For years I dealt with water that had a brown tinge to it. I just hated the brown colored water. I knew there had to be a way to keep the pond clean so I could see my fish and still enjoy my plants. After many years of experimenting there were only two ways that I found to get rid of that ugly brown color and promote healthy growing plants. Water changes worked but this took time and unless they were small changes it would stress the fish so those changes had to be small. This took a great deal of time to do repeated small water changes. Then I experimented with Potassium Permanganate and this seemed to do the trick with just one treatment. But in the end this would stress the fish. I am not one to just throw any kind of chemical into my pond unless there is a problem and I know the benefits out weigh the risk.
Over the years we had experimented with different planting methods using different types of planting media and still the water would take on a brown tinge once the plants were put in the pond.
Finally a few years ago I decided to go totally soil less. During the season I noticed that the plants seemed to be doing very well all except the water lilies. I still had a few lilies in my pond that was in the traditional garden soil. I did note that the ones in the soil were much larger, bloomed more and had bigger flowers than the ones that did not contain soil.
When we moved to North Carolina we expanded from our Michigan business and began shipping lots of plants, mostly back to Michigan to our customers there. The dilemma was we would put the plant in soil to get them started and then we would have to un-pot them for shipping. It was double work. So we began to experiment with growing plants with out soil. We found we could grow and hold the plants for several weeks in the greenhouse in buckets of water with no ill effects on the plants.
Then a year later I decided to experiment growing them soil-less in my pond. I have a 30’ stream bed that is perfect to grow smaller more compact plants. What I did was wash the soil off the roots and then treat the plant with Potassium Permanganate. I then lifted a small rock and set it back down on the roots to keep the plant up right. In just a short time the roots took hold and the plant began to grow and put on new growth
 This is what we use to plant our bog/marginal plants in. No soil is used. We use larger rocks to hold the plant upright. You can buy these basket at this link POND SUPPLIES
My main ponds were more of a dilemma because here I wanted to use larger, taller growing plants. Any one who has placed plants in a pond that have some height to them will tell you that if there is a wind the pot is going to blow over and dump all the dirt into the pond. And oh what a mess that is!
To over come that problem we used 1 and 2-gallon black nursery pots that have drainage holes in them. I washed all the soil off the roots and then put the plant in the pot. Then I began adding larger rocks to the pot while holding the plant upright with my other hand. The main benefit of the rocks is the weight so that the pots would not blow over in the wind. I found that I did not have to fill the pot full of rocks either. I just had to add enough to keep the pot upright. During the summer I discovered that the roots were growing out of the drainage holes seeking the nutrients in the water just like they would do if they were planted in soil. Actually when potted this way, the plants seemed to grow much faster than they did in the soil. And the added benefit was that because there was no soil, there was no danger of the soil going anaerobic. And anaerobic soil can cause health problems for the fish when the soil begins to decompose and release hydrogen sulfide gas into the water.
I have found a couple of tricks if you are using soil to keep the dirt out of the pond. First use a shorter wider pot because it is less likely to blow over than a taller pot, especially if it is a taller growing plant. This type of pot is called a "pan". Make sure that you add enough smaller stones on top of the soil to keep the soil in the pot. The reason for the small stones is twofold. It will keep the pot from tipping over in the pond in the wind. And if you have extremely aggressive fish that love plants the smaller stones will discourage the fish from rooting in the soil. I do suggest that one uses larger, smaller stones rather than gravel because that the fish can not suck them into their mouth where they make become stuck.
Here you can read more about Growing soil-less or hydroponically.
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