Pondless Waterfalls
In the heat of the summer, there is nothing as refreshing as the sound of splashing water. In many places, however, water is at a premium and likely to be even more scarce in the future. So how can a water feature bring beauty and freshness into the garden in a responsible manner? Consider the pondless waterfall. are wonderful fun, but they are expensive to install and require a fair investment of time and money to maintain. All too often, ponds lose their appeal after the first couple of years and become eyesores of neglect, or worse, health hazards where they are abandoned. So if you don’t want a pond, or simply aren’t sure, try starting with a pondless waterfall. It’s water efficient and lower maintenance.
Okay, what IS a pond-less waterfall? The idea of a pond-less waterfall is to create something between a fountain and a pond. Structurally, it can take any form you’d like to imagine. The basic concept is that water is moved from a storage space, through a pipe and out into the air to splash back into the storage space and be recirculated again. This is the same basic concept in all water features. The difference here is that the ‘storage space’ is not a basin like you would find in a fountain, nor is it a larger body of open water like a pond. By covering the ‘storage receptacle, there is no open water visible (hence: “pond-LESS waterfall”). There are a number of advantages to building a water feature like this. First of all, you will not have to deal with mosquitoes laying their eggs in open water. You also do not have to buy or care for fish. Additionally, you do not have to use chemicals in the water to avoid build up of algae or pests. And depending on how you build this feature, you can create a water feature that is low on water usage and evaporation. You can still plant bog plants if you’d like to have a break from drought-tolerant gardening or you can design your waterfall for minimum maintenance and avoid any organic decor.
To build a pond-less waterfall, you only need to understand the basic concept. An underwater pump needs to be submersed in a container of water. The water will be pumped out an outlet pipe attached to the pump. You can guide that pipe however you wish. When the water spills out the other end of the pipe, it needs to go back into the container again. This is how any fountain or pond works. In a pond or fountain, the water splashes directly back into open water, often cascading down multiple tiers before returning for recycling. If you eliminate the surface of the water, you eliminate many of the maintenance issues discussed above. You can cover the surface with stones, gravel rock or many other materials so the water filters down below into the area where the pump is housed. The pump will need a special permeable house or box that allows the pump to remain submerged under returning water, yet keeps the stones or other material covering the surface of the container away from the pump. A cage with an easy access top – for servicing or changing out the pump – would work well.
Designs for pondless waterfalls are limited only by your imagination. You can create any structure you want to match your home or garden. If you fall in love with a piece of garden décor, such as a sculpture, you can incorporate that sculpture as if it were a part of a fountain. People, animals and objects can be used as a focal point with water splashing over rocks behind, cascading at the sculpture’s feet, or even becoming incorporated with the action of the sculpture if the positioning allows. The trick is to hide the pipe so it can’t be seen. The water can pour out wherever you direct the pipe opening. A common and tasteful version of a pondless waterfall can be seen in bubbling pots that spill their water into gravel covered receptacles. The fun of using these pots is that you can find all colors and styles of pots so you can easily find something to underscore your favorite look.
You can use unusual materials to create pondless waterfalls. Rock and bubbling pots may be popular, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get creative. Watering cans, hollow chunks of bamboo, anything that you can conduct a line of water through can spill water back into the receptacle. You probably would do better not to choose items with material that can rot or rust badly, but plastic, glass, stainless steel, PVC, and treated wood are all examples of materials that should work fine. You can use less resilient material to surround the water flow as well. That way you could use, say, a wagon wheel or a piece of furniture as a setting in which a more water-friendly material can conduct water though. You could use an old computer monitor housing for an unusual focal point, or send water around a dollhouse, or maybe run an electric train set over real waterfalls. You can go small or large, abstract or realistic. You can underscore a theme, like a lion’s head waterfall in a Tuscan garden or a fabricated cement tree with water flowing from all the branches for a fantasy garden. Not only can you create any type of water feature, but you can cover the receptacle with materials other than stone. Picture the fantasy tree splashing branches of water onto a bed of tumbled glass with the pump hidden safely beneath for a pondless waterfall. Or maybe you might want colored rocks for the Lion’s head. Consider using brightly colored small tiles spaced sufficiently for the water to run down between in a Mexican styled garden. You might even do away with the “fall” of the water fall and simply install a spray that blossoms from the material covering the tub beneath. In short, just about any effect can be created using a pondless waterfall. You might have an artist design something special for you or you might want to play around with your own creative skills. You can bring in a contractor for larger constructions or play with your own smaller versions. Whatever you want to design and build, you can create it with a pondless waterfall.
