Streams of Thought (and How to Line Them)

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Rich Binsacca

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Seamlessly blending your entire garden landscape into the water feature may take a season or more. Choose perennial plants well-adapted to your climate and suitable for carefree maintenance. Allow them freedom during their first growing season to expand into the site.

Anyone who’s hiked in the wilderness is likely to have had the pleasant experience of coming across a natural spring welling up from the ground. You can achieve a similar natural effect by building a stream in your garden, or you can create a point of architectural interest in a more formal landscape by installing a watercourse.

All streams and watercourses should be appropriately scaled to the rest of your garden, and they’re most effective when their design keeps within the overall style of your home and surrounding landscape.

Generally, traditional settings are best suited to streams, while modern settings are compatible with watercourses. While stylistically different, the basic components of streams and watercourses are the same: Both have a header pool at the top that begins the water feature and a reservoir pool or basin at the bottom, which also contains the pump.

Ideas for more complex designs to create a unique water feature include intermediate pools placed along the course, changes in elevation and direction, and bubbling fountains. There’s also ample opportunity to add shoreline rocks and plants. It’s all up to you, your imagination and site.

The slope of your garden stream, from the header to the reservoir (or top to bottom), should be about a 3 percent grade, as determined by the rise (height difference) and run (distance) between the header and reservoir pools. Avoid stagnating the flow with a too-shallow grade or creating uncontrollable torrents with one that’s too steep. Rely on the pump’s capacity to control the volume of water flow. (Remember that abrupt changes in elevation – like with cascades and waterfalls – are independently planned separate from the stream’s grade.)

Line the header and reservoir pools with either rigid or flexible liners and the watercourse channel itself with flexible liner material. If your goal is a natural appearance, remember that creeks in nature flow into deep pools, then flow downstream in a bed that gradually shallows above the next riffle or cascade.

Your streams should be lined in the same manner as your reservoir pools and garden ponds. Excavate and line the header and reservoir pools, then excavate for the stream and set any planned waterfalls. Long watercourses may require overlapping and sealing liner segments with double-sided EPDM adhesive joint tape made for such purposes. To connect the stream and pools, take the steps shown in the following pictures and described in their captions.

Warnings

Always watch children and pets around water! Although garden ponds aren’t swimming pools, curious minds can’t help themselves – especially when streams and waterfalls are involved!

Facts

Even garden sites that are relatively flat can accommodate a simple watercourse or stream driven by a recirculating pump. (All streams and watercourses require a steady, full flow of water facilitated by such equipment.) The required size (or capacity) of the pump is determined more by the water volume of the reservoir and header pools and less by how fast you want the water to flow.
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A successful water garden is a well-balanced ecosystem that quickly expands to include many animals and plants.

Tips

Before you start creating or expanding your garden pond, check with your town or village for electrical wiring codes, property line information and depth-of-pond safety requirements so you can build your pond within the letter of the law.
Choose liners that will span your water feature’s length and width, after adding double its maximum depth to each measurement. Avoid joining two liners, if possible, because such points are prone to leaking.
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Creating Cascades and Waterfalls
Creating a cascade or waterfall adds soothing movement and sound to any garden pond or water feature, as well as can help boost property value (if done right). Learn what building a garden waterfall requires, as well as the steps to installing one.
The Finishing Touch: Installing Coping Stones
Well-conceived, well-executed finishing touches are essential to a successful water garden project, and there are several ways to add that final mark. Learn a few tips to adding the perfect finishing touches to your garden pond, as well as the proper way to install coping stones around your feature.
Enhancing Your Garden Pond With Water Features
Be it simple fountain or multi-waterfall, adding a water feature to your garden pond enhances the overall look and feel to your aquatic paradise. Enhance your outdoor living experience with the sights, sounds and wonder that only flowing water can provide.

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