NQ Splash - Pool Gardens

The garden around your pool can play an important
part in how relaxing & enjoyable your pool is.

Most Far North Queenslanders love & enjoy their lush, tropical gardens & want their swimming pool to be a tranquil, pleasant environment, as well as a showpiece - not just a "wet hole in the ground". This page contains a few tips for planning the garden around your pool to provide a colourful and relaxing poolside environment without creating extra work in maintaining your swimming pool.

The above pictures show a good example of a relatively low-maintenance tropical pool garden. While there is plenty of leafy foliage and colour, most of these plants have fairly small leaves, drop very few of their leaves, and those that flower are generally lower to the ground. A large mango tree in the corner of the garden provides lots of shade, but is kept pruned well back from the pool edge to ensure that the leaves and fruit fall into the surrounding garden, not the pool.
This all adds up to a very pleasant surrounding without a dramatic increase in time & effort required to keep the pool clean & healthy.

Troublemakers
Palms	Palm trees look great, provide shade, and are an integral part of nearly every tropical garden. While they add a great feature to your pool garden, It's important to put a little thought into what variety of palm trees to place near your swimming pool. Most palms drop their leaves regularly, so don't place them too close to the edge of your pool. Some varieties drop large quantities of flowers or seeds for several months of the year - these will not only require your pool be vacuumed more regularly, but they may also clog up your skimmer and pump baskets and cause expensive damage to your pool equipment.
	Some to avoid...	Less troublesome varieties...


Fruit Trees	Popular tropical fruit trees such as mangoes can be a real pain if planted too close to a swimming pool. Their large leaves can clog your skimmer box quickly and make vacuuming your pool very tedious. Fruit dropping into the pool can also be very troublesome, as the stones of the fruit are the perfect size to block the vacuum hose, making them difficult to remove.

Suggestions
Crotons, Cordylines, & Bromeliads can add a fantastic amount of colour & variety to your garden with very little effort. All of these plants grow like wildfire in the tropics, require almost no maintenance, & create very little mess. Crotons & Cordylines grow to a reasonable height (enough to hide your fence), and Bromeliads can provide a dazzling ground cover and sometimes climb tree trunks. Below are a few photos of several varieties from each species. Click on each thumbnail for an enlarged view of that variety.

Crotons


Cordylines


Bromeliads

You will also find links to some inspirational & informative tropical
garden websites on the Links page under the Garden heading.

		NQ Splash