To help with planning a pond landscape we have lists of water plants grouped by the colours of their flowers or their most conspicuous leaf colour. This will aid in maintaining a colour scheme in the overall garden landscape or help you to choose water plants to a colour palette that will complement or contrast.

Taking this one step further, we have also divided each colour grouping according to the pond depths that they are most ideally suited to. This allows the colours of water plants to be selected for each pond planting zone (see Zone Map).

We have tried to keep the grouping to the most common colour selections found amongst water plants. Sometimes the decision to group a plant under one category or another is an arbitrary one. For example, if you have a red-rose pink coloured waterlily such as Nymphaea’ James Brydon’. Is it a red or a pink? We have decided that if it is on the darker side of pink to group it in with the reds.

Some plants are more difficult to group. Variegated water plants are grouped according to their most prominent colour. For example, if it looks like a creamy colour contrasted with green, then we group it under white. If it is more golden, then we group it under yellow. Where water plants have one flower colour and another foliage colour, they are listed under both.