Newbie, needs some pond advice! Please?

[King Edward]

Yes. Did you decide what plants you might try?

[Dannygraham]

Yeah I've looking at water forget me not, Hornwort, mini bulrush, flowering rush, yellow flag iris, zebra grass and maybe scarlet monkey.

I'll start with the hornwort first and see how it takes and if all goes well I'll start adding more.
I'm hoping to get the sides built up at the weekend, if the weather breaks a bit.

[Red Robin]

Originally Posted by Dannygraham

Yeah I've looking at water forget me not, Hornwort, mini bulrush, flowering rush, yellow flag iris, zebra grass and maybe scarlet monkey.

....I've got Water Forget-me-nots - The underwater leaves tend to be a favourite place for newts to lay their eggs. Their growth is a bit long and stringy though and some insects like to munch their leaves, but the little pale blue flowers are pretty. They don't seem to need much rooting and they'll be easy-peasy to pull out if they get too rampant.

[tom00_uk]

if you buy the plants potted, its worth unpotting and splitting, you will then be able to repot and have a lot more plant for your money as they will soon establish

if bits break off when doing this try leaving them in a tray of water, even roots with a small amount of rhizome will often sprout so dont chuck them on the compost heap right away as aquatic plants have an amazing ability to root

[Dannygraham]

Thanks for the tip Tom.
I think the plants come rooted not potted but most seem to be in bunchs of 5.
Can't wait to get planting and see my pond come to life.

Thanks again everyone for your input!
Danny

[Dannygraham]

Ok so armed with some advice, i finally got a minute to myself to make a start on some changes.
i took the feature away from the middle to free up some space as advised. Though i would really like to have water cress so i arranged the rocks to create another feature of sorts, i know cress preferes moving water and thought this should work well.
using the rest of the rocks ive created more of a slope down into the water but i dont think you can see it in the pics.
im about to start building up around the pond, raised beds thinking of using some bog plants and things like that.
anyway will update when iget a bit further on.
thanks