Plant species for garden ponds

Which plant species are the right ones for your pond?

You can choose your marsh zone pond plants, according to your colour preference, but will need to consider some general points about plant selection.

What is beautiful?

Firstly, of course, your personal aesthetic perception is important. Flower colours and shapes and plant growth is completely a matter of your own taste. A sensible approach is to read about the flowering periods of the plants and to establish a planting plan to make sure that not everything is flowering in one go but successively.

Useful pond plants

Even more important than beauty is the benefit you get from the plants. Which plants absorb a higher level of nutrients from the water to keep the algae down? Which plants clean the water and which ones provide shade etc.?

Underwater plants

Watermilfoil (Myriophyllum) has an antibiotic effect and decreases the bacterial count in the water to reduce the fish’s risk of infection! It gives them a better immunity.

Myriophyllum

Cultivation in greenhouses and deliveries in plant containers mean you can plant from spring to autumn nowadays. The only limits are set by frost and autumn withering.

Start by planting the deep zones of your pond. You’ll still be able to walk over the marsh zone without damaging the plants to reach the deeper areas. Hornwort (Ceratophyllum demersum) is a fast growing underwater plant which also hibernates in the pond bottom.

Ceratophyllum demersum

The watermilfoil (Myriophyllum spicatum), as already described, has an antibiotic and detoxifying effect. The waterweed species (Egeria densa and Elodea canadensis) grow very fast and thus extract a lot of algae-promoting nutrients from the pond water.

Floating plants

Water lilies (Nympaea species) are not only attractive, they are also very useful: They give shade and work against extreme water heating. Always plant water lilies in planting baskets and add a good root fertiliser for the roots to take well ( JBL FloraPond ). Between May and October they are in full bloom.

There are more floating-leaf plants to choose from. The water hawthorn (Aponogeton distachyos) from South Africa is not really hardy but it is still a very beautiful and useful plant with attractive floating leaves.

Some attractive floating plants like the water cabbage and water hyacinths are not hardy and need to hibernate indoors. But beware: In the EU, water hyacinths and water cabbage are listed as invasive species and therefore may not be traded. In other countries, they are often used as floating plants for ponds. They are only unsuitable in countries with cold winters.

Shellflower and water hyacinth

Companion pond plants

The mare's tail (Hippuris vulgaris) is a plant which quickly spreads and absorbs a lot of nutrients from the water. Its dense growth houses a huge fauna of small animals.

The water knotweed (Persicaria amphibia) and the fringed water lily (Nymphoides peltata) are beautiful additions or alternatives, too.

Nymphoides peltata

Duckweeds, water caltrops and water soldiers are also hardy.

Duckweed
Water pineapple

Marsh plants

Shallow water plants (5-40 cm water depth): These plant species tolerate varying water levels and even survive outside the water for a short time. Galingale (Cyperus longus), common water-plantain (Alisma plantago-aquatica), dwarf bulrush (Typha minima), marsh-marigold (Caltha palustris) and many others belong to this group.

Water plantains (Alisma plantago-aquatica)
Marsh-marigold (Caltha palustris)

We know bulrush species from lakesides. They look very decorative in domestic ponds but their spread needs to be prevented before they suppress all other species. This is perfectly doable with planting bowls.

A word about cookies before we continue

The JBL Homepage also uses several types of cookies to provide you with full functionality and many services: We require technical and functional cookies to ensure that everything works when you visit this website. We also use cookies for marketing purposes. This ensures that we recognise you when you visit our extensive site again, that we can measure the success of our campaigns and that the personalisation cookies allow us to address you individually and directly, adapted to your needs - even outside our website. You can determine at any time - even at a later date - which cookies you allow and which you do not allow (more on this under "Change settings").

The JBL website uses several types of cookies to provide you with full functionality and many services: Technical and functional cookies are absolutely necessary so that everything works when you visit this website. In addition, we use cookies for marketing purposes. You can determine at any time - even at a later date - which cookies you allow and which you do not (more on this under "Change settings").

Our data protection declaration tells you how we process personal data and what purposes we use the data processing for. tells you how we process personal data and what purposes we use the data processing for. Please confirm the use of all cookies by clicking "Accept" - and you're on your way.

Are you over 16 years old? Then confirm the use of all cookies with "Noticed" and you are ready to go.

Choose your cookie settings

Technical and functional cookies, so that everything works when you visit our website.
Marketing cookies, so that we recognize you on our pages and can measure the success of our campaigns.
I accept the YouTube Terms of Service and confirm that I have read and understood the YouTube Terms of Service .

PUSH messages from JBL

What are PUSH messages? As part of the W3C standard, web notifications define an API for end-user notifications that are sent to the user's desktop and/or mobile devices via the browser. Notifications appear on the end devices as they are familiar to the end user from apps installed on the device (e.g. emails). Notifications appear on the end user’s device, just like an app (e.g. for emails) installed on the device.

These notifications enable a website operator to contact its users whenever they have a browser open - it doesn’t matter whether the user is currently visiting the website or not.

To be able to send web push notifications, all you need is a website with a web push code installed. This allows brands without apps to take advantage of many of the benefits of push notifications (personalised real-time communications at just the right moment).

Web notifications are part of the W3C standard and define an API for end user notifications. A notification makes it possible to inform the user about an event, such as a new blog post, outside the context of a website.

JBL GmbH & Co. KG provides this service free of charge, and it is easy to activate or deactivate.