Garden Maintenance and the No-maintenance Landscape
If you want a good looking landscape, be advised that there is no such thing as a no-maintenance garden any more than there is a permanently picture-perfect landscape. All gardens need regular care. They are constantly in a state of change. Plants are living things and continually grow so there is nothing that looks good and stays the same short of plastic or silk – and even artificial plants tend to fade over time! The most successful gardens are designed with forethought and planning. Take into consideration your budget, your lifestyle and be realistic about not only what you want your landscape to look like, but how much time you are willing to devote to caring for your garden.
Good design involves laying out the right plants in the right place so they not only look good, but grow easily without a lot of fussing. You are setting up a living system that needs to function well and in harmony with itself, your environment and your lifestyle. That’s why just picking out some nice plants and plunking them down will never work for long. Putting together the permanent features of a garden with the plant material is a complicated project. This is one reason it is often a good idea to hire a knowledgeable garden designer or garden coach for professional landscape help.
Part of a good consultation should involve talking about what solutions will give you the closest fit possible. If you decide to work with a professional, make sure you make your views known. You don’t want someone who will tell you what you are getting without your input. And you want your garden to be designed to your tastes and lifestyle, not someone else’s.
Sadly, there is no such thing as a no-maintenance garden. But there are interesting alternatives. By using a combination of living and non-living materials an artistic eye can create a perfectly lovely landscape that will require minimum garden maintenance while providing maximum beauty and utility. Using local native plants – or at least plants from similar ecologies – is one way to make upkeep easier since these plants will be naturally adapted to your conditions. But a garden is a man-made creation and if you want your garden to be a successful landscape that is controlled to fit your vision, expect there will be weeding, pruning, occasional replacements and other work involved in even a low-maintenance garden.
Garden Design by Plant Layout
You can create a successful garden by using a well thought-out plant layout. By designing your garden with groups of plants with similar growth habits, colors, textures or growth needs you not only create interesting designs, but make maintenance easier.
There are many advantages to creating garden areas that group plants with similar growth habits or families. For example, it is practical to group azaleas, gardenias, camellias and hydrangeas in the same garden as they all need acid soil and shade. There is sufficient diversity within these varieties to create a lovely setting which will bloom for a long period of time. There are a number of other acid lovers you can pepper in to add other shapes or colors. An all acid-loving shade garden will need less care since the whole area has the same requirements.
Ponds and other water gardens force us to use plants with similar needs. Natives and drought-tolerant plantings work best with the same principle.
But you can also plant gardens of all one type of plant. Bulbs would be less successful due to the relatively short flowering habit of most bulbs when compared to the time the foliage looks less attractive. These are best inter-planted with other plants that can hide foliage when flowering is done. But daisy gardens would be a good choice as there is a wide range of daisy-flowered plants from tall sunflowers to shrubby Euonymus to colorful chrysanthemums to bright Gerbera daisies to tiny Bellis daisies. And many more. Daisies come in a huge variety of colors and forms – enough to create really interesting groupings for a plant layout.
Grass gardens also create their own ambiance. Since grasses come in so many sizes, shapes and colors, you can create a whole picture without any other types of plants. And in areas with winds, grasses sway gracefully adding motion and sound to the visual garden design.
