The French still love to work in the formal style. This is part of a fairly recent garden at Le Manior DErignac in the Dordogne.) After all, the minimal range of plants coiffured in balanced repetitious patterns did little to demand much attention.

Moving water, flowing down hill, and if there was no hill, spurting up out of the surface of some great pool was a transfixing entertainment. So much so that people of wealth and influence would travel along way out of their way on their Grand tours of Europe to get a view of good display. A good garden with associated water features was thus a definite statement of your own wealth, power and influence.

A fact that one Nicholas Fouquet, the finance minister for Louis XIV, should have borne in mind before he embarked upon the fantastic formal water gardens of Vaux-le-Vicomte designed to impress his king but instead enraged him with a jealousy the spelt Fouquets immediate downfall. This was in 1661.

Once Fouquet was incarcerated and out of the way, Louis, using the same garden designer, Le Notre, went on to create the most fantastic fountain phantasmagoria ever created. He chose the site of his fathers hunting lodge at Versailles for his place and garden. Eventually there were 14,000 fountains there, too many to work at one time from the maximum supply of 5,000 cubic metres of water supplied from the vast waterwheels down on the Seine.

But even for the most modest fountain, in those days of very little machinery, it would have seemed nothing less than magic for there could be no other explanation for water to spurt upwards against the normal pull of the earth. In fact a great deal of effort would have been involved with even the most simple fountain, by creating water pressure from reservoirs hidden high up out of sight filled by water wheels or from hill water conduited from far away and piping it underground to your outlet nozzle. But I think real appreciation of fountains lies deeper in the innate knowledge of the human mind.

Innate Appreciation

I believe there is something fixed in the human psyche, linked to days when we roamed in loose bands of hunter/gathers, when the sight of pure water emerging from a hole in the ground was treated like a gift from the gods of the natural world. Here was sustenance for life emerging straight from the ground and the knowledge of its whereabouts was essential for your existence. Over time, this appreciation becomes adapted, and what we saw as essential to our survival becomes a foundation stone or initial building block in our appreciation of beauty. Many psychologists and anthropologists seem to agree that virtually all of our aesthetics are based the primitive awareness of what was made good signs for our survival or procreation.

All ages of man have appreciated fountains and every large city is littered with fountains from a varied assortment of eras, Rome, Paris and London are particularly well endowed where they quite often used mark or celebrate particular events. TRANNIE 4:

A fountain in Hyde Park in London, the water brings life to the statues. The Americans being quite uninhibited about celebrating, unsurprisingly seem to go over the top in this respect. The city of Kansas is the fountain city of the world claiming to have more fountains than anywhere else. If you have a claim to the contrary then they will do their best to prove you wrong given a little time.

In this country it seems the Victorians were certainly quite uninhibited about their appreciation fountains and sought to put them anywhere in any public place for the enlightenment of the common folk, long before there was any consideration of installing running water as matter of course in domestic properties. In Bristol, where the first Public Water Company was created in 1846, the general populace had existed in desperate need of fresh water for centuries, but when the city gentry was first mooted the idea to pipe water from 19 miles away in the Mendip hills, it was merely to provide water for fountains. (TRANNIE 5: One of Bristols well known fountains to celebrate the reign of Queen Victoria.)(TRANNIE 6: A modern fountain in a shopping mall in Bristol that creates a series of effects using a combination of water and light.)

Fountain Society

If you are fascinated with fountains you will be keen to learn that there is a society of similarly smitten souls. They organise trips and tours, have newsletters and annual conferences in Cambridge. In 2001 they went to St Petersburg to see how the Russians do it. They restore, conserve old fountains and advise on siting and construction of new ones. Membership is 20 p.a. or 250 for life, 12.50 for under 18s. For more information they have a website at: www.fountainsoc.org.uk , or you can join by contacting the Honourable Treasurer at 65 Hazlewell Road, London,SW15 6UT.

