Plants for a new water garden/Koi pond

by Joe
(Lexington, SC, USA)

New Koi Pond in mid South Carolina (Nov 08). Waterfalls has Atlantic filter system at the top. Skimmer is accross the pond from falls. Deepest part of pond is 33 inches. Two areas are 6" deep. Pond is 3000 gal +-100. Water is clear. 2 butterfly koi, 1 larger white koi (10"), 20 comet goldfish (all are about 5"), 2 shbunkin.

Question(s): Should I wait until Spring to add plants? Suggestiions on kind and number of plants? How do I protect plants from the koi grazing? How do I add plants & necessary plant soil without mucking up the pond? What is your take on the floating baskets? thanks for your consideration. Joe R

Doug says that's quite a list.

1) Plant in the spring. Planting now in the fall -even in SC - the plants are going dormant.

2) Protect from Koi? Don't let them get near them. ;-) If they can reach them and they're hungry, they'll eat them. Period. If the koi don't eat the plant, they'll dig and root around in the soil to disturb the roots. So however you do this, it must be done. Use large rocks on top of the potted plants such as lilies (common advice) so the fish can't root or dig up the pond lily plants.

3) Adding plants and soil. Use pots. Or plant directly into the gravel/rocks (assume you gravelled the bottom). If no gravel, then pots are what you need.

4) Never used floating baskets in my ponds so have no data to give you on these. Sorry.

5) Kind and number of plants. The sky is the limit here. There are articles on this site about picking plants as well as the kinds of individual plants to use. Let me suggest you browse those articles rather than me repeating it all here (lots of options) :-)

I've written on these pages about the difficulty growing koi and great plants in the same pond. Pretty tricky stuff as this fish is very hard on plants. Good luck with it.