Now Tweeting

We’ve added a Twitter account to keep followers updated on topical water gardening issues, and we’ll also use it to highlight any new items that we add here.

We promise not to overload you with tweets, so if you have a Twitter account and are interested in ponds, water gardens, ornamental fish and water features, please consider following us.


 

The elusive hardy blue waterlily….

Nymphaea 'Purple Fantasy'

Nymphaea ‘Purple Fantasy’
(Pic: Tamara Kilbane)

Back in the late 1800s the only hardy waterlilies available were white or pink and very occasionally red. Then a Frenchman (Latour-Marliac) succeeded in hybridising waterlily species drawn from different parts of the world, and gave us yellows, more reds, and a cluster of copper-orange varieties. The garden world marvelled at the range, and Monet filled his ponds with the new varieties. Following Marliac’s death in 1911, the numbers of new varieties dropped to a trickle. No other hybridisers seemed to share quite the same knack of picking the right parent lilies to cross.

By the 1980s-90s new hybridisers had finally broken through this barrier, and a multitude of exciting new cultivars started to appear, including eyecatching new peach colours which are already popular with my customers… but no hardy blues.

It is only in the last five or so years that successful crosses between hardy lilies and tropical blue lilies have been made Continue reading

Spring has Sprung… at last!

After the coldest March for fifty years, temperatures are finally rising. Gardens seem to have been in suspended animation for months, but are now awakening.

In the pond too, things have been slow to get going. In many cases frogs have only just started to spawn in the last week – a month later than usual (and a full eight weeks later than the mild spring of 2007).

Now is the time to check that your pumps and filters are functioning correctly Continue reading

Water Garden Solutions News

Welcome to this new section of our website.

As time goes on we hope to bring you

  • Timely hints and tips for your water garden or feature
  • Related news, comments, and technical advice
  • Inspirational design and planting ideas

Updates are likely to be infrequent, but we hope that you will enjoy reading them.

James Allison