Guide to Choosing the Best Location for a Water Garden

Choosing the best location for your water garden is crucial to the success of your garden and your ability to enjoy it. Before you begin digging and choosing the plants that you would like to include in your garden, you need to consider the layout of your yard, the type of water garden that you would like to include in your yard and the location of utility lines. The most important thing to consider when you are choosing the best location for your garden though is that your garden is in a location where you can enjoy and admire it with ease.

The following topics are several things that you need to consider before adding a water garden to your yard.

Easy Viewing and Access
The most important part about adding a water garden to your yard is that you place it in an easy to reach and view spot. Even if you want to place the water garden into a seclude corner for privacy, it is still important to make it a focal point and provide a way to reach the water garden. Before you completely settle on the exact location for your garden, consider these other factors.

Trees, Bushes and Roots
Already existing plants, trees and bushes in your yard are an important part of the character and landscape. It is also important to remember that the water quality of your pond is very easily disturbed, especially when it is smaller in size. You want to place the water garden close enough to the existing landscaping so that the garden looks as natural as possible, but not too close so that the tree roots and falling leaves get in the way.

Utility Lines
While you are making sure to get around tree roots, bushes, boulders and other landscaping, it is important to find out where all the utility lines and drains that snake their way around your yard. Usually there is someone in the city that you live in or the utility companies themselves that can come out and mark the areas where lines run. Try not to situate your garden anywhere over or near the lines, but if there is not enough room to place a garden around already existing lines, find out if you can get them moved.

Adequate Sunlight
Guaranteeing that your water garden will get enough sunlight is a huge part of finding the best location for it in your yard. Sunlight is crucial to the plants that you will be adding around your garden and to maintain the delicate balance of the water in your artificial water garden. At the same time, it is also important that you do not place your garden in an area where it gets too much sun for too long of a period of the day. Water gardens that get too many hours of sunlight will get to hot, so the optimal location would leave the water garden in the sun for half the day and in the shade for the other half.