Garden Ponds & Water Features
The Number One Best Way
to add Value to your Xeric Garden
Garden ponds are particularly important in a xeric garden, not just for the beauty and joy they provide, but as a bird attractant and to provide insects and wildlife a source of water in a changing climate.
A garden pond can also be a lifesaving addition to your fire smart gardening in the case of a wildfire. Having a water feature stocked with goldfish and water plants and an adjacent bog garden is a constant source of amusement and tranquility for many gardeners as well as being useful. A watering can kept at the waters edge can be used for watering in the few newly transplanted xeric plants that require it. It can be the ultimate destination for water salvaged off the roof of an adjacent building, and it will definitely be a destination for visitors. Garden ponds have a magnetic attraction for all people, young and old alike. Be sure that you have proper safety features in place or extreme vigilance for the very smallest visitors around your ponds and water features. During construction, make at least one side of the pond sloping so pets or small animals can climb out. The nicest part of a pond feature is the potential to have a small waterfall or fountain that provides that often forgotten dimension to your garden – sound.
A burbling water feature creates white noise, essential in a busy suburb where you want to drown out the background noise. It creates the elusive quality of peace and tranquility so essential in a romantic garden. Many styles of gardens have different requirements for a water feature or pond. A classic garden quite often has a geometrically shaped pond, possibly with a mermaid, small cherub or other statuary to accent it. A rustic country garden will have a free form pond, lined with rushes and sedges, with flowering Nymphae or waterlilies. An Asian themed garden may only have a deer scare or a large rock with a hole drilled to allow the water to burble out or a dry streambed to create the illusion of water. There are as many types of ponds as there are gardens and gardeners. Each xeric garden style is planned and built to the designers preference. Drawing on their own experiences they try to evoke a feeling, whether that is a peaceful oasis or jungle, the streamlined geometry of a modern landscape or a lake for boats in a miniature village. Whichever way you look at it, a garden pond is one of the most requested additions to a landscape plan and easily the one thing all of us want in our xeric garden.
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