article: Imitating Nature in the Water Garden

Imitating Nature in the Water Garden

Natural water settings are what most water gardeners are trying to achieve. A water garden that will imitate what you have seen while out walking in the woods, when visiting another place or what you have seen in magazines or in books. Using your imagination and a little creativity you can make your water garden look very natural and as if it has been ‘there’ forever.

When planning your water garden, what types of sounds do you want to hear? If you want to hear the water running when you close your eyes and you are sitting next to your water garden you will have to include the use of a stream, a water fall or a faux spring in the water garden. You can do this by using plants and materials that are both inexpensive and long lasting.

It is important to keep in mind that no matter kind of water garden you are creating, when you include the flowing water in the garden that you realize that water will only flow down hill with the slope of your landscape. You will not be able to make the water flow up the hill no matter how hard you try. Yes it might seem a little silly to say it out loud, but when you are working out in the yard on your water garden, the slightest slope might not seem like a lot but to the water force it is.

The natural path of water is going to flow down the hill. You can create any type of flowing path that you would like. You can use just a rock streambed, a concrete, or dirt little streambed for the water to follow. The streambed for the water flow that you create can be made out of anything that is ‘dented’ into the soil, not sitting on the top or above the soil.

The stream just a few inches below the soil level is going to ‘flow’ the best in to your water garden or away from your water garden to create the natural water noises you love. The water that flows naturally will cut into the soil in different levels and in various ways, it is always not uniform when you see a stream in the woods.

Sometimes you are not going to see where water comes from naturally. If you are creating the stream that will run into your water garden, you can create a water source that seems to flow up and out of the ground without a real ‘base’ pool. The spring can just push up through the soil and flow down the path to where your water garden is located.