Oxygenators help to keep your pond clear and healthy, reduce algae and if that wasn’t enough, they also encourage wildlife to your garden! Choose from floating, submerged, flowering and UK native oxygenating plants - these multi-tasking perennials sparkle with colour, texture and year round interest, revitalising any pond or water garden.
Nestled amongst wildlife meadows and resident ducks, Caroline’s award winning pond plant nursery in Enfield has been making a splash since 1965, when they invented the (recycled, obvs) aquatic basket. Sixty years and multiple RHS gold medals later, they’re still surprising us with new varieties every year!
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Why oxygenating plants are important
Ponds are wonderful garden features, but it’s important to keep them in good shape. Oxygenating plants offer an excellent (and attractive) way to help with this. These are plants that release oxygen into the water, helping to keep the pond water clear and healthy. How? Well, more oxygenated water helps better sustain aquatic wildlife, which in turn limits algal growth because animals either eat the algae, keep the water agitated (and therefore less likely to stagnate) or out-compete it for nutrients. Like the wildlife they help to support, oxygenating plants themselves also compete and deprive algae of nutrients, which reduces the chance of algal mats forming.
Growing tips for oxygenating plants
Submerged oxygenating plants benefit from being weighted down, and the bunches they arrive in will often already come pre-weighted. If they haven’t, just attach a plant weight (these are easy to source online). Floating oxygenators are even easier to plant – just place them on the water’s surface! Oxygenating plants are hardy, typically prefer full sun to partial shade and benefit from the odd trim to ensure they don’t take over the whole space. As a rule of thumb, vegetation should cover roughly half of your pond’s surface.
Our favourite oxygenating plants
There are so many great oxygenators out there, but there are a few we’re particularly partial to here at Roots – namely, hornwort (Ceratophyllum demersum) with its distinctive spiky foliage, the dainty white flowers of water crowfoot (Ranunculus aquatilis), and New Zealand pennywort (Hydrocotyle novae-zeelandiae), thanks to its alluring scalloped, clover-like leaves. They’re all brilliant, though, and most importantly, help keep your pond in tip-top condition.
