Pond plants aren’t sick of summer (but I am)
One thing I love about having a stock-tank pond is the visual cooling it provides, a little oasis in my Texas garden during our long, broiling summer. Pond plants like waterlilies never get crispy looking because they’re growing neck deep in cool water. Who wouldn’t want to spend the summer like that?
I was recently reminded of all this on a larger scale at Hill Country Water Gardens & Nursery in Cedar Park, where hula-hoop-sized lily pads of Victoria amazonica waterlily float in a rectangular pond. Frogs could host a convention on these things!
The day I visited was hot, another triple-digit day in a month-long string of triple-digit days with no rain. And now it’s September, the cruelest month in Texas, when pumpkins and pumpkin spice everything appear in stores, marching bands play, and kids go back to school. All the signs of fall are here, and yet it’s still FREAKING HOT out.
When summer despair sets in, a beautiful waterlily is just the thing to cheer you up and make you realize not everything about summer sucks. I fell for ‘Panama Pacific,’ a violet-flowered tropical waterlily that, yes, I’ll have to protect in winter, but I just couldn’t resist its charms.
Its melted-butter center glows amid violet, starry petals in my pond now, and it may be the only thing keeping me going until summer sputters to a slow burn in early October. Come on, fall!
__________________________
Digging Deeper
Come learn about gardening and design at Garden Spark! I organize in-person talks by inspiring designers, landscape architects, authors, and gardeners a few times a year in Austin. These are limited-attendance events that sell out quickly, so join the Garden Spark email list to be notified in advance; simply click this link and ask to be added. Season 8 kicks off in fall 2024. Stay tuned for more info!
All material © 2024 by Pam Penick for Digging. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.
Triple digit heat…ugh. I am tired of summer even without such heat. It has been hot enough to make me glad for the cooler weather that is predicted here. That is some gorgeous water lily. I can see why you couldn’t go home without it.
You are heading quickly toward fall, I imagine, in Indiana. I’m jealous!
Hot and tired of summer indeed, Pam! Seems every year it gets worse. All I can do is sit and look out the window of my backyard and dream of projects for cooler weather. Hill Country Water Gardens and Nursery is on our places-to-go list when, in fact, it does get cooler 🙂
Isn’t it fun to get back into our local nurseries as the weather starts to cool and planting season returns?
We’re not that hot but we’re getting up there – and we can’t expect rain until November at earliest. I’m tired of summer too. How I’d love to have a pond – until I imagine what the raccoons would do to it.
Raccoons are pond challengers for sure. I’ve been lucky with my pond — maybe because it’s a container pond with steep sides — and have only had one or two occasions when plants have been knocked over.
You’re lucky! Have I mentioned to you that raccoons have learned to swim in my stock tank pond like it’s the local YMCA? If I leave it unfenced even one night, they get onto the island in the middle and party hard. And they’ve gotten too smart for my live traps!
You have the worst raccoons, such bad boys! But I have to admit you conjured quite a funny image. 😉
You feel about summer there the way I feel about winter here!
Our comfortable outdoor seasons are flipped.
So I’m curious exactly how you’ll go about protecting your beautiful new plant in the wintertime?
They told me I could bring it into the garage in a container of water to overwinter it.
I’m in “mild” Ohio, and even I’m getting a bit tired of summer. Just had a streak of 90’s, and no rain for about three weeks. This is exactly why I do no fall decorating till October!
I haven’t started yet either, but to me unending summer is almost reason enough to decorate for fall. A mental escape if nothing else!