Plant water lilies to enjoy one of the most beautiful sights of the summer as their heartbreakingly lovely blooms open and bring your pond to life.
It's a great time of year to invest in these spectacular water plants as the water has now warmed up enough to get them off to a flying start. You can grow waterlilies even if you only have a half barrel on the patio: just choose one of the dwarf varieties, spreading to just 60cm across.
Plant into aquatic baskets using special aquatic soil. Line the basket with hessian, then part fill with soil. Tease out the fleshy roots before placing the plant in the centre of the container, then firm in the soil around it.
Mulch with large stones to stop the compost floating off, and soak the basket in a bucket of water. Then lower it into the pond on a platform of bricks so that the leaves are just below the surface – if you lower them too quickly they can rot. Gradually, over the next few weeks and months as the leaves extend, you can lower the container further until the plant is sitting right on the bottom.
