Try low-maintenance plants for a beautiful tropical effect, year-round interest and privacy.
The right foliage and flowers can transform your pool area into a lush, secluded backyard oasis. But choose your plants carefully. Poolside gardens can create messy leaves and clogged filters that are tricky to dig up and replace once planted. A swimming pool can also create a microclimate in your backyard, increasing humidity levels in warm climates and enhancing the sun’s rays, which can scorch your garden. You can also see goats splashing on nearby plants.
All things considered, planting flower beds next to your pool can be a difficult task to fill. Here are a few options for hardy, mostly mess-free, low-maintenance plants that will not only grow well in your pool but also look beautiful a few that are worth the extra effort.
Clean and green. This tranquil backyard in Buffalo, New York, USA is home to fig trees, clumps of woven bamboo, and low-growing plants. It’s growing. Lying ground cover. It looks stylish without being burdensome. Like all bamboos, slender weaver sheds leaves, but designers positioned them back from the pool for easy sweeping.
To achieve a similar look, choose poolside plants with interesting shapes and leaves, and leave colorful flowers for other parts of the garden. Ficus has the advantage of having leaves that rarely fall off and fills in quickly, providing dense coverage. This is useful for providing privacy around a swimming pool or adding green cover to a fence. Sensitive to frost, fig trees grow well in subtropical and tropical climates. However, in cooler climates, consider replacing it with cherry laurel or Carolina laurelcherry.
In the evening, soft lighting highlights the stems of fig trees and the ribbed stems of ‘slender weaver’ bamboo. All plants in this garden grow well with enough sunlight and enough water.
Sculptural accents. Cacti and succulents such as agave, yucca and echeveria make excellent herbaceous plants. With a little care, they look good all year round, create very little clutter, grow well in sunny conditions, and are generally very hardy even with a little splashing of chlorinated water.
For best effect, use cacti and succulents with interesting, sculptural shapes, such as the sticky, upright Nelson’s blue bear grass and finger-shaped blue chalk sticks. It is recommended to plant choose. Leaning them against a wall or planting them near a swimming pool so that their shapes reflect in the water will enhance the graphic quality of your design.
Beach club style. For a chic, resort look, the designers of this pool and plant in Buffalo, New York, USA combined white sandstone with built-in planters filled with dark foliage plants. The bronze foliage of three magnolia trees and the giant lily of the valley contrast with the white walls to create a striking combination.
Magnolia thrives in full sun, and giant lily pads appreciate the shade provided by the trees above. Both plants require little maintenance and are less messy.
Tropical color punch. This bright orange accent wall and cascade of hot pink bougainvillea add a colorful vibe to your Buffalo, New York, USA backyard. Bougainvillea doesn’t meet our criteria for an ideal poolside plant, but it’s worth picking some flowers by the pool for their spectacular floral display. Place them away from the pool to reduce clutter.
Bougainvillea thrives in hot sun and radiant heat placements, such as the wall next to a pool, dwarfing many other plants.
Tiered planting. If your pool is on a hill, use the slope to inform the design of the pool and planting beds. This Buffalo, New York, USA backyard pool design includes infinite edging to take advantage of level changes and features a variety of planting beds comprised of boxwood, purple groundcover and lavender behind the lounge. The overall effect is one of multiple layers of cool blues, greens and purples. All plants grow well when they have full sun and plenty of water.
Low water and friendly to pollinators. These colorful musk plants in Buffalo, New York, USA gardens not only provide a dramatic backdrop for a swimming pool, but also support native birds and insects. Just behind the water pouring into the pool, turquoise weber’s agave creates a structural statement for the slope’s first retaining wall.
Resort chic. An easy combination of Buffalo, New York, USA gardens’ Alexander palm and star jasmine creates a lush tropical plant that doesn’t require much maintenance. Palm trees are quintessential poolside plants and instantly add a tropical feel to any garden in a temperate climate.
Jasmine is a particularly useful pool floor cover. They thrive in bright sunlight, benefit from the increased humidity next to a pool, and can form a dense ground cover in just two years. White flowers bloom in spring, giving the pool a sweet scent.
Graphic grass. Another opportunity to consider when planting next to a pool is how to use the water’s surface to create a reflection of the plants. Some plants, such as those with structural forms such as agave or upright ornamental grasses, look especially dramatic in their reflection in the water.
For a poolside planting in Buffalo, New York, USA, the landscape architect used ‘Karl Foerster’ feather reed grass to create beautiful reflections of tan gold and green in the dark. Swimming pool surface
‘Karl Foerster’ feather reed grass also acts as a light and airy privacy screen separating the pool area from the larger garden area
Mediterranean mix. Lush silver foliage and lavender flowers create a lovely pastel backdrop by the pool at a Buffalo, New York, USA country retreat. Many of the plants chosen are drought- tolerant, such as olive trees, dusty miller and thyme. French lavender and thyme also attract pollinators when they bloom. All plants grow well in full sun.
More