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Rock And Water Features
By admin | August 29, 2008
Gardens with a gentle slope offer an ideal opportunity for constructing a natrual looking rock and water feature with perhaps a stream and small cascade. For ease of construction these features may have to follow the natural contours of the site and this may influence your design.
Where practical, choose a rock type found in your locality, it will look more natural and it will almost certainly be cheaper than rock that has been transported over long distances.
Planting plants are difficult to devise for a rocky slope so concentrate on a few key palnts, such as dwarf evergreen shrubs. The smaller rock plants are usually best planted intuitively, chossing subjects that fit both with the space available and the settings.
A meandering path is always more interesting than a straight one and a combinationof sloping path and a few steps changes the pace and makes the slope easier to cope with.
Seating also requires carefull thought. Its worth providing a refuge large enough to take a garden seat part-way down to help those who find slopes difficult.
Choosing a position that has an attractive view of the garden, or of the scene beyond, will encourage more use of the seat.
A stream can be constructed from a series of seperate long, narrow ponds with the liners overlapped and sealed where the levels change.
Use of a good quality liner over a proper liner underlay, and make small concrete slabs at each side of the level changes on which to bed suitable rocks. Fold over a piece of spare liner to form an extra cushion under the concrete pad.
The stream is to make water tight at the cascades by overlapping the liner from the higher pond over that from the lower. This should prevent the water from escaping, but as an additional precaution seal the overlaps with speacial tape or adhesive. Consult your aquatic supplier regarding materials as it depends on the type of liner used. Bed the rocks firmly on each side of the cascade on mortar to ensure they are stable. You may however first want to have a test run then drain the water to make any adhustments. An aquatic specialist should be able to advise on a suitable pump - it will need to be powerful to maintain a fast flow over a wide lip. A header pool is used at the top, fed by a return hose fromt he pump.
Topics: Garden Furniture |
September 8th, 2008 at 10:56 pm
[…] Rock And Water Features - Gardens with a gentle slope offer an ideal opportunity for constructing a natrual looking rock and water feature with perhaps a stream and small cascade. For ease of construction these features may have to follow the natural contours of … […]