Snake plants are pretty reluctant bloomers. Some people grow them their whole lives and never get flowers. I didn’t expect mine to bloom, and it even sent up two flower spikes! I’m really thrilled.

This tree was so massive and breathtaking! I doubt I will ever see anything like it again. This was on the grounds of the Anew Resort in Hazyview near Kruger Park

Fair warning, this is a long one. Apparently I had more to say about a concrete tub than I realised. All pictures are taken by me on my pixel phone. The fog in the first picture is made by an ultrasonic mist maker.

TLDR: I turned a discarded construction tub into a planted mini pond, tried to make it low maintenance, added far too many plants and fish, lost control of several species, and accidentally built a tiny feral ecosystem.

I acquired the concrete tub back in July of 2024. I've posted this project a few times over the years, usually as random updates whenever something flowered or the plants were looking particularly photogenic. I figured I should finally document the whole thing in one place because at this point it has gone through so many iterations. I'm writing this down mostly as a personal record, but also so my experiences might help anyone working on similar projects. I think it's somewhere between a patio pond and a Walstad riparium.

The Container

The pond itself was never actually meant to be a pond. I found this huge reinforced concrete tub at a construction site. It had been used as a temporary structure for cleaning something. There was even a concrete lid lying around. The tub itself was obviously ridiculously heavy, about 4 inches thick, and having it transported to my yard was probably one of the more questionable decisions involved. But it was big, tub shaped, almost indestructible and free, which are all excellent features for a pond project.

I had been into the aquatic niche of pond plants that time, especially water lilies and lotus, so this seemed like a no brainer next step. I patched a few holes on the sides and that was pretty much it. No liner, no waterproofing. It did sweat a lot initially, but that has become negligible now. It is a little over 4 feet across and about 1.5 feet deep, with roughly 350 litres, or 92 gallons, of actual water volume.

Being a giant chunk of concrete has actually turned out to be quite useful in my climate. Summers here get brutally hot, but the concrete buffers the heat really well compared to plastic tubs. The pond gets almost full direct sun, although a massive Norfolk Island pine behind it provides some shade during parts of the day.

The Design

All I knew was that I NEEDED a water feature for the mini pond. Nothing fancy. Just a good ol' heavy duty water pump salvaged from a retired air cooler, a piece of hose, and something for the water to fall out of. And it had to look natural. No pipes and wires in sight. Ideally, you'd actually have to stop and wonder where the water was coming from.

My first thought, the moment I saw the concrete tub in place, was to build sort of a mini mountain behind it. Mound up soil, bury one of those 50L blue industrial drums inside it, run the water through that as a bog filter, and have the outlet emerge somewhere between the pond and the giant Northfork Pink tree behind it. Basically hide the entire plumbing inside a little planted hill.

That was a much bigger project than I had the time or energy for at that point, so I very quickly downgraded to a simpler setup. I fixed a piece of thick PVC pipe into the ground behind the pond and used it as a pedestal for the container the water would spill from. The PVC itself is secured with a steel rod driven through it, and conveniently also hides the outlet hose running up to the top. Very sophisticated engineering. Definitely not something I assembled by drilling holes into random things until water came out where I wanted it to.

I put another, shorter piece of PVC inside the pond directly below the waterfall. That supports a little container to catch the falling water. For the actual waterfall container, I originally wanted to use earthen pots. I shattered two of them trying to drill holes before finally submitting to YouTube tutorials. That worked beautifully for about a month. Then the roots of the plants cracked the pot. I replaced it with a thicker, stronger earthen pot, which the roots then very politely split completely in half as well.

So I have since abandoned pottery and embraced recycled plastic. It may lack the romance of terracotta, but it has the advantage of not randomly shattering.

Since I'd dropped the whole buried bog filter idea, I still needed actual filtration. That meant adding a separate electric sponge filter inside the pond. But I already needed to run power out there for the water pump anyway, so whatever. One wire, two wires. At that point the battle was just making sure none of them were visible.

I think the filter died at around the six month mark. It was a slow death, but the ecosystem had matured enough to handle its own filtration by then, so I didn't replace it.

