"A water feature can be something as simple as a birdbath or as elaborate as a 20-by-20-foot pond," says Richard Bown, who recently opened a shop in Ottawa that pays homage to the soothing power of water and outdoor accessories.
There is a growing range of decorative and simple ways to add water to your property, says the landscape architect. The first step is looking at your lifestyle and deciding what water features suit you. Also look at the size of your property and go from there.
"When you buy a cottage, you get whatever lake is in front of it," adds Nicholas Bott of The Pond Clinic in Ottawa. "When you are building a pond, you get what you want."
Here's a sample of the options available:
For the swimmer:
The swimming pond
Bott didn't buy a waterfront property, he created his own. He is one of a small but growing number of people who bypassed a pool and installed a swimming pond in his backyard.
"Swimming ponds have now started to be more popular," says Bott. "Where people might put in a pool, they are starting to install miniature lakes."
These ponds can cover one-eighth of an acre and up, says Bott, adding that the larger the pond, the less maintenance it requires.
A swimming pond is expensive -- often twice the cost of a pool -- but it's usually cheaper than buying waterfront property.
The ponds function like a lake, using aquatic plants to clean the water, and can contain fish. Arranging the plants is like decorating, says Bott, adding it's a lot more fun than vacuuming a pool.
For the small yard:
The pond-less waterfall or hidden basin
One of the main reasons people want a water feature is because they like to hear the sound of running water. One way to achieve that is with a pond-less waterfall, which is an arrangement whereby water, instead of cascading into an open pond, falls into a basin filled with loose gravel or rocks before being recirculated up to the top of the falls.
"It's really popular because there's barely any maintenance," says Perry Molema, the Chatham, Ont.-based Canadian sales director for Aquascape Inc.
Closely related is the hidden basin, a pond that is covered with a metal grille on which rocks are piled. On the rocks sits a sculptural feature, such as an urn or a fountain, through which water is pumped.
Hidden basins are probably the No. 1 water feature this year, says Molema, because they are easy for the do-it-yourselfer to install and create a lot of ambience for a minimal cash outlay.
No yard at all? Just a deck or a terrace? You can always get a wall-mounted fountain with a pump that recirculates water from a small catchment basin up into, say, a spout that shoots water from a lion's mouth.
All you have to do is make sure the wall-mounted fountain never runs out of water so the pump doesn't burn out.
For the decorator:
Fountain-scapes
The decoratively arranged fountains can be animal shapes, natural shapes or anything else.
Molema says there are a lot of new decorative items out this year, including brass fish or herons that spout water.
Bott mentions bubbling urns; Bown talks about bubbling rocks -- rocks with a hole drilled through them and arranged so that the water gurgles up through the hole and over. He says bubbling rocks can even be brought indoors in winter, and placed anywhere in the home where a water feature would work.
What's fun about fountain-scapes, says Bott, is that they can easily be moved around and re-arranged at the owner's whim.
"More and more, landscapes are fashion statements as well as being permanent gardens."
For the ecologist:
The rain garden
The idea is that you collect rainwater from your roof, store it in an underground reservoir instead of a rain barrel and grow a wetland garden on top of it.
If you collect enough rainwater, you can even pump it out to water other parts of your garden.
"This is a rain barrel beneath the ground that's going to feed the plants on top of it," says Bott.
If you have a small yard, you can simply grow aquatic plants in your rain barrel or any other large water-filled container, such as an urn.
"Any kind of aquatic plant can be displayed in pots," said Molema, adding that with this concept, you don't have to worry about watering the plants if you're away for a few days.
Molema said that to create a nice arrangement, all you need is a vertical plant, a filler plant and a drooping plant.
And now, the maintenance:
No matter what you choose, there will be some setup and maintenance involved, particularly for spring setup and fall closing.
But overall, says Bown, it's not a big deal.
"People have the misconception that it's a high-maintenance thing, but in fact it's really simple because technology has improved."
Ponds are no longer the domain of 'pond geeks' who argue endlessly about filtration systems. They are now much more accessible to the average homeowner.
"Because of the technologies manufacturers have introduced, they have made the technical part modular and simple and taken the difficulty out of it," says Bown.
-- Canwest News Service
