VA Dog Rescue: Water works

Monday, June 10, 2024

Water works

I've been collecting water features and adding them to the gardens for the past several years, although the pace has accelerated a lot in the past year or so. Here's what I've got so far. Some show up in pictures better than others, but they all work well in their surroundings. This is definitely a work in progress. I'll add more things as I find them in years to come.

This is a static piece, no moving water, but it's one of my favorites and it's at the entrance to the fountain garden. I just like the way all the pieces of it fit together.

When the water hyacinths multiply I will use them in some of the other gardens and ponds. They seem to be safe here from dogs pulling them out.

This is one I put together in a whisky barrel using the stone that I bought on Marketplace last year. This is the one the dogs drink out of most often, making it difficult to get any floating plants established.

This is one I got at a nursery in Kentucky last year. I consider it my memorial fountain for my sister Kate.

This little guy came as a surprise when it was given to me by an adopter earlier this year. I put it together with a basin that's partly buried in the ground and surrounded with bricks.

This doesn't show up well in the picture but it's a small copper hummingbird drinking from a flower that is overflowing into the basin below. It's filled with stones so it's a water source for bees and butterflies.

This one was another find on Facebook Marketplace a couple years ago. I've had to make some modifications because the bottom doesn't hold water anymore. It sits on a concrete bench nestled between the boxwoods and the holly.

This faux driftwood fountain was a low cost purchase from Lowe's many years ago.

This is actually the first fountain I purchased, also from Lowe's, quite a while back.

This was originally an indoor decorative fountain, but it is made of copper and has held up quite well outdoors for many years.

This is a lotus flower that I've had for several years. I divided it early this spring and I hope it will bloom this year.

Now we get to the ponds.

I started out with this small pond sunk into the edge of a round bed in the back yard. The shrubs in the bed either died or got overgrown with weeds and poison ivy so I've been working on clearing the area. There's a water lily in this pond that overwintered and should bloom sometime this summer.

This is an oblong, galvanized stock tank that I stole from the dog yard (replaced it with a rubber one) and put into that same bed up above the first pond. It has a small water feature in it, but it's not operating optimally because all the plants clog up the pump.

This small pond holds the other part of the lotus flower that I divided earlier this year. There is a small turtle spitter on the right that isn't operating very well right now. I've been fussing with that a lot and I think I just need to buy a new pump for it.

This is also a new pond this year, with some new plants that I just got recently.

This is the fifth pond in this area, also new this year, with a nice fountain in the center.

All of these ponds are clustered in the same area but they are all at different heights, which you can sort of see in the picture above and below. My plan is to naturalize them with ferns and native plants around them so they look somewhat less artificial.

There is still more room in this bed, although it needs to be reclaimed from grass and weeds. Rather than more ponds I'd like to put some sort of sculpture or a tall fountain of some sort behind them. Future projects. I should also mention that these ponds are not breeding mosquitos because (1) the water is moving constantly, and (2) they are breeding hundreds (thousands?) of frogs. They are teeming with tadpoles and at night the sound of frogs chirping coming from this part of the yard is almost deafening. I just wish the frogs would eat the duckweed.