How to Make a Floating Island

Dave: Hi. I’m Dave Epstein here in Framingham, Massachusetts at Garden in the Woods, part of New England Wild Flower Society. We’re taking a look at the lily pond and the floating gardens. Wow! These are just beautiful. I’m going to introduce you to Scott LaFleur. He is the botanic garden director at Garden in the woods. And Scott, you’re going to talk to us today about how you made those and why they’re so important in the ecosystem. Scott: Absolutely. This capture people’s attention when they come to Garden in the Woods all the time. What they’re made out of is recycled plastic. You plant these with aquatic plants and they grow right through the island. Their roots go directly into the water and they absorb nutrients right out of the water. So if you have a polluted or an over nitrification in your water system going on where you have algae growing and things like that, they will remove nitrogen, they will remove phosphorous or heavy metals from the waterway and they’ll actually keep your pond and lakes cleaner. The second thing that they do is this really important ecosystem called the repairing edge, and that’s where the water and the land come together. And on that special area, turtle like to sit, snakes are there to lay eggs, dragonflies hang out there. And putting these floating gardens in our lily pond, we’re increasing that repairing edge. And then the third thing is that the gardens make really great habitat for ducks. Ever since we’ve put these things in, every single year for four years now, a pair of mallard ducks has come nested on the exact same island and had little ducklings Dave: So we have a bunch of plants here today and we’re going to plant one of these up. Tell me about some of the plants that we’re using inside of this floating garden. Scott: They need plants that can live in a rather moist sort of aquatic environment. So what we have chosen today is we have marshallia grandiflora, a hibiscus moscheuttos which gets fantastic dinner-sized kind of plate flowers. They’re absolutely stunning. We also have the pitcher plant which is fantastic because it eats insects. It is also going to kind of help keep your insect population down. And the last one that we have here is a really fun one, this is the corkscrew rush which is actually a garden origin kind of plant it has got a really unique design to it. Dave: And I assume that all of these are hearty and we’ll come back year after year. Scott: Absolutely, yes. Dave: Alright. So I’m just going to watch you plant one of these up, maybe help a little bit. Scott: Yeah. Let’s plant one of these up. Dave: So the first thing that we’re going to do is just get some really nice compost going here on the island. We’ll start with one of these big hibiscus which get to 3, 4 or 5 feet tall. We will add in some of these nice little pitcher plants here. Why won’t you grab one of those marshallias there, and for the last one, why don’t we just throw a couple of corkscrew rushes right on here. So there you go. It’s kind of that simple. It’s really kind of a beautiful looking plant there helping out the environment, habitats, keeping waterways clean. Scott, this is awesome. I’m going to let you get into the pond and plant these. And folks, if you have a pond at home, this is a great addition to your pond to keep it healthy and you can go online and buy some of the materials, or you can come to Garden in the Woods and check it out. I’m going to let you get wet. And come back every week for all of our tips and some helps here at Growing Wisdom.