Install water garden stream | Create stream or watercourse: Gardening

Helping You Become a More Successful Gardener

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.

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.

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. So let's connect the stream and pools.

Install a Steam Liner

Steam Liner - Step 1

Trial-set all waterfall spill and foundation stones before finalizing your excavation. Check the relative elevation of all spill stones, allowing 4¼ inches extra depth for the sand base and the stream liner’s thickness. Allow sufficient slope in the watercourse so that the top of the spill stone upstream is at least 4 inches higher than the one below it.

Steam Liner - Step 2

Stretch the liner into position and recheck spill stone elevations. Fasten the liner to the header or filter, using aquarium-grade silicone sealant and corrosion-proof fasteners.

Steam Liner - Step 3

Overlap all liner joints 18 inches at a site beneath a spill stone. Lay the lower-stream liner under the upper-stream section, so that its top end is positioned above the final water level of the lower-stream section.

Steam Liner - Step 4

Cut away extra liner, seal all of the joints with EPDM joint tape, and mortar or foam the spill stones atop the liner with special black, water-resistant, expansive polyurethane foam made especially for this purpose.

Steam Liner - Step 5

Fill the stream liner with gravel and boulders to protect the liner from puncture hazards and exposure to UV-rich sunlight, which could cause premature aging of the liner fabric. (It’s important to have a deep receiving pool beneath the waterfall to prevent water from splashing out of the stream.)

Steam Liner - Step 6

Flush the stream with water, using a submergible pump to remove water and sediment, repeating until the water remains clear. (Cleaning the stream prevents sediment and debris from reaching the reservoir pool, settling in it, and clogging the pump and filter.)

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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Next Steps

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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