Just add water
If your garden is not big enough for a pond, but you’d love a water feature to add cool and calm to your outside space, there are plenty of options.
Pools in pots, sculptures trickling water or wall attachments spouting a stream can all be easily sorted – but there are basics to consider, says award-winning landscape and garden designer Helen Elks-Smith (elks-smith. co.uk), a member of the Society of Garden Designers (sgd.org.uk).
“You want good surfaces and good plants – and if you are time-poor, I’d be cautious about water,” she suggests.
Pots can be high maintenance
“The issue is, if you have a small body of water, it heats up. When water heats up it goes green,” Helen warns. “But you can probably drain it when it goes green, clean the container and fill it back up again.”
If you have, for instance, a half barrel lined with pond liner for a water feature, the frequency with which you’d have to change the water depends on where you position it.
“Oxygenating plants can help to keep the water cleaner,” she notes. “Water lilies can be added to still water. Flag irises can be added, but the depth of the water will have a bearing on what you can plant.
“Often it’s a good idea to have a little shallow area, like a little shelf you can pop plants on, which are planted in little baskets. Not a lot of plants which grow above the water like the water really deep.”
Consider filters
Helen says: “If you have a still bit of water – and they are very popular – you may have to have a large number of filters moving the water.
“There are loads of kits available, which often come with filters, or you can buy them from specialists who will advise you on the type of
pump and filter you need.”
Balance it out
“You don’t want plants to be too invasive in a small container, but some irises are really beautiful. We planted an equisetum in a water feature scheme, which has horizontal bars on it, which is very striking and contemporary looking,” Helen adds.
For modern gardens
“Even if you plant for nature, it doesn’t have to look homespun. You can have something that’s up-to-the
minute. Nature doesn’t mind.
“Think about why you want water in the garden,” suggests Helen. “For some people, looking at the reflective surface is what matters. Creating a reflective surface is a great way of bringing the sky down and bouncing the light around.”
Check your sound
“There are many different sounds associated with moving water.
“If you have water falling from a height, you will get a lot of splash, it’s busy to look at and will make a big sound.
“You could have water falling from the same height at the same rate onto different things, and it will sound different,” she notes. “If you want a gentle trickle, the water would be going over a surface as it drops.
“The classic is water falling through a rockery, where you’d see it more than you’d hear it.”
Wall-mounted water features
“There are kits where you prop it up or build it against a wall, and the water will fall out of a chute,” says Helen.
“These wall-mounted features tend to be slightly noisier, depending on the height and speed of the water and how wide the chute is. If you want to change the sound, you can bring something up from the ground for the water to fall on, such as stones or pebbles.”
Sculpture-led streams
You can buy sculptures, typically where a hole has been drilled and the water is pushed up through the hole. Many have hidden reservoirs, where a pump and filter sit.
The reservoir will need topping up and cleaning from time to time, and Helen advises you’ll need an outside electrical supply to run it, installed by a qualified electrician.