Landscaping Design with Water Features in Mind

There is nothing quite as relaxing as the sound of natural running water. While just about anyone can add a stream or fountain to a yard, it takes some design, thought, and planning to really make it work. There are a couple things that you can do to not only accent your water features to truly bring out their beauty, but to help them work better and continue to deliver pristine enjoyment for years to come.

The layout of your yard plays a very important role in the use of water features. If you have a pond or stream just lying out in the middle of the grass, it will not have quite the effect as a nice stone path along the side of your lawn to a secluded area with a babbling brook and gazebo adjacent to a koi pond nestled in a bamboo forest. The things that you surround your feature with and the location of your features can mean a big difference between relaxation and beauty or just a big wet spot that takes up space. The layout of these features can also dictate how many things you can add to your yard. If you plan them out and let them intermingle, you can easily combine a pool, Jacuzzi, river, natural rock slide, and koi pond and still have the space for grass and trees in your back yard.

There are certain terrain concerns that you need to keep in mind when you are landscaping your yard as well. You may not want to put a steep hill near a water feature. This can cause dirt and debris to slide into your feature. With ponds and streams, this can cause cloudiness or damage to your pond. By keeping your water features slightly elevated, you can easily minimize the amount of dirt and debris in your water. By surrounding your ponds and streams with natural rock or gravel, you can also help to keep things from contaminating the water.

You will also need to consider the surrounding areas when adding water features to your yard. If there is a play type area where children will be, you do not want to put a koi pond nestled amidst it or directly next to it. Trees can also pose a problem since the leaves, seeds, and fruits will fall from them. Berry trees can be okay for a koi pond if the berries can be eaten by the koi without causing illness. This can help to feed your fish and other inhabitants of your pond.

The variety of trees and bushes can also play an important role to your water features if there are animals involved. There are certain things that can poison fish and amphibians that you may not be aware of. You will want to make sure that any plants near a water feature will not harm the ecosystem that exists there. Many of the aquatic critters that you will put in these ponds can get a little expensive and if you kill them off by keeping that bush next to their home every year you will quickly get tired of re-stocking your pond every season.

There are several things that you can do to ensure that your yard is a true paradise. All of these things are quite easy tasks to perform and just take a little thought. Just sitting in your yard and dreaming about how you want it to look can go a long way. If you really think about all the things involved with your water feature and imagine how it will look in your yard, you will gain a good grasp of how to arrange things. If you have a hard time visualizing this, you can create cardboard cutouts from old boxes. These can be found for free all over the place and can give you a better grasp of how to build your dream. If you cut the boxes to size and place them where you want them to be in your yard, you can start to see how the different elements will mix together. This can be one of the best design tools that you can use.

Drawing your yard to scale on a piece of graph paper can also be a great tool. This is always the best starting point and you can easily do your yard in stages. If you cannot afford the entire yard in one project, draw it out and do it piece by piece. Not only will this help to motivate you to completion, you can also adjust small details as you go or change the design slightly to fit new ideas and technologies.