The number of grasses is awesome. We tend to think of grass as lawn, but there are all kinds of ornamental grasses available. Although they do not have colorful flowers, some have dramatic inflorescences (seed heads) that fluff out to make splendid 2-second cat toys. Pampas grass is probably one of the best known ornamental grasses. Unfortunately, it self-seeds so readily in parts of California that it has been declared an official state pest. So make sure you buy a sterile variety like ‘Gold Band’ if this can be a problem in your area.
There are many other grasses with better manners you can try. Try the Miscanthus family of grasses for large colorful foliage in varieties with a whole variety of marvelous patterns. The fountain grasses come in reds and greens, large and small. (Watch out for the large green varieties: most self-seed like crazy all over the place!) Blue tints are available in fescues, oat and lyme grasses. And the Carix family offers grasses short or tall, curly or straight and in almost every color.
If you design a layout with these grasses in their own garden, you can create a patchwork of colors and textures. Mix evergreens with deciduous grasses for a colorful, yet wintry looking garden in the cool months. Some grasses even turn colors in the autumn. Build in paths to wander through grass gardens so you can see all the denizens. Easy to care for and graceful in breezes, a grass garden can be an experiment in delight.
So as you layout your garden design, consider creating all-of-a-kind, group gardens. They make for eye-catching designs and easy care.
Also check out this iris poster!
And other plants to group like Verbena and other groundcovers and Roses for spectacular rose gardens.
Designing a Small Space or Apartment Garden
With all the political and financial changes in the country and the world, sometimes it’s nice to snuggle into a safe, cozy garden space rather than go anywhere. As a result, more and more people are looking at their little (or large) piece of outdoor space as a safe haven in which to heal from the harshness of the world outside.
You can use your outdoor space for whatever you want — to decorate and offset your house, as a play area for children or pets, as a sports center, a hobby shop or an entertainment center, a grocery store, a retreat from the rest of the world, or anything else. What is important is that you remember the land or patio you have with your home – whether it’s a rambling estate, a house, an apartment or a condo – is your space that you pay for. Make sure you use it to suit your needs. Don’t waste it.
This article is devoted to those of you who don’t have a lot of space to do all those wonderful things people with big yards can do. Yet even with a limited space, you can create magic. Even if you have little or no yard space, you can build a garden with flower boxes or a few large pots.
Try stacking low rows of pots beside or atop each other and plant flowers or vegetables (the latter do need at least 6 hours of sun) to create a living wall that will provide color and/or edibles in even a small area. If you chose decorative containers, you can design your low wall to be any color or style you chose. Or consider filling in part of the wall with a trellis to grow a vine – flowering or edible – and use it as a divider wall.
Set trays below pots to keep water from dripping down on people below if you are planting on a balcony. You can fill the trays with ornamental stones to make a whole mini-landscape. Or decorate a small space by hanging pots filled with dangling plants in a row along a railing or suspended from the end of individual steps on a staircase to create a living curtain.
Design in a small garden of tomatoes, peppers or bush beans in pots for the apartment garden. If you plant vegetables in your small-space garden, add sparkle by inter-planting colorful annuals. Whether you grow edibles or ornamentals, design your garden to have a plant or two that will spill over the container and at least one that will grow tall for contrast.
You can buy a table-top fountain or a small floor-sized fountain and even add a small-growing water plant or two (or a handful of watercress from the grocery store) and enjoy water gardening on a small scale. Try hanging a colorful swinging canvas chair and balance it with a table or planter stand sporting pots of geraniums, bacopa or lobelia for color.
To simplify watering in a small area, potted garden, rig up a simple drip irrigation system on a timer. A little portable barbecue creates a gourmet cooking area, while a tinkling set of wind chimes transforms your small space into a meditation nook. A small area can be cordoned off for a pet or a small child to play safely while you watch. If you want privacy and do not need sun to grow edibles, one large bush in a pot can screen you from neighbors and keep your space cool. Use a heavy cement pot and a loop of rope to secure it to a post or rafter if you live in a windy location.
