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| Accessory Aquatic Plants |
The balance of life in a water garden is strong and natural, seldom requiring any adjustment it cannot make for itself. At the same time, it
is intricate and interdependent. Water-Mies and other aquatic plants
will grow in a pool that has no fish. Goldfish will live in a pond that has
no plant life. But neither will flourish without the other. In a well-stocked pond the water seldom can take in enough oxygen by surface
absorption to replace that utilized by the fish in their "breathing." And
so submerged water plants, which exude oxygen constantly as a waste
product, are necessary to keep oxygen content at healtMul level. Fish, as
they take oxygen from the water, throw off carbon dioxide, a product
quickly assimilated and converted into plant tissue by water plants.
The plant Me of a water garden grows at three levels. There are submerged or oxygenating plants beneath the surface; floating plants on
the surface; and in the surrounding ground, slightly above water level,
the marsh and bog plants.
Some submerged and some floating plants must go into your pool,
since goldfish do very poorly without them. Border plants are necessary
only to please the eye, but they are important, too, for water-Mies are
twice as beautiful with a background of accessory aquatics.
Selecting Aquatics
The simplest way to select aquatics for the health and beauty of your
pool is to leave it up to your water-lily dealer. Almost every one offers
standard assortments of submerged, floating, and border plants. These
are well balanced, in both variety and quantity, and you have only to
order a large assortment or a small one, depending on the size of your
pool. If your dealer does not advertise such assortments, you can give
him the size of your pool and ask him to make a selection for you.
After you have tended your water garden for a season or two, you
will have your own ideas, likes and dislikes, and will be able to order
aquatics thereafter in more specific terms. If you have a neighbor with
a water garden, you can enlarge your collections by trading cuttings.
What Is Available?
In assembling this listing of aquatics to recommend to you, I drew
from the catalogs of what I consider the twelve leading dealers in the
United States. I omitted those few rare plants, which they have for sale
only on occasion, as well as those which grow only in the cool waters
of the northern United States and southern Canada, and the tropical
and semitropical plants which thrive only in the hot and humid South.
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