Walking around the land today, I noticed that the lily pads in the pond are flowering. We planted them for aesthetic as well as cleaning purposes.

All water plants consume nutrients in the water. The more nutrients the plants consume, the less is left for algae and other undesirables hopefully resulting in clearer water over time. Additionally, algae needs light, so surface plants can help to block some of the sunlight from the algae below.

But lily plants are also quite nice aesthetically. Monet figured this out in his water gardens in Giverny. (He also painted quite a few of them.) I’m not sure what it is, but there is something more peaceful about a pond with lilies than a pond without.