Bog Garden Plants 101 - What to Grow in Your Bog Garden

Growing a bog garden requires special steps in regards to selecting and caring for garden plants. Bog gardens replicate the conditions of a bog or marsh, which means the growing medium will need to range between moist and soggy throughout the entire year. If you are interested in starting your own, you can plant bog natives like cardinal flowers, blue flagiris and bee balm.

Cardinal Flowers

One of the easiest flowers to grow in a bog garden is the cardinal flower. This plant is a native species of the Eastern United States. It has beautiful scarlet flowers that attract both hummingbirds and butterflies. They can be grown either directly in your bog garden soil or in a container that is set in your bog garden.

The best place to plant your Cardinal flowers is in a sheltered corner of your garden. They need protection from the sun and heat of midday, so being planted near the base of a tree or near taller bog garden plants is a good option. It is important to keep leaf litter and mulch from covering your Cardinal flowers leaves as this will inhibit their growth and health.

There are several ways to propagate Cardinal flowers in your bog garden. The first option is to plant seeds under a thin layer of moist soil. The second option is to take a stem cutting and place it in a cup of water. Wait until roots sprout and then plant the started plant in your bog garden. The final option is to divide mature flower clumps into smaller groupings and then transplant these daughter plants in your bog garden.

Blue Flagiris - Irisvirginica

Blue flagiris is a tall bog garden plant that grows up to three feet tall. It develops blue flowers with white and yellow markings. It is a hardy plant that does best when located at the edge of a water source such as a bog garden pond. It needs moist soil to survive.

Blue flagiris can be grown from seeds or from rhizomes. To plant from seeds you will need to sow the seeds in the winter when the temperature is between 0 and 36 degrees F in moist peat. The seeds need to be in this growing environment for three month in order to germinate in the spring. The second propagation option is to divide the bulbs that develop in the root system of the flower. You will want to divide and plant the bulbs in July so that they have plenty of time to establish a new root system before winter hits.

Bee Balm - Mondarde didyma

Bee balm is both a beautiful and an edible bog garden plant. It can have flowers of pink, purple or red. It is considered to be a perennial herb, which means that you only have to plant this bog plant once and it will return each year on its own. If you want to increase the number of bee balm plants in your bog garden you can plant seeds or you can divide the parent plant into multiple daughter plants.