Top Ten Tips that a Water Gardener Should Know about Improving a Garden Fountain
There, you are a WATER GARDENER. You have created a pool with all the necessary ingredients in it to make it a complete and self-sufficient little world. Given time it will develop its own balance and way of sustaining itself. With your caring eye on it, it will develop from season to season providing more pleasure and entertainment than any T.V. set, and it will be real.
The temptation is that before things really get underway, before it really begins to show itself as true part of the garden, you think there needs to be something added. Its like when you were given that basic train set or that simple Barbie doll when you were a kid, you wanted all the add-on extras - the station platform, the bridge, the little people doing things around the station; Barbie wanted her clothes, her horse a car and probably her boyfriend.
If your pool was planned correctly you should have the complete kit already; the little bridge, the viewing platform, and all the little things doing things, if not there in the form of fish, should arrive soon in their own time. But beware of the temptation to add on before it even begins to develop of its own accord. If necessary keep it a secret from relatives and friends otherwise gnomes and frogs and spouting herons will proliferate, ad nauseam year after year, until there is no room for humans to move next to the pool, and the gismology soon overshadows the live occupants of the pool.
In other words, take your time. If you do feel as though something needs to be added to your initial inspirational concept; think about it.
Though perhaps if you do have a Koi pool, bare of all the plant essentials because of the vandalistic propensities of your charges, bristling with technological hardware for their welfare and protection, then maybe this ought to be softened and hidden by trellage or wattles and well-placed plants.
Possibly you are still at the planning stage, or you have inherited a water garden that seems visually lacking in something. A backdrop of complementary plants may be required. Isolated and alone in a lawn, it may seem isolated like an island that needs to be visually linked with the mainland, with trees and shrubs that would lend themselves to the scene and to the rest of the garden as a whole.
Possibly it is in the way where it is, and needs a bridge or stepping-stones somewhere to cross it. This was would double as a viewing platform, if you wanted a good view of what was going on down in the depths. An alternative place to view from would be a jetty, or decking or some well laid paving. You may however want somewhere to sit and contemplate it from a simple seat or a fragrant bower.
Perhaps you are working so hard to pay for your water garden, you only get an opportunity to see it at night. So some pool lighting, even underwater lighting becomes a priority.
If it is a formal pool, particularly in a small courtyard space, it may need a central focal point. Whatever you feel as though you have to do, these problems need a tasteful solution that blends the water world with the rest of the garden. There is so much that verges on tasteless in the market which might be cheap but definitely adds up to the fact that economy does not necessarily dictate the best policy. So spend your money like angels remembering that only fools rush in........
I was Nothing, Minimalism
From a designers point of view, water is more than just another surface or texture in a garden; it brings light, space- doubling with a reflection -and movement. To have a big area of simple unsullied water that is there just as a texture or for its reflective qualities, without being a water garden as such, is a difficult thing to maintain. Secret filtration systems, or a constant change of water as in the Capability Brown landscapes, or the heavy persistent use of chemicals is essential to create the impression that this water isnt just some septic lagoon.
There also needs to be something big and extra special that the water surface needs to visually interact with, nay balance with. Minimalists might use the reflective qualities to enhance a massive stone ornament as perhaps Charles Funke did in his show garden at Chelsea this year. The Landskip School of the !8th century would have used an impressive planting so that the serene glories of nature might be amplified. The Japanese in their most austere designs will have adhered to a strict balance of stone water and plants.
So, you cannot get away from it, you need something.
Here are10 elements, things or groups of things that you may feel will add something to your water garden to make it a more integral part of your garden or even your lifestyle.
1. BOG PLANTS.
A bog garden forms the perfect backdrop to any water garden. It will visually blend the world of water in with the drier world of the garden as a whole. Many bog plants have striking large foliage, like Gunnera maniculata, Rheum palmatum and species of Ligularia. They help hide imperfections or eyesores like filter boxes or electrical junction boxes whilst adding a jungley oasis effect.
The best bog gardens are self-sufficient items independent from the water garden itself. Even though the bog looks as though it is merely a continuation of the water garden, it is separate and can be installed at a later date. I will give you more details on this at a later issue - if thats OK with Ed.?
If space is at a premium and a real bog garden construction would be just too much bother then with a combination of improving the moisture retention of your soil with leaf mold , composted bark or compost plus a mulch and then choosing your plants wisely, you can give the impression of there being a bog.
Like a lot of the marginal plants there are a large number of plants that we associate with a bog that are just as happy in a good garden soil. By using this congeniality, you can make it seem as though your planting emerges out of the water in a continuous, seamless flow into the ever more dryer regions of the garden. Plants like Hostas and some ferns are happy in both the damp and dry camps. Lysimachia thyrsiflora, Lysimachia nummularia (Creeping Jenny), Iris siberica and Houttynnia cordata are as happy in water as in the herbaceous border.
