FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

(no, this is not me carrying out the moat-of-carnivorous-plants plan)

There's currently a roundish spot in my garden, about 6' across, that's considerably lower than the rest. We dug up a sinkhole that turned out to be an old only-mostly-filled-in cistern, and when we put the dirt back (cistern was unusable) it settled even more. It's everywhere from 6" to 18" deep, and it looks like it's pretty much an ideal shape to have a plastic pool liner stuck in it so I can fill it with bog dirt.

Some questions:
1: It's in full sun. The house provides a bit of shade early and late in the day, but most of the day is full sun. I could theoretically plant a couple of sprawly bush/tree things around it to provide some shade, but there's a limit to what I can do. Is there anything that can tolerate full sun year-round? I do have a shadier area that I could probably dig up, but this spot is pretty much ideal for filling in.
2: It gets hot. Summer temps can be up to 110 degrees for a day or two in a row. The upside is we don't really have hard freezes, it's very rare for us to get two days below freezing in a row, but it gets hot. What plants can deal with this?
3: Would one of those plastic pool liners with some holes slashed in it at the bottom for drainage work?
4: Where does one acquire a large amount of bog soil for a not-ridiculous price?
5: We don't get much rain in the summer. We do have a drip watering system that could have a few coils put in a bog spot, but that's tap water, so I don't think it's a good idea. I'm guessing the lack of water is a deal-breaker?

Has anyone managed a setup like this in similar conditions, or am I just going to end up with a bunch of dead plants?

Sounds like a cool idea!

1 & 2. You can fill it in with sarracenia and venus flytraps. They need full sun. Southern sarrs should be able to take the heat. S. flava grows native in south eastern Texas. Even S. purpurea did ok for me in Austin summers. Sarrs might provide some dappled shade and keep some humidity in for flytraps if arranged closely together. 110 will be hard on them, but they should tolerate it as long as the soil stays moist. I've been told some growers in Phoenix will build flytraps a little screen shade to provide some partial shade in the summer.

3. I don't know. I've only heard of people laying plastic sheeting down. I'm not sure a kiddie pool would be deep enough though.

4. You can usually get a 3 ft bale of compressed peat moss at Lowes or Home Depot for pretty cheap. Garden stores sometimes carry large bags of perlite too, or you can buy them online. Perlite is probably not the best for an outdoor bog though, because it will make its way to the top when the bog floods. Occasionally Lowes will carry pool filter sand that is 100% pure silica and a lot cheaper than pool stores. Other sources of silica sand are hit and miss depending on region. Just make sure you rinse your sand really well before using it. You could also add some pumice/lava rock to use up volume, but I wouldn't be excited to have that in my media.

5. This might be the deal breaker. You'd probably need several rain barrels. I would imagine in the summer you'd probably be using at least 5 gallons a day for a 6 ft area, so a 50 gal rain barrel might last you 10 days. You probably won't have plants covering every square inch of it right? Any open soil would just be wasting water through evaporation so maybe you could make it more efficient by giving it a white plastic cover with holes where the plants are, or maybe even a layer of dry pine needles...something to hold the moisture in that also won't leach harmful salts into the soil.

That's my 2 cents!