Adding the trickling of water to your yard

There's something so soothing about the sound of running water. I've always had a thing for a bubbling creek, or the sound of waves lapping up on the lake or ocean shore, so when I started looking at putting together my landscape, I knew I had to put in some kind of water feature. There's a huge variety of water features you can put into a yard, from above-ground ponds to pool-less waterfalls, to a short brook running along a shady area to large ponds where owners can actually go fishing.

I'll be covering many different kinds of water features, how to build and maintain them over the next couple of weeks including plants and animal life you might want to include in your yard.

a pool of water in their yard. The possibility of a child drowning is the stuff nightmares are made of whiI know a lot of families are concerned about havingch leaves three options: first, you can fence the water feature in; second, you can build a pool-less water fall; or third, build it above grade.

I'd say fencing the kids out of the water is self-explanatory, so we'll cover pool-less water features today.

Most home stores have fountains you can purchase and assemble in a few simple steps like the one pictured at the top. water flows from the top trickles down the sides and back into the base. The second pictures a much larger fountain which has a bowl tall enough to keep small children from falling into. This may not work if the little ones who play in your yard are prone to climbing.

The third possibility is to have a fountain or waterfall that empties into a bed of gravel that covers an indentation where the water collects and is pumped back up to the top. Most of the time there is a fine hardware cloth or wire mesh that keeps the stones at the top and provides a place for the water to collect. You can even turn wire these to turn on and off at the flip of a switch so they only run when you are in the yard to enjoy them--saving energy.

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