[Sidebar: I created this "Aquatic Gardening" label for posts years ago when we started using real plants in our fish tank...husband showed me Dutch aquascaping and oh boy was I in!
Sadly ours never quite took off like the pictures on Google, but the plants did thrive for awhile before getting overgrown, then scraggly. We decommissioned the tank when our last fish died shortly before our second kid was born...seemed like good timing to take a break, though it's still sad to me. But another dream has been resurrected!!]
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I look at ponds and dream.
Imagine...fish and frogs and dragonflies and a peaceful waterfall and lilies and....!!
But we have entirely too many tree roots to dig out a pond. (I can barely get quart pot sized plants in sometimes!)
And we have small children drawn to all things water like addicts. And worst of all - neighborhood cats that are allowed to roam 😑😑 Fish are definitely out of the question.
But, (once again, thank you internet that is occasionally helpful!) I started seeing container ponds 🤯
A dream may not be dead yet!
I went to Costco and got me one of them giant $18 plastic pots 😁😁
A year ago 🫣🫣
But finally as I started creating my rain garden, one of the first things I did was create a level spot, put a giant paver I had gotten for free as the base and proudly stick my empty pot awaiting its glorious future!
There it sat empty for weeks as I worked around it creating the bed. Except by "empty" I mean not... 3 year-old kept it well-stocked with her mucky mud kitchen "sink" water, dumping dirt and leaves in "to feed the frwogs", and then added two spoons as "potties for the frwogs to use".
What more could a frog possibly need?!
So there I was at the nursery in mid-May, looking for the last few plants I needed in the rain garden. I started chatting with one of the workers and offhand asked about pond plants since I was still in the middle of researching what the heck I needed for this thing.
Next thing I know he's explained the wonders of "normal" plants like cardinal flowers, calla lilies and blue-eyed grass being wonderful pond plants! What?!!
Aaaaand next thing I know I've purchased a floating planter, some blue-eyed grass, and a very expensive (and not fully native 🙄) water lily (Nymphaea 'Albatross').
I went home and started on my impromptu project! Doing research on my phone as I went. Highly not ideal. Especially when I discovered I would need pea gravel to keep the dirt from contaminating the water. [siiiiigh] Break for lunch and then off to Lowe's the kid and I trotted for the gravel so I could plant the lily in the bottom and a cardinal flower I divided from a cluster in my yard went into a pot I would raise up as the water was able to be filled.
Ta daaaaa!!!! It's started!
While pondering how to build it up under the stones to give the frogs a place to get out, I realized one of the ugly curved edgers I'd gotten for free (took it as a favor since I needed all the other stuff they had and figured I'd just take this to the dump at some point with a load) would work perfectly!
Eventually it'll be submerged, but I couldn't fill the water higher than 6-8" above the sad little water lily.
That very afternoon, who should we find up on the deck, but......
Squeeeeee!!!!
Two other times we've found him up on the deck this spring! He's either a gray tree frog or Cope's gray tree frog (they're apparently virtually identical and very hard to tell apart).
Unfortunately I couldn't move him to the pond because my water was still dechlorinating! Arg!
That's something I now have to think about! For example, while sprinkling the gardens around the pond, how do I keep the chlorinated water out of the pond?!
Genius!
Pond in place, I just needed to find a couple of other plants, but meanwhile I waited, not seeing the frog for a few weeks. (And crossed my fingers that my sad-looking sunken water lily would survive 😬😬)
At one point I saw little squiggly guys...wait, those aren't tadpoles are they?!
Sir Google informed me they were in fact mosquito wrigglers....yikes!!! In went the BTI bits and thankful the wrigglers were "addressed" the next day.
This entire time I've been harassing a very gracious friend who started his small pond last year and is a wealth of useful information.
Not only information, but he shared some of his water lettuce! His wife brought 3 of them when I had her over that week.
Ten days later and they had quadrupled! Goooood gracious.
Aaaaand, a water lily leaf reached the surface!!! That sad looking, stupidly expensive plant isn't dead!
Looking so pretty!!
However I realized that the floater I had bought was entirely too large for the pond, so that money's down the drain (at least until I make myself a larger pond...shh, don't tell husband...maybe he won't even notice 👀👀). I repotted the blue-eyed grass and hung it off the side...perfect!
Blue-eyed grass blooming! New water lily leaves reaching the surface every day!
