Garden and Home Water Features

How to Create Home Water Features and Paved Areas
by: Hege Crowton

Garden Pools and Fountains
Water, in almost any form, enriches a garden and delights the senses. Modern houses are bringing garden pools right into patios and terraces.

What is often ideal is water in movement: a splashing fountain or a narrow little stream running through your garden and between flowers or over clear stones.

But even a spigot with a wooden bucket below it or a tub filled with water can be effective. These simple home water features can bring a verdant, cool feeling into the home or garden, especially if you use your bucket or tub for freshly-cut flowers.

Using the sound of running water and the evaporative qualities of a fountain or pool to bring relief from the heat is a trick we have learned from the gardens of Japan, Spain and other hot climates.

A pool in the garden highlights the good features of your setting, and it should always be placed so that its surface will be seen from several points, or at least from the most frequented spot in the garden.

The shape and materials of the coping around the pool have much to do with its appropriateness in the setting. Flagstone, brick, and tile are all good depending on the degree of formality of the pool. But sometimes the best solution is no visible coping.

Fountains can be made with only a small supply of flowing water, and the same water can be used over and over if you install a small motor and pump for an electric pumping system.

A vegetable garden can also be a source of great enjoyment. It should be out of sight in a corner or screened with shrubbery because of the seasons when there is nothing growing in it. But it can be a decorative addition to the garden, particularly if there are grass walks and attractive flowers around it.

Paved Areas and Driveways
Planning your driveway and walkways so that they take up a minimum amount of room yet still provide a strong enough surface for the traffic they will bear, calls for careful thinking.

The well-designed house and gardens have the garage close to the house and near the street. The garage situated way in back of the house is a hangover from horse-and-buggy days when the stable had to be remote from the house.

Today when the majority of home-owners have cars, space can be saved by using a garage path that also serves as the house path, or feeds into a short house walk. But though the driveway can be a short one, perhaps 20 feet from the street.

Most home driveways break down under heavy service trucks and traffic because the soil under the driveway is wet. Adequate drainage for wet spots is therefore a necessity.

Good driveway materials are stable, and should not get washed away by storms or shovelled up with snow. However, if the driveway is long and forms an important feature of your landscaping, a stable material may have to be passed up in favour of one like gravel or crushed rock, which will blend better with the surroundings.

Well-designed walks with neat edgings, steps which seem to belong where they are placed, and intriguing little paths that lead you deeper into the garden can do much to improve your garden setting.

You can scarcely lay too much emphasis on your selection of material. Concrete paths and steps, for example, while often just the right thing, can sometimes form too sharp a contrast with the surrounding turf and planting.

Informal walks made of wood (perhaps telephone poles or railway ties), flagstones, or tanbark may be much more suitable. Colonial houses are traditionally set off by brick, while modern houses favour wood. On the other hand, small houses seem to call for flagstones.

Hege Crowton is the author of the article on the Home Water Features Page. She is an expert copywriter and researcher.