Garden view
Ponds and rills create sparkle in a garden; Helen Billiald says we should all splash out
Ponds and rills create sparkle in a garden – so go on, splash out, urges Helen Billiald
Do you have any tadpoles this year? My neighbour was surprised when I told her no, because I don’t have a pond. She couldn’t have look more surprised if I’d answered the front door naked. “No pond?” she asked. “But you love gardening!” She has a point. Is any garden complete without a splash of water? We’re lucky to have a beautiful leafy canal not one minute’s walk away, home to yellow water lilies and elusive otters. Having children still learning to swim further muddies the water-feature decision – and my daughters’ spectacular entry into the canal on her bike was testament to that; she’s fine, and one day she may even forgive the fact I laughed. (It wasn’t deep.) There is one type of water feature I’ve always hankered for. You can keep your lakes, sparkling fountains, amoeba-like pond liners and stone bird baths: rills beat the lot. These little channels of moving water bring a garden to life – and are too small to submerge bikes. Hestercombe has some glorious examples. There are two Lutyens rills in its formal garden, each just wide enough to encourage even the most sensible grown-up to hop across. But it’s the snaking rill in the landscape garden that floats my boat. Technically it’s a brick-lined leat running from the top pond to the grand cascade. Its water surface riffles and dimples as it scoots along, carrying the tiny leaf boats we like to float on it; the pleasures of a clear country stream translated to a garden.
Octagonal pool
Rousham has a much-photographed rill, a sinuous line pausing at an octagonal pool before enticing you away, heartbreakingly beautiful in its simplicity. Both are far removed from my first pond as a child, made by digging a very large hole with my brother until our parents relented. It was lined with bright blue tarpaulin, a strange choice that made the fish look like they were swimming around in a neon nightclub. Next up was a slightly larger and deeper pond, a black liner this time (we were learning) and a rockery waterfall whose incessant watery tinkle was guaranteed to give you a restless night. It was positioned along our front path, with the unsurprising result that it soaked the foot of more than one departing visitor, heading home after an evening of good food and drink. If you turned off the pump, the fish ran short of oxygen, so the tinkle remained. The large koi carp were eventually stolen, fish security being a part of pond maintenance we hadn’t bargained on. And here perhaps is the logic behind my reluctance to bring water into the garden. Experience shows that every pond is labour intensive. Even though I love a good project, I can see that we’d have to hire a professional to build our rill (I’d never get the gentle gradient right) and what about the underground reservoir? The pipework? A power source for the pump? How often would it need topping up? Who would have the time to clean it? Despite all these concerns it’s hard not to dream about starting small and then scaling up. I wonder whether rills exist in kit form?
Our pond soaked the foot of many a departing visitor