Note: This is a rewrite from my Natural Art Media blog.  It didn’t really belong there and when I lost the database for that blog I rewrote it here.

I spent a few days before the 4th to plan and (mostly) install a new ‘water feature’ in my back yard. There are a few reasons we wanted to put a water feature in the back yard, and after it had been there for a few days we discovered a number of great reasons to have it that we hadn’t even thought of. Follow along for an overview of installing a Liquid Art Water Feature in your yard. First, let me rewind a bit and show some pictures before we landscaped – a sea of green – no, wait – an ocean of green.
Hum, maybe that was a bit too much of a rewind – that picture is from 2002. I’m not sure what that thing outside the patio door is called – can’t call it a deck – maybe just ‘stairs’. Let’s fast-forward quickly before I have to think about mowing all that.
That’s better – the above picture is from October 2007 – right before we started our landscaping project. The deck I built a few years ago is much improved from the ‘stairs’ that were there. Doh – still have to think about mowing that lawn. Now, here we are – I’ve just started ‘ground-breaking’ for the water feature. Much nicer – notice the plants and the minimized lawn – ahhhh. Takes only 20 minutes to mow the whole yard. We now have a river or ribbon of lawn.
After we had the landscape design done and planted most of the plants, we let them ‘grow in’ for a year and then decided it was time to add the water feature. We looked at a lot of options from formal water fountains to water falls, ponds and streams. Ultimately, we decided on some rock ‘bubblers’. Real rock columns are very heavy and for the size we needed we’d practically need a crane – not to mention it’s very expensive to have holes bored though the center of rock columns. After some research we decided on a system from Liquid Art Fountains in Canby, OR. I have to say, I really like their system. It went together fairly easily, they have good instructions and everything appears to be high quality. I only have one disagreement with their web site and instructions – both say you can install a fountain from start to finish in just a few hours. If you are a perfectionist, which, apparently I am; or you install ‘extras’ like the auto-fill kit so that you don’t have to run out with a garden hose every few days and fill up the reservoirs it will take considerably longer. I will admit I built two (the space we allocated for a water feature was just too big for one). But it took me most of 2 1/2 days and I still don’t have power hooked up permanently. You can see from the picture above, I had just moved the mulch and started to excavate for the two reservoirs. Each one is a 4′x4′ square 12″ deep. Here I have been working about 1.5 hours (okay it was over 90 outside) to define exactly where I wanted to place the bubblers and start loosening and removing dirt. Now it looks like this.
Three hours later…. I have one pretty much dug out and the other ‘almost there’.
Another three hours of digging and leveling and I’m at a spot where I can ‘test fit’ the fountain bases. It was about 8:30 and after working since noon I decided it was time to stop for the day.
I had to (read “want to”) install an auto-fill system (you can buy it from Liquid Art) so I don’t have to remember to fill it (or forget and burn out the pumps). So, a day of digging trenches and gluing PVC pipe…. Here I have the trench to the fountain bases and have put two rocks on so I can get an idea of how this will really look.
Okay, after a day of digging trenches and gluing PVC in 97 degree weather I finally have water at the fountain bases. But before I show you that… here is where I confess and give Liquid Art Fountains a break. Pretty much this whole day (Thursday, July 2nd) was dedicated to fixing and redoing a job I paid a contractor to do when we did the landscaping project. I shouldn’t go into it here – it’s another story (but I will anyway). Let’s just say I paid Boulder Falls a good little bit of money to run power and water from under my house to the fountain location. Turns out that I had to redo all that work myself. For one, they didn’t run the power line to the location I specified and they buried it 6 – 8 inches deep with no conduit. Second, the water line ran down the side of the house and dead-ended. Humm, it was supposed to be connected to this water source – they even bent the main water line out of the way to run the fountain line over the top – never connected it.
Yeah, I shouldn’t have gone into it, but here is my fix. Much nicer, now I have a water spigot and a shut-off valve. Unfortunately, it put me behind a whole day (I was moving slow – thermometer said it was 103 by 3:30). Too bad I had to dig up a rose bush to get access here – that poor rose is still struggling.
So, now, at the end of the day, I’m back to the fountain with water to each base. I did some things that took extra time that are not called for in the instructions. Hopefully they will work out. First, I did spend quite a bit of time with a 3 foot level getting the holes I dug completely level. Second, and you can’t see it in the pictures here, I put landscape fabric on all sides of the bases (tucked down between the base and the dirt I back-filled) and folded them inside the bases before I put the support grids on top. This did a few things – kept dirt from getting into the bases as I back-filled, and after I was done I ‘unfolded’ the fabric so that it spread around the fountain bases to keeps weeds from growing up through the river rock. Be sure you don’t start back-filling your fountain base before you’ve put the grids in. I didn’t make that mistake – I needed them in to hold the landscape fabric, but my observation is that the sides of the base would push in and you would not be able to place the top support grids once the base sides are deformed from the pressure of the back-fill.
Apparently, since I was behind, I stopped taking pictures and didn’t even realize it until now. Thursday night I cleaned up the dirt from above, removed the support grids, spread out the fabric, placed the pumps and hooked up the auto-fill valves. After that I moved the fountain columns into place and hooked up the hoses. Friday I spent the morning hauling 1.57 tons of river rock from my truck in the driveway to the back yard. Here is a picture of the fountain with river rock around it and some of the landscape fabric still showing.
And here is the (mostly) finished water feature. Still running on an extension cord because I ran out of time before the 4th to get it done.
And the obligatory ‘night shot’.
So, our original reasons for putting a water feature in the back yard?

• Eat up more lawn!
• Generate some white noise to mask the nearby road and air handler on the Sharp Electronics building across the road.
• Create a ‘cool’ spot in our back yard (it’s on the West side of our house and gets very hot in the summer).
• Provide a focal point near our patio where we gather with friends and family.

Some things we didn’t think about but noticed after we put it in:

• Gold finch and swallows love to come drink and bathe on top of the rocks.
• Humming birds have started coming around and hanging out.
• Butterflies hang out, and apparently drink too – I’ve seen them land on the damp part of the columns.
• It just plain looks cool. I love the grasses next to the water.
• I’ll bet I see some senior pictures using the fountain and grass.