For flowering plants that will tolerate bog and herbaceous border conditions, nothing can beat the whole family of Primula. These start their display from the earliest in spring right through to early summer; from the gentle Primroses to the startling Primula viallii.
The Ligularia are big plants for flower and foliage. Astilbes and Aruncus come into their own in July, dazzling us with there cerise, cream and white plumes. The Day Lily (Hemerocallis in all its varieties) is one that is not commonly regarded as a bog plant. Rodgersias are used for their for bold metallic foliage all through the summer. And then there are the Irises..Now are you beginning to realise the possibilities ?
If you want to see these possibilities for gardening by soil improvement and the dazzling displays you can create throughout the year, a visit to Hadspen Garden in Somerset is essential particularly in June.
But take as much care in the choice of bog plants as you would with the marginal plants. Some, especially the indigenous species to the UK are incredibly invasive. Beware the Filipendula ulmaria (Meadow Sweet), the non -variegated Petasites (Butterbur), Allium ursinum (Wood Garlic) and Eupatorium cannabinum (Hemp agrimony). Like hyperactive kids, they need plenty of room to play and preferably outside the garden.
2.TREES and SHRUBS.
Quite often it is moisture loving trees and shrubs you do not want near a small water garden. Water loving plants like Elders and Willows have leaves that are poisonous to the wildlife in a pond; Poplars and indeed Willows have such searching suckering root runs, they can easily puncture a cheap or ageing pool liner.
There are a whole host of trees and shrubs that suit the waterside habitat, not because they are moisture lovers, but because they look right and thrive in the moisture-laden microclimate next to a pool.
Weeping trees; some folks feel that a weeping tree next to or near a pond is virtually essential, so rather than resorting to the time bomb Willow, how about the grey-leafed weeping Pear (Pyrus salifolia Pendula) or the weeping Silver Birch - Betula pendula Youngii.
All Birches love a water garden and a stand of Betula dalecarlica (the finely cut leaf of the Swedish Silver Birch) with their bright white barks making a rhythmic reflection is perfection sublime. Plant them up from the prevailing wind to take away the autumn fall of foliage, and to catch the evening sunlight.
For the small water garden, on a rocky perch, perhaps one or more of the Acer palmatum Dissectum, both the red leafed and green varieties grow down to the water surface like veritable vegetative cascades, seeking the reflected light.
Viburnums love the water; Viburnum plicatum Lanarth or Mariesii given space, they make a shape that provides a brilliant white-tiered reflection in spring with flowers, or in autumn with plum red foliage. Viburnum opulus has pompons of flowers in spring, followed by bright red berries and a cacophony of brilliant foliage.
Winter waterside performers for the bigger wilder water gardens, when things could otherwise look rather dull, are the Cornus or dogwoods with their brilliant red, green or yellow barks.
You need not have a Japanese scene to fit in a glorious display of Azaleas, Rhododendrons or the amazing Crinodendron, but you do need a dampish sheltered site with acid soil. So check your pH level in the soil before you indulge yourself in these expensive plants.
3. EDGING.
Unless your pool is surrounded by a beach effect, I would always recommend some sort of hard edge at which point the water finishes and the outside world starts. Whether this is so discreet that it goes unnoticed, or whether it is a feature in itself, it is something that forces you to make a perfectly level pool surround in the construction and helps in the maintain during its life.
With raised pools it can double as a seat and with a 3 to 5cm overhang it is enough disguise a slightly untidy edge in a flexible liner pool.
Many moons ago, rather than cutting paving slabs to fit an awkward shape, I would often recommend a crazy paving path in natural stone round part of the edge of an informal pool. This would allow us to build a path that followed the flowing lines of the pool shape. Nowadays this would work out at 120.00p to 170.00p per tonne. A tonne of Purbeck paving stone (at 170) will cover about 12sqmetres, which per metre will come to just over 14.00p per square metre.
Crazy paving has fallen out favour in the pristine world of housing estate developments but many of the big boys in the recon. stone market, like Marshalls, Bradstone, Town and Country and Stonemarket, have come up with a contour paving consisting of chamfered slabs that are parts of circle segments.
Formal paving cut to fit an edge could never look neat and tidy and always looks like an awkward commemoration of the old thruppenny bit. But with these new circle segments, by putting them one way or the other and mixing them with rectangular slabs of a similar texture, you can follow any reasonably smooth contour.
These Radius slabs cost between 2.30 and 4.60 each depending on the segment size. That works out in square metre as roughly 20 to 22.00 per square metre.
Block or brick paving can be discreet and can provide a defining line between the wild of the water and formal paving when an informal shaped pool abuts a formal patio. The advantage with this is that if you tuck the liner up behind the edging brick you can get the water level of the pool right up to the top of the edging.
