Grown as a marginal or bog plant, taro is quick to get established and grows fast, especially when given plenty of nutrition. One of the top benefits of growing it as a pond plant is that it can have access to water and nutrients 24/7, giving it an unlimited nutrient supply for top growth. Growing taro as a bog or marginal plant can also make harvesting super easy as the ground in these areas will soften over time, allowing your taro to be dug or pulled out without too much effort. 

Rhubarb can be grown as a bog or marginal plant. Just be sure to plant it with the crown above water. It's fast growing, and even faster if there are fish in your pond to fertilize it plenty. 

Though the sweet potato plant is relatively drought tolerant once established, it also doesn't mind having wet feet, which is great so the growth of these edible tubers can be sped up by giving them a constant source of nutrients. Like taro, sweet potatoes are easier to harvest when grown in loose soil so the benefits of growing them pond-side with lots of compost are great indeed!

As an edible, fast-growing grassy plant, asparagus with its robost roots does well next to a pond. In fact, a new asparagus plant freshly planted can become what looks like a fern in a single season when given adequate water and nutrients. You can cut down on that labor by planting it nearby a pond, softening the pond's edge and giving you delicious, organic spears for the next 20 years or so.

While this experiment is still underway, horseradish is growing and doing quite well in a shallow, kiddie pool/fish pond located in my own food forest. Updates to come! 

Without my permission, I have found that strawberries will grow quite well along the edges of the duck pond and right into the pond itself. At that point, the ducks have been keeping the strawberry plants in check by attacking them vigorously as ducks do. One of the strawberry plants is currently flowering even though it is nearly winter. 

Tree Collards are surprisingly tolerant of being heavily watered and thusly have been added to the wetland area around the duck pond as a future food source for the ducks and for people. I believe that the tree collards will put down some good water roots and be able to tap into the nutrient-dense pond water to be fertilized around the clock. This will increase the growth rate of the tree collards which will be used as animal fodder for the ducks and will need to replenish quickly. 

For the healthiest, freshest bamboo shoots, you can grow many types of bamboo near a pond. Bamboo plants love water and will help hold the edge of your pond with their robust root systems. Their tall-growing nature also helps to prevent rain erosion by protecting the ground from the direct impact of the water. Some bamboo plants are more tolerant to boggy soils than others. I chose the Giant Leaf Bamboo which is a popular choice for controlling erosion around ponds. It also only grows to 9 feet tall and can be trimmed to make a nice ground cover, giving a lot of flexibility for fitting it into the landscape whether you want to grow it tall or keep it short. 

Other bamboos with larger culms like Stone Bamboo provide the additonal benefit of being able to be harvested for lumber. So if you "forget" to harvest some bamboo shoots, they can be used later on after maturity in crafts or other home decor. 

An apple tree planted nearby a pond but far enough away so it can stick just the TOE of a root into the duck pond to suck up lots of nutrients has been a beautiful thing. Once that duck pond started being used by the ducks everyday, it has grown from a scrawny stick into a TREE. At one point, I lost a tree branch to a summer storm. The apple tree began growing a new branch 7 days later. Trust me, I was quite surprised. The apple tree is quite fond of the duck pond and provides a wonderful resting place with good shade for the ducks during the summer. 

Well, the actual reason this Fuyu Persimmon Tree ended up beside the pond is because I did not want to risk killing it by digging it up as it has been in the same place for 3 years and persimmon trees apparently put down very deep tap roots that don't like to be moved.

Further more, I figured that my Fuyu Persimmon Tree had plenty of other roots growing away from the pond which would help to keep the tree alive. 

Since the addition of the duck pond, the Fuyu Persimmon Tree has continued to grow quite wonderfully.