Practicalities

Well if you hearts desire is some sort of fountain for you pool then you need think no further than the submersible pump. Most new pumps come with all the fittings to create a fountain straight from the pump and or to supply a waterfall or fountain ornament. Many fountain ornaments if they are just spurting a jet of water will create a fairly impressive effect with quite a modest size of pump. But if the ornament has something like cascading bowls and is meant to have fierce jets that launch spectacularly into space then you will find the pump performance required leaps correspondingly. It is all to do with getting more water through a restricting tube. There is a limiting curve of possibility. In order to get the most out of the pump the tubing needs to be the maximum bore to the very last possible point.

Fierce jets need powerful pumps

If you were thinking in terms of these beautifully engineered tubes of steel and brass that seem to make water dance all but the Sugar Plum Fairy, then save up your pennies. Fairly simple devices start in the hundreds of pounds and as for the stunning machines that launch mortar rounds of pieces of water (see May Issue How Far Can You Go), around 8,000.

Fountain features that have no visible water reservoir or pool in which they sit need to be sterilised in some way with a strong algicide that may be chlorine based or may contain potassium permanganate or copper sulphate. Certainly not anything that could be described as fish friendly. With water running over the ornament surface, or landing on surrounding surfaces, algae and moss soon establishes itself to give an aged or rustic look out of kilter with the clean shiny looks of minimalism.

Fountains are fish friendly and fountains in pools with fish in them need to be easy to maintain. So make sure you have a method of reaching them from the side of the pool because they will regular clog with lime from the water or detritus pumped up from the pump. A quick soak in some vinegar or lemon juice puts paid to the lime.

If they are too light and they are in an exposed position, the spray can easily be blown out of the pool. Ensure there is at least the height of the fountain spray times two from the fountain jet to the poolside.

The gushing style or foaming jet is a useful aerator that is less liable to be windblown. The really effective versions of these are quite expensive, because they are engineered to suck in air as they rise up. What is more, they need a good powerful pump to be effective. If you have a pump, it can be a fairly effective compromise to have just the fountain nozzle, minus jet, spurting up full bore from just below the water surface. (TRANNIE 8) This seems to create aerating bubbles without too much spray. The spray is a pain for lilies too. Any moving or agitated water upsets them and prevents them from flowering.

Make Them Laugh

My favourite fountains are ones with an element of humour to them. Since possibly before Roman times, fountains have often be used in the past to play tricks on passers by or the audience by giving them a good soak like the Willow Tree at Chatsworth in Derbyshire (TRANNIE 9).

Other times the dance of the water was used give the effect that the statue or scene was itself alive. David Goode has started doing this with his strangely realistic gnomes (TRANNIE 10)

The next step of course is to use the power of the water to actually animate the ornament itself into doing things. In Renaissance times these could be quite complex theatrical enactment of scenes from mythology, or they could create sound as well with animated birds whistling in trees. There is a the occasional revival of this ingeniousness from the likes of the sculpture Angela Conners with the Revelation fountain at Chatsworth again. (TRANNIE 11)

Richard Taylor is the genius with copper that apart from his giant dragon monsters makes tiny animated fountains. (TRANNIE 12)(TRANNIE 13)

Geoff Brown from Waterstones Fountains in Somerset is getting the idea too with his comic frogs. (TRANNIE 14)(TRANNIE 15)

When it comes to Hampton Court Flower Show, I always look forward to the Chenies water garden usually designed by Brian Toms who usually creates something to make you smile at least and is generally something to do with moving water.(TRANNIE 15:

Chenies Merlins

Magic Garden at Hampton Court Flower Show 1999 had a fleet of fountain features).

For the most suitable fountain for a fish pool we need look no further than the Chaumont Garden Festival in 1999, from Christophe Mallmouche The Scene of the Fish. A fish pool with an obvious difference, the fountain is a fish! (TRANNIE 16)

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