Waiting....waiting....watching.....
And then!
One night in mid-June I heard him!
I ran downstairs to get a video of his trills.
I excitedly texted my pond buddies and went to bed a very happy gardener.
All was dark and quiet...except for my screeching friend.............and my dear husband: "What have you done?"
😶😶😶
Hindsight - perhaps I shouldn't have put the pond right below our bedroom window. (Popped in the earplugs and dozed off wonderfully.)
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It's so pretty, though!!
The water got so clear and lovely and you can see the lily leaves growing down there!
It was really fascinating to watch things start growing - even the algae is fascinating! (I needed to get another oxygenator plant to help curb that from taking over.)
Waiting....waiting....watching.....
And then!
Two nights after hearing him, I found something under the deck while I was putting my couch cover back on - so glad I didn't step on it because when I leaned down closer, sure enough it wasn't a leaf!!
I scooped him up and headed off to the pond! (Hindsight...sure most people scooped up frogs as a kid, but now that I know how absorbent their skin is, doing that really could be dangerous to the poor little guy!)
He dove in out of my hands and I panicked that I'd drowned him! (Tree frogs lay their eggs in water, but don't live in it...I wasn't sure how strong of swimmers they are! All the instructions say to make sure they have ledges and good ways to climb out of the water since they're not really swimmers.) I ran inside, ran to the other door to turn on the light over the pond, ran out and found him clinging for his life! Poor guy! (It probably wasn't that dramatic, but anthropomorphism comes with the territory.)
I put him on the rocks and left him in peace. He was gone when I checked half an hour later.
We went away for a long weekend and when we came back there were several new lily leaves and something on them. Sir Google Lens suggested some kind of lily aphid and suggested dumping them into the water for free fish food.
Well I don't have fish, so I left them be.
There were also what looked like tiny bean sprouts starting deeper below - so fascinating to see what life is forming!
The next day the little "aphids" were gone! How odd. Wonder what ate them?
As I was peering into the pond I see...
🤯🤯🤯🤯
Are those what I think they are?!!
Sir Google once again (this time accurately) and friends confirmed!
I HAVE BABIES!!!
The individual "bean sprouts" I could see starting a bit down in the water were quite obvious when they clustered together at the surface!
I am in awe! One month after creating this and already it's serving its purpose!! Everyone in my gardening group and chat feeds I've read say "If you build it, they WILL come", but I know absolutely nothing...my plants are hardly growing! How could I possibly get frogs that fast?!
The next morning we went to check on the eggs and they were gone! Oh dear, what ate them?
Wait....what's moving in the water?!
BABY TADPOLES!!!
They had already hatched!
Needless to say I'm beyond excited and can't wait to watch them develop! (Here's hoping any survive and that the neighborhood cats don't play fish [amphibians] in a barrel 😳)
I bought a Brazilian pennywort* at the local aquatic store; it's an oxygenator so that the "pond scum"** I'm creating doesn't get out of control. (Tadpoles do need a LOT of algae to eat! They don't become carnivorous until they mature into frogs.)
*You can see it in the top right corner under the surface where it will stay. I was really hoping for natives, but I'm starting with what I can find and need to research how crazy some of them will get quickly inside this tiny of a container.
**husband's term...he's not wrong...though I prefer "aquatic habitat"
I was also informed by a very knowledgeable worker at the nursery that if I plant a calla lily in the bottom of the pot, it should overwinter....? 🤞
(You can just barely see it's pointed leaves peeking out under the pennywort...probably planted them too close, but it's a small pot!)
And with that I was finally able to fill the pot all the way up!
Every day I go out and check and the tadpoles are chunkier! (There are so many! Though how they're not boiling when the water feels warm to my skin and it's only getting hotter [over 100°] this week, I don't know! 😬 But it's cool down at the bottom and yet they are hanging out at the top every time I check on them, so must be fine. 🤷
Sooooo pretty!!!
Postscript...
On 4th of July after a giant storm rolled through, we went out front to do sparklers; husband came from the back yard and showed me this picture:
Squeeeee!!!
I've never seen one IN the pond! (Besides when I placed it there and he wasn't thrilled 😂)
AND a second one!!! More eggs coming out way! 😆 (Apparently they can mate and lay eggs all the way through August! This pot may get veeeery crowded! 😬)
This is SO much fun!!
