That looks great!
Yes, bog filters are the way to go for a naturalistic pond. I see you have some water lilies in a pot. I just stuck mine into the nooks of the rocks, and they’re doing great. No pot.
On the other hand, I put a bald cypress bonsai in a bonsai pot in my bog filter. So, it sits in the bog, with water almost up to the brim. I didn’t want to actually plan the tree in the bog, it would completely fill it with roots! Sure, some roots escape thru the drain holes in the bottom of the pot, but I can still lift it and cut them off.
Here’s a picture of my pond: (Just after the clean-out, and in the process of refilling it!)
And here’s a picture of the area above the waterfall (the bog):
The bushy tree in the back is the bald cypress. I put it in last year, all the branches grew out about 4 feet! Over the winter, I cut them back to about 6 inches, now they have back budded, and each new branch is about 8 inches. They’ll be 3 feet long by the end of the summer. Grows like a weed! Last year the trunk doubled in girth. I bought the tree at our Club auction for a song. It wasn’t really very good, as bald cypress bonsai go, but I really didn’t care since I was planning on putting it in the bog. I got it for less than the price of the pot! This is a current picture. The one where I was refilling the pond was about 2 months ago. If you look carefully, you can see the bald cypress way in the back. It’s mostly just a trunk with short stubby branches!
See the area at the top of the picture of the bog where you see some stacked rocks that look like flat slate? They’re covering the “snorkel” that Aquascape sells for allowing access to the bottom of the bog for clean outs. Once a year, I have the water pumped out, and clean water is sprayed on the top. This backwashes the bog.
Here’s the pond I built last year. It’s about 14x20 and 3’ deep. Turned out okay for my first one, I’d do a few things differently next time, like absolutely do a bog filter.
