You would need to buy some bagged topsoil to pot your aquatic plants in. It is cheap at big box stores. Many tropical and hardy aquatic plants thrive in Phoenix, I had a ponding friend there who had a business selling off her extras as they grew so fast. You didn't say you were in Phoenix that is just where I used to live. You can grow plants from tubers at the Asian market. You can also get them from other ponders, a lot cheaper than retail. There is an exchange as part of this forum and there are others too if you google. Many allow plants to be sold but this one does not. Many aquatic plants are fast growing and small starts are fine. There are not so many that are suitable for a home gardener to grow for food production. Most are ornamental.

Great thanks! I don't mind the heliconia getting knocked back every couple of years when we have freezes, but they need to be robust enough to actually come back and bloom in the years when there was no freeze. I have what is supposedly the yellow variant of rostrata that I brought back from the northshore and it was 100% reliable there, but it never bloomed. It hates the lake wind here and dies back severely after a wind storm in the winter, even if it stays above 40. I moved it to a very protected spot, and if this winter turns out to be as warm as they say it will be, it will be that plant's last chance. I may put it up for adoption next spring. I have a Maya Blood rhizome that is rooting up a storm but hasn't pushed any green yet. If rostrata gets the shovel, I may replace it with Pedro Ortiz. Perhaps if I tell it I am going to shovel it, it will get its act together. It worked for the peach tree, the lime tree and a few roses that were misbehaving. =) Evenie

I always see amsonia in my plant catalogs and have been tempted, but I haven't tried it yet. It's native to Arkansas where I was born and raised, but I just don't remember seeing it growing there. Pam

Yeah he has ways to access stuff that most of us dont't. ;-) I'm not especially familiar with the various cultivars. The two I know of in Cecil Co. MD, near where I live are the straight species, maybe about 30' tall so I'd guess about as many years old, and a couple 'Skylands' that looked about 10 years old. If you ever have a chance to visit Philadelphia the Morris Arboretum has a huge and impressive 'Skylands' that must have been planted around the time the cultivar was introduced. Update: according to NALT, there are other variegated P. orientalis in US commerce. So I'm not sure what I saw this day but it was impressive.