For a while I also turned the upper waterfall basin into a tiny bog filter. Pennywort, papyrus and Colocasia grew bare root, supported by rocks. The water stayed crystal clear. Unfortunately, they grow too fast. Their roots kept filling the basin and clogging the water flow. This added another step regular maintainance that I didn't want to deal with. So after trying many plants i eventually removed all of them. The waterfall now mainly exists to keep the water moving and oxygenated for the fish, and because I really like the sound. It runs 24/7.

The Substrate: basically Walstad, but outside

This was probably the most important decision I made when setting it up. I wanted something that could eventually function with very little intervention because I'm not always home. So rather than treating it like a conventional ornamental pond with everything sitting in individual pots, I treated the entire bottom like a giant planted aquarium. I tried to mimic the natural pond floor, following a lot of the principles set out by Walstad. Her book and blog posts were really helpful.

I added roughly 3 inches of aged compost plus a blend of organic fertilisers, then capped the whole thing with around 1 inch of washed sand. Washing the river sand really helped start things off clean, even though it took forever to rinse all the dirt out of it. So. Much. Washing.

But that's it. I haven't needed to feed the substrate in two years. More like I haven't had the time nor inspiration, but I digress. The substrate is still going strong, though I do have plans to reset the soil next spring.

The idea was basically Walstad on a patio pond scale. Give the bottom a large nutrient reserve, heavily plant it to outcompete the inevitable algae, let the roots colonise everything to stabilise the substrate, and allow the microbial ecosystem to mature. Then let all the little things take over from there. Mulm feeds the detritivores and microfauna, Daphnia, Moina, Cyclops and ostracods establish themselves, dragonfly and damselfly nymphs show up, and eventually you start getting an actual food and nutrient cycle instead of just a container full of water. No vacuuming or cleaning, just top ups as the water evaporates.

This pond definitely had its ugly duckling phase initially. Algae arrived, as algae always does when you create a giant nutrient rich soup and put it under tropical sunlight. But once the plants established themselves, things settled down dramatically. The submerged plants, floaters and terrestrial roots hanging in the water now compete pretty aggressively for nutrients.

There's still algae, of course. You can never truly get rid of it, neither should you try to. Some algae is good. It also keeps my school of Siamese algae eaters chonky.

The Fish

I did complicate things a little with fish. It added a variable that needed to be regularly fed. In hindsight, it would have been easier to manage with just a few pairs of guppies or mosquito fish. But i wanted fancy. I tried various species over the years, basically trying to build a community tank outdoors.

I originally really wanted medaka for this pond, but they are basically unobtainium where I live, and I don't think they'd survive my climate anyway. Honestly, the list of fish that work well for this setup is pretty short.

I learnt pretty quickly that bottom feeders are a bad idea. They'll sift through the sand into the soil and the water will NEVER be clean. Ask me how I know. So no goldfish or koi, or any of their fancy or morally questionable mutants. Some that can barely swim could theoretically work, but that's just sad.

Serious jumpers like snakeheads, some bettas or arowanas were obviously out too. And anything I kept had to either be native to the area or well acclimatised to the local climate.

The fish I eventually ended up with were guppies, zebra danios, Siamese algae eaters, mollies and corydoras. Although they all did really well, the zebra danios were the underdogs. If anything, my money would've been on the guppies. (I'll get back to the guppies)

The danios, being native to my area, absolutely thrived in the planted setup. They are fast, hardy, lively and always darting around like they have a flight to catch. A little ADHD, I think. Also they are predatory. Like little piranhas. With the night light just above the pond, they love hunting the termite swarms that fall into the water. And they love the occasional mosquito larvae feast.

There are always baby danios around with cool patterns. Over the years, their bright colours have dulled down into darker browns as they've mixed with the wild type danios I added, although some rare emerald green ones still pop up from time to time.

Another success was the Siamese algae eaters. For months I genuinely wasn't sure some of them had even survived. Turns out they were thriving, I just couldn't see them through all the thick vegetation in there. They have become chonky af. I've kept SAE in aquariums before and I don't think I've ever seen them this big.

