Any and every plant which grows in the ponds and swamps may be made to grow in an artificial pond or swamp in your own house or yard. The water arum or arrow-leaf; the pickerel-weed, with its spikes of pale-blue flowers; the sagittaria, whose flowers are white, and the water hyacinth are all pretty in the water garden.
There are vines that grow readily in water which you can put around the edges of the tank, allowing them to hang over and partially hide the outside. The Wandering Jew is one which is very hardy and will droop in graceful festoons of green. It is not a water plant, but will thrive in water and should not be planted in the soil at the bottom, but allowed to send out its roots into the water near the surface.
Aquatic plants are the simplest of all kinds to transplant, because the sun does not wilt them when their roots are kept wet. Transfer the plants in baskets filled with wet moss, or make them in packages covered on all sides with several wrappings of wet paper. They can be preserved an indefinite length of time if kept wet.
Cat-tail seeds will grow in mud; so will other swamp plants, and a swamp garden, kept always wet, may be an accessory to your water garden.
From time to time you must add fresh water to supply the loss by evaporation in the tanks, but as the growing things keep the water pure it does not need changing.
You may arrange smaller and
Simpler Water Gardens
for the window in glass dishes or bowls, or even glass jars, and grow there the small and delicate water plants. Only a layer of clean sand is needed for soil, and some plants do not even require that. The water-milfoil is an ornamental little plant; the eel-grass which, growing at the bottom, sends up its long spiral stems to lift its blossoms above the water, is interesting, and the horn-wort and water-purslane do well in narrow quarters. The duck-weed is a surface plant which drops its slender roots into the water without touching soil. Besides these there are
Plants Grown Artificially in Water
A friend of mine tells the story of a morning-glory vine which, growing in water, draped her window luxuriantly and even blossomed in a timid way. This plant was taken from the garden when its stem was several inches long and placed in a bottle of water, where it sent out more roots and grew rapidly.