No-Mess Marvels: The Best Plants for a Sparkling Poolside

by Ken Lain, the mountain gardener

 

Gardening around a swimming pool in the mountains presents unique challenges and opportunities. You want a resort feel, a lush oasis, but without a lot of leaves clogging the filter or demanding constant cleanup. This is about creating a poolside paradise that is both beautiful and practical, seamlessly integrated into your home's architecture and the surrounding landscape.

 

Key Considerations for Poolside Plants

When selecting trees and shrubs for your poolside environment, pay close attention to several factors:

·      Non-Messy Plants: This is paramount. Avoid plants that drop excessive leaves, flowers, or fruit into the pool or onto the deck. You want to enjoy your pool, not spend all your time cleaning it.

·      Low Maintenance: Choose plants that are hardy and do not require constant pruning, fertilizing, or pest control.

·      Mature Height and Spread: Always consider the mature size of the plant. A small shrub today can become an enormous problem for your pool deck in a few years.

·      Sun Exposure: Ensure the plants you choose thrive in the specific sun exposure around your pool.

Here are my top poolside designs featuring various styles and planting approaches to inspire your own oasis. Top 10 Tall Plants for Stunning Containers

 

 

Extend the Pool's Vibe

Imagine an unsightly concrete wall entirely wrapped around the pool. The solution: design a raised planter from the wall to the pool's edge and cover it with luminous blue tiles that feel like part of the pool. It is now a planting filled with a garden that looks like it could grow underwater.

 

You will find vivid plants with blue and purple tinges. Dracaena, Canna, Agaves, and Asparagus Fern punctuate the scene. The plantings carry your eye up the hill and blend in with the lighter chaparral beyond.

 

Plants in the Design:

·      Foxtail Fern: Long, upright, plumy stems hold soft needles. This fern is semi-evergreen in mild winter regions. It can be used in containers and overwintered indoors at higher elevations. It produces red, ornamental berries throughout autumn, making it an ideal choice for hanging baskets and containers.

·      Tropicanna Canna: This variety offers tropical style and exotic flair that looks great in patio containers. It boasts large, bright-orange blooms and dramatic orange, burgundy, and green foliage. Growing up to 4 feet tall by 3 feet wide and perennially hardy.

·      Dracaena Palm: This dramatic, palm-like dracaena has rich, dark foliage and an upright habit. It can reach a 5-foot trunk with 3-foot broad foliage. It is easy to care for and makes a great addition to a covered patio plant. Remember to store it indoors through winter.

 

Loosen Up the Landscape

The best way to conjure the breezy elegance of a natural spring is by keeping the surrounding landscape loose. Artful rocks can shoulder the pool area, with a flat-surfaced boulder strategically placed near the pool as a natural springboard. This bouldered landscape helps bridge the expansive lawn to the mature trees just beyond, changing with the seasons and showcasing vibrant colors. The grasses feel genuine and refreshing in this exciting pool area.

 

Plants in the Design:

·      Blonde Ambition Grama Grass: This rugged, native grass features blue foliage and striking golden flowers on stiff, weather-resistant stems. It provides cool-season interest with long-lasting blonde seed heads that remain through winter.

·      Maiden Grass: This grass flowers at an early age with silvery-white blooms in summer. Its foliage turns golden bronze in autumn. It grows up to 3 feet tall and 2 feet wide and is very hardy.

·      Agastache: Burgundy-rose flowers pop against dark green foliage, attracting hummingbirds and butterflies. It thrives in local gardens and grows to a height of 3 feet.

 

 

Pool with a View

This poolside setting features a series of terraces designed to showcase the large trees and panoramic views. The soft grass and perennial flowers create a serene, low-maintenance landscape.

Lavender, Salvia, and Penstemon echo the pool's blue and provide other places for the eye to rest alongside flax and Erigeron. By using muted colors and a limited palette, the design draws the eye to other vistas.

 

Plants in the Design:

·      Harlequin Pink Penstemon: This cottage garden essential produces a profusion of tall, native spikes of bright pink flowers that bloom from early summer to fall.

·      Munstead Lavender: A rugged yet beautiful evergreen shrub with mounding, aromatic foliage and an abundance of fragrant, rich lavender-colored flower spikes.

·      Karl Foerster Grass: Creates a stunning vertical effect with feathery stalks that emerge reddish-brown in spring and turn a rich golden color in fall. It blooms much earlier than common feather reed grass.

 

Feast by the Pool

The secret to creating an edible poolside is to use edible perennials. These plants need less maintenance and provide greenery through the off-season. Grow seasonal vegetables in raised beds far enough to avoid splashes and rogue pool toys. Espaliered apples and figs can balance blueberries, artichokes, and strawberries. The herbs are reserved for smaller spaces.

 

Plants in the Design:

·      Seascape Strawberry: A highly productive variety with a long season and large, delicious berries. It is ever-bearing with good disease resistance when splashed by the pool.

 

·      Fignomental Fig: This fig has all the big fig flavor of a classic fig but in a miniature form. Growing to only 28 inches tall and wide, it is ideal for urban gardening, small spaces, and poolside areas.

 

·      Honeycrisp Apple: Charming pink-white flowers provide a showy spring display, then produce large, vivid red fruit with exceptional flavor and crispness. Excellent for fresh eating, cooking, or pressing for cider.