Guppies. First of all, it's like impossible to get female guppy fish from my LFS. Forget about fancy ones. I had my eye on a few breeds for a while so had them couriered to me from another state. Really really pretty fish. They did fine initially but gradually the adults started getting sick sick. Lots of pineconing and stuff. Meds didn't help and the disease eventually wiped off the guppy population as a whole. This happened to the guppies from 2 different sellers. The other fishes were completely fine so I'm guessing it was either a guppy-specific illness or the fancier breeds are far too inbred having short lifespans.

Then there was a system crash level catastrophy in the ecosystem by the end of it's first year. Chemicals were involved and it wiped out most of the fish populations. Only the danios and SAE survived that disaster.

The aquatic plants

This went completely out of hand. The original stars were the water lilies. Then I decided to add lotus and underwater aquarium plants, which in turn decided that my plans were merely suggestions.

First, it was the lilies. I added wayy too many lmao. In hindsight, three lilies would've been the absolute max. But I was also storing some water lilies temporarily in containers for a bigger pond project I was simultaneously working on. Despite the absolute congestion, there were several blooms every day for months.

Then came the lotus phase. Since the substrate was ready, I planted the lotus rhizomes along the edges. Within five months the lotus started dominating the pond. It shot out massive 2 foot wide leaves and giant flowers on 7 foot tall stalks. One funny thing we noticed was that all the leaves always faced towards our house.

I also had a phase with the Thalia plants. Thalia dealbata, geniculata and multiflora. Pretty foliage and even prettier chandelier flowers in geniculata, but they were aggressive plants. I always tried to keep them contained. But after one broke through its second Tupperware container, literally ripping it in half, I removed it from the pond. It was also top heavy and would topple over during storms, partly because I kept it confined to a small pot. It now sits in its own bucket in one corner of the garden.

Over time I started throwing in random plant cuttings from my aquarium. This pond was essentially my plant cutting graveyard and nursery during my aquarium era. There are various Cryptocoryne species, Vallisneria, dwarf Sagittaria, dwarf hairgrass, Rotala, Ludwigia, Limnophila, Staurogyne repens, Cabomba, Blyxa japonica, Juncus repens, Myriophyllum, Hygrophila, Pogostemon, ferns, Anubias and probably several things I've completely forgotten about.

Earlier on I was keeping a much more respectable list and making sure they didn't smother each other. I have long since lost control.

Adding some of the more aggressive plants was a mistake. The type of plants commonly used in the aquarium hobby is, by nature, pretty weedy. Many of the plants listed above are actually restricted or illegal to sell in parts of the world for that reason. If given the ideal environment, some of them will simply take over, outcompeting everything in their path like wildfire.

Vallisneria was that plant for me. I've dealt with Elodea and even hornwort, but Val is another monster. So anything that propagates aggressively through runners should probably be automatically blacklisted next time. Basically most of the grass type ones, Sagittaria, hairgrass and friends.

Stem plants like Ludwigia and Rotala need way too much maintenance if you want to grow them submerged. They just want to shoot out of the water and become all vine like. Though they do look pretty and help soften the hard edges of the tub, so I keep them around. I've even given them their own 50L drum to propagate in. I love how wild that's gotten, tbh.

The lilies and lotus have somehow continued flowering through all of this. Which probably says more about the stability and nutrient content of the pond's substrate than it does about my horticultural skills.

One of my favourites is Nymphaea 'Peru Puerto Maldonado', a night blooming lily with these beautiful dark red and purple heart shaped leaves. I had it for two years without a single flower. Partly because it wasn't getting enough sun and partly because underground there was presumably root space competition to the death. Unlike any of my other lilies, this one spreads by making baby plants all around itself. Too cute to uproot, but I try to keep on top of it by maintaining just two or three plants in one corner of the pond.

A couple of weeks ago it randomly decided it was ready and bloomed for the first time. And holy shit, the fragrance. Strong, sweet and spicy. The closest description my brain can produce is spiced bubblegum.

The Terrestrial plants

This might be my favourite part of the pond. I started experimenting with ordinary terrestrial plants growing hydroponically around the edges. Initially, tied around the water feature, there were things like spider plants, peace lily, Monstera, pothos, caladium, Colocasia, Alocasia, lemongrass, coleus, iris, Syngonium and Dracaena. Some survived and thrived, others melted away over the years. Epipremnum now dominates the water tower.