Even small spaces like apartments, balconies and patios can be transformed into places where nature can soothe our souls in the frantic pace of our lives today. It’s easy to get caught up in getting things done from moment to moment. Make sure to build in some place in your life where you can take some time to remember you are working to live, not just living to work. It’s all about appreciating being alive. That’s what gardening is all about, whether on a large or small scale! So, consider designing a small space or apartment garden if you don’t already have one.
Add Color with Annual Flowers
This year the big fashion in landscape design is color, color and more color. Maybe everyone’s tired of the dull dreariness of the recession. Maybe there is just a really good selection of colorful hybrid flowers appearing from the breeders. It doesn’t matter. What matters is how you can add color to make your garden pop.
Annual flowers grow from seed, bloom and set new seed all in one season before dying. Perennial flowers grow, bloom, set seed, and rest before coming back for successive years. Because annual flowers do not have to save energy to grow year after year, you will usually get more flowering from annuals than perennials. Unlike perennials, annuals will have to be replaced on a regular basis once they finish flowering. But that means you can keep changing out your spent flowers with exciting new annual plants.
This makes annual flowers perfect for addling big splashes of color to your garden. Ways of getting the most out of your annuals is to create whole annual gardens in areas where you want to draw lots of attention like entryways or small planters. Another excellent use for colorful annuals is to fill in between young perennials that need to be widely spaced to allow for future growth. Annuals can brighten up those empty spots until the perennial is big enough to fill the space and offer blooms of its own.
You can get wonderful effects with annual color by planting a garden of all one color, use reds, whites, and blues for national holidays, paint your garden with all pastel colors or stick to a family of warm colors (reds, oranges, and yellows) or cool colors (blues, purples, and pinks). Designing with annual flowers is like painting your garden with color accents!
Check out all the amazing shapes, forms, sizes, and colors available in annual flowers. There are new culltivars being offered each year and you can find everything from velvety black pansies to tall, willowy bi-colored cosmos, to extra-frilly marigolds. You can find annual color to brighten shady areas like impatiens or Torenia (Wishbone flower). Plant colorful annuals to bask in hot summer sunshine like cheerful snapdragons or stately sunflowers. The good thing about annuals is that you can grow plants that may not like some of your seasonal weather. Since they will only be around for one single season, you don’t have to worry about their being able to survive all year round like with perennials.
Some annuals add color with brilliant foliage like the outrageously patterned coleus, or the electric chartreuse of the sweet potato vine. Most of the colored foliage plants tend to burn in hot, bright sun so giving them a little shade where sunshine can burn.
Other annual plants will spill over walls, hillsides, or fill in gaps. These plants are useful for hanging pots, too. Try Alyssum or Million Bells. Million Bells (Calibrachoa) are related to petunias and are often called miniature Petunias. They have been bred to produce a wide range of sparkling colors from brilliant hues to deep tones to soft pastels.
Climbing annuals are a handy way to quickly create screens. Twine sweet peas or climbing nasturtiums up unsightly fences to turn eye-sores into celebrations of spring. Wallpaper a boring chain link or chicken wire fence with taller climbers like the hyacinth bean or the Scarlet Runner Bean that produces decorative red blooms and edible beans.
If there are just too many choices for you to decide upon, set aside a garden area where you can plant a mixed garden of annual flowers to create a riot of color just for fun. You can buy individual seed packets, small pots or flats to plant your own or use native wildflower seed mixes. Another idea to fill a small area is to use different colored low annual plants to create designs, patterns or even pictures.
Annual gardens do require some care. If you want them to bloom their longest, they should be regularly deadheaded (the spent flower heads snipped off before the plant loses the last of its energy forming seeds). You can hire services to continually replace your annual displays at the end of each season, do it yourself, or use annuals as fillers until their perennial garden mates spread out to fill the area. Annuals can play many roles in the garden. Use them where they will best fit into your garden and lifestyle.
Garden experts claim this is the year annuals will explode in popularity. You can create a fashionable garden easily no matter where you live. Just select the annual flowers that will do best where you want them planted, give them sufficient water, deadhead faded blooms, and design them where they will give you the biggest bang for your buck.
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