A bank mat is a great element for the garden pond: it covers and protects the pond liner, prevents water loss and provides a nice base for ground covers, mosses and flowers. Find out below which plants you can plant on your bank mat and what to look out for.
Bank mats can be planted with a large number of marsh plants
Lay the shore mat correctly
Shore mats are available in rolls or sheets. Some even have integrated plant bags that you can hang in your pond and fill with pond plants. Bank mats have two sides that differ in their structure: the carrier layer made of stable fleece that comes down and the vegetation carrier that is planted.
When laying the bank mat, you should consider the following:
- Lay the shore mat the right way round!
- The shore mat is laid up to about 10cm below the future water level.
- The bank mat should never protrude beyond the pond liner and have direct contact with the soil, otherwise the water will be sucked out of the garden pond by the suction effect.
- Never cut or injure your shore mat!
- Hang the shore mat just a few centimeters into the water so that it doesn't float - unless of course you decide on a shore mat with plant pockets.
- The suction effect should be counteracted with a professional pond edge system, e.g. a bank ditch, a bank band and/or a suction barrier.
Plant the shore mat
The plants on the shore mat can be sown or planted. If you create your pond in April/May, it is well worth sowing the seedlings. Seeds are significantly cheaper than plants and you can watch the growth process from an early age.
What to consider when planting the shore mat
You certainly do not want to plant again every year. Therefore, when choosing plants, you should make sure that they are hardy and perennial. If you choose to use pre-grown plants, add just a little bit of substrate to the bank mat and weigh down the plant's roots with clay or rocks to keep it from slipping. You will see that the plant will soon hold onto the bank mat itself.
The best plants for the shore mat
In principle, you can choose any plant that begins with "swamp" for your shore mat, because the climate in the shore zone is swampy. Here is a small selection:
- stream exercise
- loosestrife
- clover
- buckbean
- jester flower
- cuckoo campion
- lye flower
- meadowsweet
- morning star sedge
- Pennywort
- pill fern
- presley
- checkered flower
- swamp valerian
- swamp bloodeye
- swamp bloodroot
- marsh marigold
- swamp calla
- swamp moss
- Swamp Forget-Me-Nots
- bank sedge
- water fennel