When choosing a location for your pond or water garden, trees in your landscape can be a big problem or their presence can make your pond a shade masterpiece. Shade from trees can be beneficial to your pond, especially if you want to keep fish or other wildlife. Shade helps keep algae growth in check. A pond needs to have at least half the top of the water shaded with floating plants. If you have a tree, you can dispense with the floating plants and be able to see your fish better. You will be able to grow plants a sun gardener cannot. Anacharis will grow better for you because it likes to be in the shade.

You can grow ferns in the shade. Ferns, like wood ferns, Japanese Painted Ferns, and autumn ferns love the shade.

You can grow broadleaf plants like gingers, birds of paradise, and taro that burn in the sun, but will love being planted around the shade pond, making your pond look as if it is in a woodland setting.

You can use callas and taro in the water or out. Callas grow in the water and best in the shade, so you can have the flowers deemed by Katherine Hepburn as ,"The perfect flower for any occasion." Callas bloom early and long, so they will brighten up your early spring. They hate the sun, so make sure it does not hit them. They will shrivel up and die.

Your fish will be cooler in the summer when that hot summer sun beats down on us. They will come to the top to say hi more often because they are in the shade, rather than lying at the bottom trying to stay cool.