Myosotis scorpioides

Water forget-me-not (Myosotis scorpioides) is a great choice for growing at the edge of the pond, especially if you want to encourage wildlife to your garden. Bees and hoverflies visit the flowers and, in spring, female newts use the leaves of water forget-me-not to encase their fertilised eggs. It also provides shelter for aquatic larvae such as tadpoles, so is an excellent marginal plant to grow for wildlife.

Blue forget-me-not flowers complement fresh green leaves, from May to July.

Unlike garden forget-me-nots, which tend to be biennial, water forget-me-not is reliably perennial and gradually expands, without being invasive, into large clumps that benefit from division every few years. It has various slightly different forms depending on whether it grows below or above the water line. It's an essential ingredient of plantings in natural ponds, or at the waterside to hide the edge of the liner and soften the outline, and is equally happy planted in a basket or direct in the soil in shallow water.