all these plants. There are so many here, so take advantage of it.<\/p>\n

Walk around with a plant.<\/p>\n

My ideal garden would be a big, long bed with one of everything.<\/p>\n

That’s because I’m a collector.<\/p>\n

But what I’d like to do is have a plant blooming here that looks like this and another plant over here.<\/p>\n

Then you can simply take one and put it next to the other.<\/p>\n

It’s already here for you, already at waist height, and you don’t have to bend over.<\/p>\n

All you have to do is take a plant you like, walk around with it, and put it next to another.<\/p>\n

Say, “Hey, honey, what do you think of this?”<\/p>\n

Put it next to another one.<\/p>\n

You’re making your own combinations.<\/p>\n

You’re going to be surprised at how well you can do if you pay attention to texture and foliage first and flowers as a bonus.<\/p>\n

Your water lilies are your flowers.<\/p>\n

You’re going to have all these water lilies in your pond.<\/p>\n

These are accents, and accents are meant to be texturally different.<\/p>\n

Lotus<\/h2>\n

I don’t think we can leave without talking about lotus.<\/p>\n

Everybody knows lotus.<\/p>\n

Anybody grow lotus?<\/p>\n

I’ve tried.<\/p>\n

First of all, of all the plants I’ve talked about, if you want your lotus to flower, it needs to be in full sun.<\/p>\n

In a shady spot, you’re just going to get leaves, which are pretty, but the flowers and the fruit and seed heads that follow are what you really want.<\/p>\n

Lotus come in miniature, intermediate, and standard forms.<\/p>\n

That’s anywhere from eight or ten inches high to maybe two feet high to five feet high.<\/p>\n

Lotus are perennial, so they’re going to come back year after year.<\/p>\n

They need to be under an inch or two of water.<\/p>\n

The good thing about lotus is that when you buy them, because they don’t transplant very well, they’re already going to be in the pot size you need.<\/p>\n

You don’t buy a lotus, take it home, and replant it like you do other things.<\/p>\n

You buy a lotus, and it’s already potted.<\/p>\n

It probably already has fertilizer in it.<\/p>\n

You take it home, put it somewhere where it’s under a couple inches of water, and let it go.<\/p>\n

Do they remind you of a plant you grow as an annual?<\/p>\n

The leaves are much smaller\u2014anthuriums.<\/p>\n

Everybody know anthuriums?<\/p>\n

You buy anthuriums as annuals. They kind of climb out of your pot.<\/p>\n

Lotus are like giant anthuriums on steroids.<\/p>\n

Their leaves can get this big or bigger.<\/p>\n

If you do castings of hostas or other leaves in concrete, cast a lotus leaf and you will not be sorry.<\/p>\n

These bowl-shaped leaves make excellent castings for concrete projects, like birdbaths.<\/p>\n

If you look online, you’ll see lots of places offering classes for casting leaves.<\/p>\n

Lotus are a great leaf for that.<\/p>\n

The lotus leaf itself is interesting.<\/p>\n

I won’t take a leaf off this one, but if you look at an anthurium, the petiole\u2014the leaf stalk\u2014comes into the back of the leaf.<\/p>\n

When the leaf opens up, it opens like a dish.<\/p>\n

That texture alone is enough reason to have this plant.<\/p>\n

But the flowers are absolutely magnificent.<\/p>\n

They usually flower in July.<\/p>\n

Following that, you get these seed pods.<\/p>\n

These are lotus seed pods.<\/p>\n

Use them in arrangements.<\/p>\n

You can gild them in gold or silver for Christmas.<\/p>\n

One year, we took all these holes and stuffed them with cranberries or peanut butter and hung them upside down in the trees to make an organic bird feeder.<\/p>\n

The birds love to pick at them.<\/p>\n

There are lots of uses for lotus.<\/p>\n

It has to be in full sun.<\/p>\n

The flowers are gorgeous, but remember that they only flower for about a month and a half or two months.<\/p>\n

After that, you’ll get one flower here and one flower there.<\/p>\n

They have a season when they’re in flower, and they have their foliage, which is magnificent throughout the growing season.<\/p>\n

