What is a bog garden?
A bog garden is a beautiful way to enable a great variety of plants to be grown around the water than narrow marginal shelves could ever allow.
Creating a bog garden is the perfect use for a redundant or leaky pond. Bog gardens provide a range of attractive planting opportunities and are an excellent wildlife habitat.
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Though in some ways it is an extension of the watery environment onto the land, making a successful bog garden demands an understanding of how pond and bog differ.
The main difference is that: While ensuring the pond stays healthy and algae-free involves keeping nutrients out of the water, bog plants thrive surrounded by all the nutrients and organic matter they can get. So, managing these two side-by-sides requires a little bit of careful planning.
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In other words a bog garden means:
– An area or pocket of saturated soil that is never allowed to dry out.
– Contains moisture-loving plants that grow in conditions of “wet feet and dry ankles.”
– “Wet feet” but no standing water.
Bog Garden Plants
Bog plants need lots of nutrients and all the organic matter they can get. The newly constructed bog provides unique planting opportunities.
The bog’s moist conditions are perfect for damp-loving wildlife – especially amphibians – the foliage offering ideal places for them to hide.
Although for bog plants the flowering season is often quite short-lived, they more than make up for it with the spectacular leaves which come in a wide variety of shapes, sizes and colors.
You can try various mosses as a bearer around the bog area; moss looks great and and does a great job of assisting in keep the area structured for retaining water.
NOTE: Weed regularly. Like any garden, weeds will grow and they need to be removed on a regular basis. Sedges can become a problem, as can buttercups, which will grow like weeds. Japanese iris will also grow like a weed.
Marsh marigold (Caltha palustris); Hostas; Irises; Forget-me-nots (myosotis); Trillium;
Trout Lilies; Polygonum; Crocosmias; Monardas (wild bergamot); Some ferns.