Mimulus guttatus Marginal Pond Plant

This marginal plant is suited to planting at a pond margin or in a bog garden bed, where it produces a long run of small, reddish-spotted flowers through the warmer months. It helps add colour to a bright, open spot near the water's edge. You get the plant already potted, either as a single plant in a 1 litre or 3 litre mesh basket, or as a pack of three smaller plants in 9cm pots, so you can choose the size that suits how much space you want to fill.

Mimulus guttatus is a marginal pond plant with small flowers marked by fine reddish spots, a detail that gives the blooms a mottled look rather than a single flat colour. It gives pond keepers a reliable source of colour at the water's edge, provided it is planted somewhere that gets plenty of direct light.

It suits planting directly into the shallow margin of a pond, along the shelf, or in a bog garden bed where the soil stays consistently moist. Once established, it fills the space steadily and can be trimmed back at any point during the growing season to keep its shape.

You get the plant already potted: a single plant in its own 1 litre or 3 litre mesh aquatic basket, or a pack of three smaller plants, each in a 9cm pot. The 1 litre and 3 litre baskets are ready to go straight onto the pond shelf, while the 9cm pot plants need potting into a mesh basket of their own before planting out.

What sets this plant apart is the choice of three different starting points: a well-established single plant in its own basket, or three younger plants in 9cm pots for covering a larger run of margin at once. Which one suits you best depends on how much of the margin you want to cover and how established you want the planting to look from the start.