Building your own DIY water feature or pond?
The key in creating a successful well landscaped pleasing water feature design is to provide a place in your garden in which all the flora and fauna are interdependent.
Nth hemisphere weather considerations are addresses here in creating water feature landscaping solutions so make the necessary changes if you live here in Australia in the Southern Hemisphere.
You must seriously consider the siting of the feature itself.
* The water feature should be in full sun. Nearly all aquatic plants need some direct sunlight to flower especially water lilies. Your dream of those beautiful water lily plants will come to nothing if you starve them of sun
* Ensure your water feature (it could be a simple fountain or stream or waterfall disappearing below ground) is away from trees (especially deciduous trees that lose their leaves in Autumn) or prevailing winds that may carry poisonous leaves into the water feature.
* Smaller garden water features can be netted against the worst of the autumn fall and a few leaves don’t harm a healthy water feature. However particularly avoid Willow, Elder, Poplars, Laburnum, Yew and Oak.
* Make sure your pond is not over-exposed to the low light direction (Nth in the northern hemisphere, Sth in the Southern hemisphere) or prevailing winds.
* Avoid any boggy waterlogged areas since this could result in it lifting
* Consider accessibility to a water supply. The feature will want regular top-ups in the summer.
* If there are to be waterfalls, streams or fountains, consider the distance to ‘plumb’ in electricity, since this can be a major expense.
* Consider SAFETY and children. Where there is water and children, at some point the children end up in it - usually head first.
* Partly for the reason above, but also because we spend so much of the year looking at our gardens from inside our houses, it is advisable to have a view of the DIY water feature, the water feature or other water feature or at least part of it from the house.
* Check for bedrock, pipe-work, electricity or septic tanks where you have chosen to have your DIY water feature.
Planning
Plan everything!. Go through the job from start to finish in your mind working out quantities and costs of materials that will be used to complete the project.
Choose the shapefeature.
* water features closer to the house tend to be more formal, further away the water feature can be more natural looking.
* However the water feature can mark the boundary between formal hard landscaping and a more informal area, for instance when a water feature adjoins a patio or decking.
* Lay a rope or hose on the ground to get the best idea of how a water feature shape will look.
* Try to draw a plan of the proposed idea or design in relation to the rest of the garden.
* Ideally do a sketch as to how you would see it from the position you are most often going to view the water feature or pond from.
* Or take a photograph of the site and draw the garden water feature in position on some tracing paper laid over it. | |
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