The Lotus Leaf<\/h2>\n

Has anybody ever thrown water on a lotus leaf?<\/p>\n

Mark is going to come up and demonstrate for us.<\/p>\n

The lotus leaf is the best raincoat you could ever have.<\/p>\n

It will not get wet.<\/p>\n

You can pour water on it. You can dunk it underwater. It absolutely will not get wet.<\/p>\n

One of the favorite things for kids to do at Longwood is splash the lotus leaves.<\/p>\n

We even have little sprayers for them to spray the lotus leaves and watch the water bead up and roll off.<\/p>\n

A lotus leaf comes up out of the mud clean.<\/p>\n

It never gets wet.<\/p>\n

It looks great as a foliage and textural plant.<\/p>\n

How many of you have kids and grandkids?<\/p>\n

You all need a lotus because when they’re visiting\u2014or when they’re getting on your nerves and you need something for them to do\u2014send them out to the garden to get the lotus leaf wet.<\/p>\n

They’ll splash that thing for hours.<\/p>\n

It’s unbelievable.<\/p>\n

Even as adults, I can’t go out to the pools at Longwood without splashing a lotus leaf.<\/p>\n

It rolls off there like mercury.<\/p>\n

It’s amazing.<\/p>\n

Scientists started looking at this and wanted to know why a lotus leaf never gets wet and never gets dirty.<\/p>\n

It comes up out of the mud clean.<\/p>\n

What they found was that the shape of the cells, their arrangement, and a film on top of the leaf allow the plant to shed water immediately.<\/p>\n

If the leaves get dusty or dirty, as soon as it rains or gets wet, that dirt doesn’t stick because of the same properties.<\/p>\n

The water just rolls off with it.<\/p>\n

You used to see people cleaning skyscrapers with squeegees.<\/p>\n

Not anymore.<\/p>\n

The technology scientists learned from studying lotus leaves has been applied to glass.<\/p>\n

Now skyscrapers can stay clean all summer without people out there squeegeeing the windows.<\/p>\n

I recently heard ketchup companies are looking at this technology.<\/p>\n

Can you imagine what would happen if that technology made it to the inside of a ketchup bottle?<\/p>\n

All you need is that.<\/p>\n

So let’s hope they don’t do that.<\/p>\n

I don’t mind shaking my ketchup down.<\/p>\n

Fertilizing Lotus<\/h2>\n

With lotus, one thing you have to be careful about is overfeeding early in the season.<\/p>\n

Once they’re growing, we feed ours probably once a month with the same tablets we talked about before, just sticking them into the soil.<\/p>\n

So that’s lotus.<\/p>\n

Floating Islands<\/h2>\n

Another way to plant things, especially if you don’t have a lot of shelf room or if you want something out in the middle of your pond, is to use floating islands.<\/p>\n

This pot sits inside this floating island.<\/p>\n

Plant something that climbs over the edge, and you’ll hide your mechanics in no time.<\/p>\n

This will float in the water, but you might have to tether it because if you have a stream, pond, or waterfall, it’s always going to end up floating to one side.<\/p>\n

A little tethering line to the edge of your pond is all you need to keep it in one spot.<\/p>\n

It’s okay if it moves around a little.<\/p>\n

You just don’t want it to go all the way over to the other side of the pond and get stuck in the corner.<\/p>\n

So tether it if you want to use it.<\/p>\n

It’s a great way to add plants because it has holes in the bottom, so you never have to water it.<\/p>\n

They’re called floating islands<\/strong>, and they come in all sizes and a variety of different styles.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
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I might have been doing this for 35 years, but I still go home and ask myself the same questions you guys ask: When am I going to be able to work in the garden? Why can’t I get this done? Why am I doing this? I’m just going to share some of those thoughts […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-91","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-public-seminars"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/team.splashsupplyco.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/team.splashsupplyco.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/team.splashsupplyco.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/team.splashsupplyco.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/team.splashsupplyco.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=91"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/team.splashsupplyco.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":92,"href":"https:\/\/team.splashsupplyco.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91\/revisions\/92"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/team.splashsupplyco.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=91"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/team.splashsupplyco.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=91"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/team.splashsupplyco.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=91"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}