Pond Plants

by Derek Lambert, Graham Quick, Philip Swindells

Over 300 attractive full-color photographs and drawings make Pond Plants an absolutely indispensable guide for creative pond keepers. Authors Derek Lambert, Graham Quick, and Philip Swindells describe the many uses of pond plants, adding color, beauty, and utility to gardens, ponds, and aquariums. The authors begin by recommending readers draft a planting plan for the four distinct areas of a pond, which they define as the pond surround, bog garden area, marginal shelves, and deep water area. Drawings assist readers to envision the planting zones of a pond and to develop a successful, workable planting strategy. The book includes practical advice on purchasing plants, using planting baskets, feeding plants, using oxygenating plants and floating plants, potting marginals and water lilies, handling pests and diseases, and planting deep water aquatics and a bog garden. A chapter on propagating plants offers specific guidelines for oxygenators, irises, marginals, water lilies and other aquatic plants.

Plant planning can be based on a color theme, and the guide illustrates ponds filled with purple, white, yellow, and pink flowers and plants. The authors also offer care advice for the four seasons of the year, including the goals and essential tasks for spring through winter.

The second half of the book is devoted to popular pond plants, and the authors recommend favorite plants by category, including oxygenating plants, floating plants, marginal plants, water lilies (pygmy, small, large, and tropical), deep water aquatics, and bog garden plants. Readers will be inspired by the many exceptional, eye-catching plants described in this section, such as hornwort and Canadian pondweed (oxygenators), water soldier and water hyacinth (floaters), arum lily, Houttuynia cordata, and yellow skunk cabbage (marginals), dozens of water lilies, and many more!

96 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2006

About the author

Derek Lambert was educated at Epsom College and was both an author of thrillers in his own name, writing also as Richard Falkirk, and a journalist. As a foreign correspondent for the Daily Express, he spent time in many exotic locales that he later used as settings in his novels.

In addition to his steady stream of thrillers, Lambert also published (under the pseudonym Richard Falkirk) a series about a Bow Street Runner called Edmund Blackstone. These, the fruit of research in the London Library, were interspersed with detailed descriptions of early 19th century low life, as the hero undertook such tasks as saving Princess Victoria from being kidnapped, or penetrating skullduggery at the Bank of England.

Lambert made no claims for his books, which he often wrote in five weeks, simply dismissing them as pot-boilers; but in 1988 the veteran American journalist Martha Gellhorn paid tribute in The Daily Telegraph to his intricate plotting and skillful use of factual material. It appealed, she declared, to a universal hunger for "pure unadulterated storytelling", of the sort supplied by storytellers in a bazaar

Lambert was residing in Spain with his family at the time of his death at the age of seventy-one.

Reviews

[Dot · Rating 4 out of 5]

A helpful guide to the zones of a pond and what to plant where! Had me a bit confused to begin with as it just dived straight in but explanations of zones and what each type of plant does was really great.

I also liked the plant descriptions at the back, particularly the splitting of water Lillies into sizes but as I’m Australian I’ll have to check some of the plants if they’re allowed/available. Also having colour theme suggestions was cool! I think it would have been more logical to have that sections after the species descriptions.