Block paving comes in a range of prices at anything from 9.00 to 22.00 per square metre, which for their size (short edge on ), 80 to 133 mm, they will cost between 2.16p and 2.73p a running metre.
4. STEPPING STONES:
Many people consider stepping stones without even a passing thought of a bridge. Bridges need to span the narrowest point; they need construction, engineering, expense. They can be imposing; besides, what need is there to put the stamp of Mammon into Eden?
A stepping-stone is an invitation to adventure. For the Japanese it is a route that evil spirits find it hard to follow.
The stones need to be of the same material as the path leading to them or at least the same colour. Modern designs look good with plain formal slabs set in even gaps.
To install them, build up in waterproofed or silglazed blockwork base on top of a very cheap slap laid on old liner or underlay at the bottom of the pool. This will spread the load of the blockwork. Lay the capping slab on top so that the bottom edge sits just below the working water level. The interval between the stepping stones: the centres of the stones or slabs should be 26ins apart, that is 66cm in new order terminology.
5. BOARDWALKS and DECKING and JETTIES.
I am reluctantly putting this lot together since they are synonymous in many circumstances, even though the Japanese staggered boardwalks for traversing boggy areas are a far cry from the trendy decking areas that bring a formal lounging area right into a wild and untrammeled part of the garden.
The simple Japanese style boardwalk, once more discouraging itinerant evil spirits, consists of simple planks of wood laid from one set of wooden stanchions, with wooden cross member, to another. The cross member is bolted or notched into the stanchions set in a large flat concrete base, possibly half a metre square and 25cm deep. The stanchions need to be in protective sleeves of polythene or liner offcuts or inserted into brackets, also set in the concrete.
A simple jetty could either be a piece of decking jutting out into the pool area or be like the boardwalk; simple planks laid into the dry land out to stanchions in the pool. These need not be set in concrete because they have a firm purchase on dry land. If the wood needs to be treated, try to ensure it is tanalised with Boron and not the common Arsenic and Chrome based toxic chemicals.
Decking can do a similar thing, by putting humans in their earnest quest to be near nature in its wildest state, as close as possible in a very refined and luxurious way. Designers nowadays often flaunt the convention of only having formal pools near the house, by instead letting wild informal ponds virtually lap the footings of the dwelling, almost like a moat.. In a situation like this, decking contrasts with the wildness by allowing you to put a living space right into or on top of this environment. But because it is made of natural plant material, it does not look out of place.
If you are considering decking - do your homework. You get what you pay for. Decking made from cheap fast grown timber warps in every direction and splinters like matchwood! Expect to pay a minimum of 30.00p per square metre plus another 30 per metre to install. This is just treated yellow pine too. If you want Redwood, Oak or even Cedar you better contemplate selling the Rolls Royce.
6. BRIDGES.
Bridges can be a viewing platform; a way of getting from A to B; a focal point in themselves that might even go so far to say all by themselves - This is a such-and-such style water garden. Natural stone clapper style bridges of stone are the next best thing up from stepping-stones; ideal for negotiating across white water stream effects. Japanese style brightly coloured bridges can only be used in that late style of Japanese garden and must be considered as part of the vista as a whole, apart from any usefulness it might have.
Bridges come in all shapes and sizes, but even the cheapest is an expensive adornment, nevertheless I have seen them used even in quite confined gardens to great effect. One such ploy is to put a bridge at the end of a view to make you automatically assume there is a corresponding area of water beyond the bridge. If however the bridge takes up all the view, it can disguise the fact that it is the end of the garden. There may in fact be a blank wall behind the bridge. In small gardens the Trompe loeil effect is further enhanced by placing a mirror under the bridge reflecting the light back to the onlooker from ,what seems to him, the other half of the garden.
7. SEATING .
Things happen on such a microscopic level in a water garden that really the best action can only be seen if you get your nose to within 4ins of the water surface. It can get a bit scary down there so maybe it would be best to relax bit and take it easy, taking in the fluttering Dragonflies, the plop of frogs and the odd midge bite.
Thats the life! Treat yourself to a decent chair. Ones that look good are not necessarily the most comfortable. Choose one that is suitable to the design of the garden setting - not too big - and give it a good try. Wriggle about on it and try some others in comparison.
8. ARBOURS AND ARCHES.
If you have a seat, how a about a fragrant arbour or a rustic bower to surround it? Or am I taking things too far? Even if your water garden is so small that it only reaches into the bracket of Feature, there is a long tradition to fulfil that comes to us from the very early Persian gardens , through the Moorish tradition and down to the mediaeval knights Garden of Love. There was never a more natural place to have a small roofed building or tent type of structure next to a water garden for any amorous dalliance as the mood may take you. Our word Kiosk comes from these such places in Persia.