Eventually I planted creeping fig, Ficus pumila, around the outside of the concrete because I wanted that old stone being reclaimed by a rainforest look. I planted four, but only one survived. The survivor sat there doing absolutely nothing for like six months, dying back almost completely multiple times. But once it got a grip on the walls, there was no stopping it.

There are also Syngoniums appearing in places where I definitely did not plant Syngoniums. I swear that plant knows no concept of boundaries. And then there is the Epipremnum, or pothos. That was supposed to grow with its roots in the pond. It has since escaped in basically every direction available to it. Two stems are currently on their third lap around the circumference because I had to redirect them. One shoot somehow located the Norfolk pine behind the pond, made a beeline towards the trunk and had already attached itself about a foot up the tree before I noticed.

The critters

The stuff I find more interesting nowadays is everything I didn't deliberately stock. There are water beetles, seed shrimp, Moina, dragonfly nymphs and various other tiny critters constantly moving around in there. Frogs visit occasionally.

Earlier on, I used to periodically add live Daphnia and Moina from separate monocultures. At some point they just found their niche in there as well. Food now grows food, which gets eaten by something, which gets eaten by something else. Which is basically the whole point. Mosquitoes, incidentally, have never really been a problem.

Between my constant tinkering and months of neglect while I'm away, the mini pond gradually found its niche. It isn't literally maintenance free. Water needs topping up. Occasionally plants need to be hacked back before they take over everything. The water flow needs checking. And if the balance shifted badly enough, I'm sure I could still end up with an algae apocalypse.

But I interfere dramatically less than I used to.

Where it is now

Two years later, the patio pond has really blended into the garden. The concrete is disappearing under creeping fig. Epipremnum is thriving with mature sized leaves. Lotus and water lilies are fighting underground territorial wars. Vallisneria is committing botanical genocide. Dragonflies are using it as a maternity ward. Fish I thought were dead are fat. And somehow all of that works.

The pond looks very different from what I originally imagined, but much closer to the thing I actually wanted without knowing how to describe it: a tiny piece of slightly untamed nature.

My job nowadays is mostly to stop any one organism from becoming too much of an asshole. Other than that, I let them negotiate among themselves. Build the bones, feed the system, nudge it along, and nature figures out the rest.

Found this strange big bump growing around the trunk of a maple tree. Anyone know what causes something like this? Is it a burl, or something else?

There was another one about 200ft away.

Location: Iowa City

And kitty Jinx :P

Hey there gardeners. I'm wondering why this snaking pattern has appeared on my Cineraria. it's only on the one leaf.

Well, this beauty popped up ahead of the crowd!

I bought a bunch of bags of soil on clearance a few months ago. Most of them were incorporated into the garden, but a couple remained on the ground. Today I decided to finally use them and found this one with a huge paper mulberry root in it. It’s basically just a bag of roots now!

There is a paper mulberry in my neighbors yard just on the other side of the fence. Any tips on keeping it contained? I constantly have to pull up root suckers and I have to till my raised beds a couple times a year. The house is a rental and I don’t know the owner so discussing total removal isn’t feasible at this time.

Didn’t manage to plant anything other than marigolds in this raised bed but I love them so much, and they still look beautiful and lively in mid-October. Turned out to be a good low-energy decision :)

My neighbor was throwing out this terracotta pot, but I thought it was too pretty to just give up on. What are some ways I can fix/reuse it?? I was thinking to patch it somehow?

(btw I don't have the pieces that broke off)

This is a very hard name to pronounce 😃

Every time I copied the word to avoid spelling mistakes 😜

I am 15, for context, i have always loved plants deeply and i actively forage and do ethnobotany. other than saving and growing a wild circubit i have not done much growing at all..

i do not understand, how do you guys understand what kind of soil type a plant needs? the environment? special miscellaneous requirements, it is so confusing.

i want to grow Tatsoi but i have genuinely no idea how to start. other than the terracotta azalea pot i have. please, gardeners of reddit, share your knowledge.

i just don’t understand man

Este es mí pequeño rincón. Un lugar mágico donde la meditación entra en su más profundo instante. Los aromas y colores te atrapan. Es un placer compartir con ustedes. Este humilde jardín.