A shore mat is a great element for the garden pond: it covers and protects the pond liner, prevents water loss and provides a beautiful substrate for ground cover, mosses and flowers. Find out below which plants you can plant on your bank mat and what you should pay attention to.
Which plants are suitable for planting a bank mat?
When planting a bank mat, you should choose winter-hardy and perennial plants, such as stream bung, purple loosestrife or marsh marigold. The plants can be sown or planted, although the roots should be secured with clay or stones.
Lay the bank mat correctly
Shore mats are available as rolls or sheets. Some even have integrated plant bags that you can hang in your pond and fill with pond plants. Shore mats have two sides that differ in their structure: the carrier layer made of stable fleece that comes down and the vegetation support that is planted. When laying the shore mat, you should note the following:
- Lay the shore mat the right way up!
- The bank mat is laid up to about 10cm below the later water level.
- The shore mat should never protrude beyond the pond liner and have direct contact with the soil, otherwise the suction effect will suck the water out of the garden pond.
- Do not cut or damage your bank mat under any circumstances!
- Hang the shore mat just a few centimeters into the water so that it doesn't float - unless of course you choose a shore mat with plant pockets.
- The suction effect should be counteracted with a professional pond edge system (€116.00 on Amazon), e.g. consisting of a bank ditch, a bank band and/or a suction barrier.
Planting the bank mat
The plants on the shore mat can be sown or planted. If you create your pond in April/May, it is definitely worth sowing the plants. Seeds are significantly cheaper than plants and you can watch the growth process from an early age.
What should be considered when planting the bank mat
You definitely don't want to plant new plants every year. Therefore, when choosing plants, you should make sure that they are winter-proof and perennial. If you choose to use pre-grown plants, add just a little substrate to the bank mat and weigh down the plant's roots with clay or stones to prevent it from slipping. You will see that the plant will soon be clinging to the bank mat.
The best plants for the bank mat
In principle, you can choose any plants that start with “swamp” for your bank mat, because the bank zone has a swamp climate. Here is a small selection:
- Bachbunge
- Loosestrife
- Flower Clover
- fever clover
- Juggler's Flower
- Cuckoo Carnation
- Laugenblume
- Meadowsweet
- Morning Star Sedge
- Pennigkraut
- Pill Fern
- Preslie
- Checkerboard Flower
- Swamp Valerian
- Swampbloodeye
- Swamp Bloodroot
- Swamp Marigold
- Swamp Calla
- Swamp moss
- Swamp Forget-me-not
- River sedge
- Water fennel