In mediaeval times, affairs of the heart could be discussed in the privacy of a rosy bower or piece of topiary and within the blanketing sound of a trickling fountain.
The choice in the market for rose arches and mini pergolas is almost as mind boggling as the garden furniture world. Once again quality of craftsmanship is what you pay for, but if you are growing plants over it, then a lot of what you see in the early days will be obscured; in which case simplicity is the buy word. Some come with a bench seat already installed and they are not just made from wood. They even come in wrought iron, ready rusted if required.
Agriframes have made a huge business out of the sales of their straight forward designs in black plastic coated metal tubing and have always offered products that seem to be of relative value for money.
9. PUMPS , FOUNTAINS and WATERFALLS. FOUNTAINS.
If your water garden is well populated with fish, there may come a time when adding extra oxygen is essential, particularly on a humid, stormy summers eve when the oxygenating plants are no longer oxygenating. There are ways of doing this mechanically for the benefit of the pool environment which generally include installing a submersible pump. So why not make a feature of it. Most submersible pump manufacturers include the fittings and a jet in with their pumps and so by having them raised up on bricks in the pool, a fountain really is the simplest things to install.
In a small formal water garden, a fountain is almost the reason for it being there. They make the perfect focal and audible point . They combine the senses and cool the air, helping add moisture to the environment around a pool.
A submersible pump generally means added expense and upheaval of installing electrical power to poolside - but you had though of that, had you not? If you had not and you have a small pool too far away for convenient power installation, there is now available a number low voltage solar powered pumps that make very adequate and pretty fountain features.
If you wanted a feature that was more than a fine spray of water, then a mains powered pump would be necessary. One of the problems with fine fountain spray is that the spray can blow out of the pool. Therefore a heavier spray from a large holed nozzle or jet, or a gushing foaming jet, is often the solution. The latter require quite substantial pumps to power them, but they make highly effective oxygenators with the minimum disturbance. If you wanted a pump to supply water to a fountain ornament then the manufacturer of the ornament would possibly supply the pump or at least recommend one.
The mention of fountain ornaments engenders feelings of dread in many a heart but this is only from misconceptions invoked by other peoples overriding passions for the kitsch. In fact there is a spouting ornaments somewhere that would suit every conceivable taste - although, perhaps not every pocket.
WATERFALLS and streams fit in with the most natural looking water gardens if they are done well. In particular, natural and informal features require a good deal of experience to get right first time, but life is made much easier by publications like this and the good advice available from books and videos.
For those of you who want rapid results and a guarantee to get it right (almost) first time then you resort to the preformed stream liners. One of the best ones to my mind is the range from Rockways which if they are installed in a cleft in a slope with due consideration to planting and blending the units into the site, they are very difficult to distinguish from a natural water course.
The mysterious looking Flowform sculptures that are effectively waterfalls in reconstituted stone are said to be extremely effective oxygenators of water. They give any water scene a new millennium look and their organic shapes blend in with the wildest environments despite being made of concrete.
10. LIGHTING.
If you have moving water, then you have electrics, then you can light it.
Lighting is meant to be the new vogue for the new millennium. Supposedly, as we use our garden more and more as outside rooms, lighting for the water garden and surrounds becomes more of a saleable product. The truth is that we find it very difficult to be persuaded to go into the garden as the days get shorter, but many of us are less likely to draw the curtains on our garden at night if there is something to look at, especially if it is moving water. The beauty of light in moving water is that if it is lit from below a sheet or spout of water carries the light through it right down to the white water of splash down.
Garden lighting and indeed water garden lights have been around a long time. For many years there was the cheap and cheerful ranges - usually 12 volt with a transformer included with a set of 5 lights - they hardly ever seemed to last more than a season. These would be balanced by a more expensive 240 volt range generally from Germany that would cost for one lamp twice the price of the complete cheap set with transformer. These would have the power to be effective searchlights at Stalag 13 and would probably last 3 or 4 seasons. Although there have been a variety of effects from changing colours to illuminated mushroom domes of water, there was no compromise in the extremes in the price range, and they were all rubbish.
There is still rubbish about, but nowadays garden lighting has become another area for the garden designer to use his imagination and design expertise. Even though, once again, good quality means high prices, there are a number of companies competing on different levels to provide everything you might need from uplighters to downlighters, in or out of water, 12 volt or mains. And at least now the products last more than a handful of seasons.
So in conclusion, there is no shortage of delights to add onto our water garden scenes of perfection. But whatever we are tempted into, let us learn as much as possible about what is available and look for quality, rather than the cheapest item that does the job. As the years go by and the scene matures, the satisfaction with our choice becomes evermore complete.
Published with permission of Peter May, for more visit ... http://www.pond-solutions.co.uk/