Start by dreaming
To begin our water feature, we had a long chat with our landscape architect. He ended up giving us a design of a 70 foot long water feature with 3 ponds. The water was surrounded by a variety of plants mixed in such a way that there would be flowers blooming all summer long. When one stopped blooming, another would come into bloom. After we received the drawing, the next project (a very long project) was to just lie down and dream about what the water feature would look like. We bought books about water gardens and let our imaginations run wild. We learned such things as
- Create curves in the water stream so that we have the sound and look of white water.
- It is more artistically pleasing to have a straight edged rock in the front of each waterfall.
- Because of our lifestyle, we want informal and natural looking rather than a formal garden.
- The water feature should be in full sun.
- It was most artistically pleasing for the third pond to be at the lowest point in our lot.
- We had to make sure the underground electrical services were installed according to the local code.
- We installed electrical outlets by both the upper and lower ponds.
- We had to keep in mind safety measures to keep children safe. (A child can drown in 3 inches of water!)
- One can expect that the pump will be out of order occasionally. So, the water courses must be contoured in such a way that there is water in the cascade basins if the pump is shut off.
- All sides of the pond should be approximately the same elevation.
- Etc.
After you finish dreaming, you start
spray painting the outline of
the water feature.
And you finish your outline.
Then you dig.
Start digging inside the spray painted
lines.
After having dug enough, you place cinder blocks in the hole to prevent things from caving in. In our case, we kept digging until the pond was about four feet deep. Notice the cinder blocks to the right of the pond. They are to support the rocks that will make up the waterfall.
Cont'd on p.2
