Water features - review

Garden designers, writers and owners agree on one point: EVERY GARDEN SHOULD HAVE A WATER FEATURE. But it seems rather easier to go wrong than right in the design.

WATER SUPPLY alternatives:

• use a natural water course [the best solution but also the least common]
• excavate to the water table, thus forming a natural pond [very successful if the water table is high in your garden]
• collect rainwater water runoff from roofs, pavements, lawns etc [most gardens should do this - but few do]
• use piped water from the mains supply [the most expensive and the least sustainable solution]

WATER RETENTION alternatives:

• natural retention [as mentioned above]
• a flexible rubber or plastic pond liner [relatively cheap but damageable - and ugly if visible]
• a rigid fiberglass pond liner [more durable than a flexible liner - but ugly if visible]
• waterproof concrete [structural concrete - a 1:2:4 mix - is waterproof but needs to be well detailed with with waterbars at joints. Concrete is also ugly if visible.]

WATER BODY alternatives:

• lakes and ponds (with irregular shapes)
• tanks and pools (rectangular)
• streams and channels (linear, with flowing water)

WATER CIRCULATION alternatives:

• gravity
• mains powered pump
• wind- or solar-powered pump

WATER MOVEMENT alternatives:

• streams and cascades
• bubbles
• fountain, sprays and jets
• whirlpools

ECOLOGICAL alternatives:

• chemically sterile water
• ecologically unbalanced (euthrophic) water - usually unclear
• ecologically balanced water - usually clear

• almost 2 years ago Water Features said

  An important consideration is water feature cleaner. In an independant test in 2009, testers found a quarter of samples from garden centres' water ornaments tested positive for the potentially fatal E.coli poisoning. Therefore adeque preventative measures need to be taken. There are many cleaners on the market to solve this little issue though.