Jane Barrett's Natural Pool
One of our selectors, Jane Barrett, recently shared photos of her natural pool that is such an inspiration! Read on to find out what plants have been a success!
Jane and her family have a property in Benalla where they spend part of the year and she mentioned the only healthy part of her garden in summer was the natural pool. This is a wonderful way to watch a garden thrive in the heat of summer. The water garden is on one side, and the family’s swimming pool is on the other.
The pool is completely fresh water and is run on solar powered pumps. The plants do the filtering and it provides a perfect habitat for frogs, dragonflies and all manner of flying insects. Birds fly down for a drink and best of all the whole family can cool down after spending time in the garden in the heat! The pool was a family effort, built by Jane’s son who is an industrial engineer, and the plant growth has been steady over the last five years.
Jane mentioned that the water plant selection for the natural pool was based largely on availability with her preference for mostly native plants.
There is a mixture of shallow and deeper water requirements, made possible by varied mounds of pebbles set into the gravel planted area. This enabled both very shallow, bog-edge plants to thrive as well as the deeper water species.
She also mentioned that she looked for plants that attracted frogs, which turned out to be most of them!
A favourite ‘apres’ dinner activity, year-round for the family, is to lie out on the sun lounges (rugged up in winter) listening to the frog sounds and spotting satellites travelling overhead among the starry constellations that are so visible in the country sky.
She explained that the frog ID app is nearly as popular as the bird life app which she uses to identify the birds that fly into the pool for a drink before retreating to the surrounding trees.
She has kindly shared the plantings in the pool.
Plants for medium depth: Nardoo - Marsilea Drummondii, fully submersible. Water ribbons - Triglochin procerum
Zone 3-4: Pink rotala - Rotala rotundifolia
Zone 3-4, 0-30 and 0-40 cm deep: Leperonia articulata
Zone 3, 0-20 cm: Giant buttercup ranunculus lingua
5-20 cm: Hardy water lily Nymphaea hybrid
Zone 5, 40- 180 cm deep: Upright Water Milfoil - Myriophyllum crispatum and Native water lily Entire Marshwort - Nymphoides geminata
Shallow water: Water primrose Ludwigia palustris, Tassel cord rush - Baloskian tetraphyllum, Lythrum salicaria, Umbrella sedge - Cyperus involucratus
Shallow 0-10 cm deep: Dwarf Egyptian papyrus - Cyperus papyrus, White gnome- Zantedeschia aethiopica, Knobby club rush- Ficinia nodosa, Very Shallow - Native plants
She found that water lettuce - Pistia stratiotes - floated across to filter baskets did not survive and were deemed failures.
If you’re interested she suggested this Gardening Australia water plant segment :