Lily's Pond

Maybe it's her origins as the child of a garden writer, or her botanical name, or the propensity of any kid to scrabble around in the dirt, but my six-year-old daughter, Lily, is a natural in the garden. And because the only thing she enjoys more than being covered in compost is being up to her knees in a pond, last spring I devised what I thought was an inspired project to engage not just Lily but also the entire family: a water garden, complete with lilies (what else?), floating plants, fish and, of course, water.

Materials

• Half whiskey barrel (or similar container) • 5-by-5-foot EPDM or other synthetic tub liner • Aquatic plants • Terra-cotta or plastic pots (8-inch pots for the parrot's feather, dwarf taro, and dwarf sweet flag; a 12-inch pot for the lily) • Topsoil • Granular 5-10-5 garden fertilizer • Pebbles or sand • 5 to 8 bricks • 12 to 20 broken quarry stones (or other decorative pond edging) • Goldfish, snails, tadpoles • Wood and chicken wire for nightly cover (optional)

My husband immediately rejected the idea. Too much work, he said; too expensive, too high maintenance. And wouldn't all that standing water attract mosquitoes and heaven only knows what other kinds of undesirable wildlife? I reassured him that the garden could be installed on a small scale, requiring a minimum of prep work and only a modest outlay of cash (under $150, it turned out). As for controlling those mosquitoes--well, that's what the fish were for. By putting in the right mix of plants and animals, we would, in fact, be creating our own little ecosystem, a watery world that would require minimal maintenance and offer maximum pleasure. In addition to teaching Lily--and all of us--an important lesson about the interconnectedness of living things, I said, my argument reaching its stirring conclusion, our backyard Giverny would be ever-changing, a font of discovery for Lily and her friends, and--my priority--pretty to look at.

If my rhetoric has won you over as it did my husband, all you need to begin creating your own family water garden is a watertight container, a level patch of ground that receives at least four to six hours of full sun a day (water lilies, especially, are sun lovers), and an adventurous spirit. If you don't have a suitable bit of ground, you can set the container on a sunny porch or patio (though parents of younger children should keep in mind the potential hazards of open water). More ambitious gardeners can take advantage of the wide variety of pond liners and containers now available, but we chose to keep our pond manageably small, using instead a half-whiskey-barrel planter waterproofed with a synthetic rubber liner. Unless you live in a warm climate, you'll have to empty the pond before the first frost, but many of its plants can overwinter indoors, and others are inexpensive enough to be purchased anew in the spring.