Aquatic Plants

A diverse aquatic plant community will provide numerous benefits to your pond. Aquatic plants can improve water quality and clarity, utilize excess nutrient inputs, control erosion and stabilize shorelines. Plants also provide habitat for fish, waterfowl, invertebrates, and other wildlife. We offer four multi-species plant packages that are suitable for ponds larger than an acre. If you live in our service area, and have a pond that is larger than an acre, we can help you enhance your down at the pond experience with a package that's just right for you. 

Aquatic plant packages 

While we can create a custom aquatic plant solution for you specific situation, we have also created a number of aquatic plant packages based on the most common goals we’ve encountered over the years. These include:

• Enhancing Fish Habitat
• Waterfowl Habitat Enhancement
• Erosion Control and /Water Quality Improvement
• Improving Aesthetics with Blooming Plants

Enhancing fish habitat

Fish habitat is the field of dreams of fishing: If you build it, they will come. We offer a variety of artificial fish structures that are environmentally friendly, easy to deploy and free from degradation. Additionally, we can use aquatic plants to create an environment that will appeal to a variety of bait and game fish, thereby improving your pond’s fish population. If your goal is enhancing fish habitat with aquatic plants, these are the species we recommend:

American Pondweed	Duck Potato
Squarestem Spikerush	Wild Celery
American Waterwillow

Waterfowl habitat enhancement

Whether you want to attract waterfowl for the purpose of conservation, hunting, or birdwatching, you need to have the appropriate habitat to attract them to your pond or lake. While these packages vary slightly according to the species you hope to attract, we have found these are among the most effective species of aquatic plants to enhance your waterfowl habitat:

America Pondweed	Duck Potato
Squarestem Spikerush	Softstem Bulrush
Water Pepper

Aquatic plants for erosion control and water quality

Erosion control plantings should be based on linear footage of shorelines at risk. For maximum erosion control, well-established plants should be spaced 1-2 feet apart in shallow water near shore where the watershed comes into the lake. Earthen dams also benefit from plantings along the base of the dam to reduce undercutting by wave action. Management benefits from erosion control plantings should yield less sediment loading and result in more water clarity.

 We recommend the following species, which can be planted as single species monocultures, or combined to offer a diverse shoreline plant community.

American Waterwillow	American Bulrush
Softstem Bulrush

Aquatic plants to improve pond aesthetics

In settings where plants are called for based on their intrinsic beauty, several native species are available that will fulfill this goad and still provide great water quality and habitat benefits.

Plants offer the most visual impact when planted with clusters of single species in different areas of the water body. Using a variety of plant architectures in one pond setting provides an interesting and attractive contrast of shapes.

Planting densities should be based on your aesthetic goals. Species offered will spread vegetatively, but are selected based on their habit of not becoming invasive or overbearing to the pond setting. Occasional management will help keep plants where they are wanted.

 If your pond is lined, these plants can be planted in large containers, limiting their spread and making it possible to have pond coverage without actually planting them in the substrate.

 Recommended aquatic plants to improve pond aesthetics include:

Fragrant Water Lily	Rose Mallow
Pickerelweed