Make A Splash

Fountains, pools and ponds bring life to your landscape.

- Sarah Ristorcelli

There are a hundred reasons not to incorporate a water feature into your landscape. It’s a huge project, you worry. I don’t have space for that, you might say. Who has time to keep it up? you wonder.

“When people come to me looking for a fountain or another water feature, I make sure they realize that there can be a lot of maintenance involved. You need one guy to maintain your pool, and someone else to maintain the fountain, because there isn’t much overlap on those skills. It can get expensive,” says Stephen Block, a garden design expert who imports garden antiques and reproductions.

This might not sound like the beginning of a story about how wonderful water features are—a story full of design ideas to consider—but it is. By acknowledging that they don’t fit neatly within the structure of easy, maintenance-free gardening that’s taken hold over the past decade, you can be realistic about what having a water feature actually means in terms of space, time and expense. Only then can you marvel at the beauty such an addition can add to your home landscape.

FOUNTAINS

First, decide on the style of fountain you want and where you might like to place it.

A fountain’s position in the garden relates to the surrounding landscape. Block says to ask yourself: From where will it be viewed? What scale do I need to complement the other existing elements, like plants, trees and furniture? Will I be able to hear the trickle and splash of the fountain? “Once you’ve decided where your fountain will be and what kind of fountain you want, get help installing it properly,” he says. Although there are some DIY exceptions, “most of the time you’ll benefit from having a professional involved.”