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As a garden feature, water has a long & multi faceted history. Long before we dragged ourselves into civilisation water was the fundamental need for our survival in a primitive world. When the Egyptians & Babylonians brought the garden in to being, they included water as a matter of course & this feature continued in an unbroken chain through all the major developments of garden design. From the Moorish rills of the Alhambra, through the canals & fountains of Vaux & Versailles & the lakes & rivers of the English Picturesque, to the contemporary gardens of the present day, water is a golden thread that weaves through them all. It is unfortunate that the water feature has become somewhat ubiquitous due to the effect of the garden makeover show (& I must shoulder some of the responsibility from my participation building a pond & waterfall in a series called ‘Better Gardens’) but a well planned & built water feature can be the heart of a fabulous garden.
Your water feature should ‘fit’ the garden space. Not only must the size be in proportion to the area but the material & setting have to mesh into the surroundings. There are many ‘off the peg’ features available from garden centres, but if you want something more personal then it involves a little more leg work & a lot more imagination.
Recently, I have designed & built a garden that contains a stream that is completely man made. Through careful design & attention to detail the stream appears to come from under the existing house, through a culvert, across the new patio in a rill (a narrow contained watercourse) before falling off the edge into a naturalised rocky stream that snakes down the garden. It does everything you want a feature to do, unites the garden, provides movement & sound, & gives structure to the layout of the garden. At 30m long it is larger that many people would require but for the scale of the garden it fitted perfectly.
On a smaller scale, enclosed features are a straightforward route to including water in the garden. These generally include a reservoir, pump & all the bits & bobs (a technical phrase used throughout the industry) to make installation easy, but you should not assume that installation should be skimped on. I’ve seen many expensive features poorly installed & this detracts so much from the overall effect.
These are some of the things that water can do in your garden:
q Waterfall – this curtain of water can assume many different guises with the flow rate of the water most important. The depth of the pool & smoothness of the flow can alter the sound of the water.
q Fountain – from trickling ‘shower head’ to high powered spout reaching 20ft into the air, there are more choices of fountain than any other type of water effect.
q Statue & sculpture – we can call this ‘Features Ancient & Modern’ as it includes many different ways of moving water through & out of all sorts of contemporary & classical statues. Quirky, calming, flamboyant, reverent or ingenious, there is a feature here for you.
q Streams – one word here, make it belong. A stream that looks out of place will always grate on the eye.
There is always something interesting that can be done with water, & if you take the time to look beyond the everyday features that are available then it is possible (& surely preferable) to have a bespoke water feature that suits your garden rather than a garden that has to fit around a feature that everyone else already has in their garden.
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