Garden Guru: Ways with water

Pools leave much scope for imagination but its best to follow some basic rules. Photo / Supplied

Just as burgers and waistlines, supermarket queues and letters sent home from school with our kids seem to be getting bigger, it's interesting to note that water features in the garden are shrinking.

Soon, you suspect, garden centres will be charging yet more for their frothy coffees as the paper cups they come in are marketed as potential pond moulds. But a water feature in a tight space is hard to get right and can feel about as comfortable as a porcupine in a balloon factory.

There's no denying that water is desirable, bringing with it a new dimension to the garden. The trouble is that the "new dimension" can easily be one of tasteless tack.

What's the point after all, of pushing for the magic of a mountain cascade by your deck if your vision comes with a humming pump, kilometres of wires, artificial rocks that look like painted icecream tubs, and splash marks all over the floor?

I learned the lesson early on as a kid, when I dug a hole at the end of my parents' place and stuck a washing-up bowl in the bottom. The rock-lined dimple was my Grand Canyon and the bowl my blue lagoon. You can get away with that sort of landscaping wishful thinking when you are 10 but it has a sense of the ridiculous when, as adults, we are still playing in Lilliput.

There are, however, still small but perfectly formed pools and fountains out there which work - both aesthetically and practically, and which have the ability to add a dash of paradise to an everyday space.

When confronted with a deck or a courtyard, it's far easier to opt for a free-standing, self-contained water feature. Garden centres are awash with the things, dribbling and sloshing and hopefully drowning out that piped garbage on the intercom.

From steel urinals sluicing water down their polished bellies to Polynesian pyramids (who dreamed that one up?) with rivulets dancing down tufa and glazed tiles - the choice is bewildering.

My advice is to go for easily cleaned materials as black sludge and slime will inevitably come and visit you at some stage. Avoid dancing fairies and Chinese bridges at all costs and choose a style which fits in with the garden as a whole.

Lastly, buy the biggest feature you can squeeze into the boot.

Water is like cake in this respect - if there's a chance of having it - it's best to fill your face and not to nibble around the edges.

A self-contained water feature demands little more than deciding where to put it, filling it, and plugging in the pump. But simpler still is a small pool which can be housed inside a decorative barrel or pot with the drainage hole sealed with plumbers' epoxy sealant.

Such pots are often deep enough to house a waterlily and a couple of small fish which, as well as looking pretty, have the job of munching up mosquito larvae.

To avoid attracting unwanted algae, place any small water feature like this in a cool part of the garden where it receives shade for a good part of the day and remember to check that it is stable and level before you fill it.

With a bit more space the more ambitious gardener can try a proper pond. It makes sense near the house, both for practical and aesthetic reasons, to keep things formal.

Raising the pool not only makes looking into the water more accessible and avoids a mountain of spoil to dispose of, but creates a place to sit and a barrier to autumn leaves blowing into the surface.

Concrete pools are made with blockwork walls or poured reinforced concrete waterproofed with a specially sealed interior concrete that is fish- and plant-friendly. Flexible plastic liners work only for small ponds - and give some thought as to how you will hide the edges.

Carefully bolted sleepers or metal strips concealing the top 20cm or securely concreted overhanging rocks work well, but it's inevitable that the tide will go out as water evaporates and you could be left staring at something resembling the interior of a garbage sack.

Gently sloping pond edges (the best for wildlife) allow you to build gravel beaches up under the water to hide the liner or to simply fold lawn edges down over the lip so the grass soaks up moisture from the pond and forms a nice verdant edge.

Most of us like the look and sound of moving water and a small waterfall or fountain nicely oxygenates things - good for fish and bad for algae. But if a waterfall is too large or the pump too strong, water will splash out and eventually empty your feature and burn out the pump. And if it's the sort with attendant pixies and icecream-tub rocks, it may be the best thing that ever happened to it.

Could do this week

* It's harvest time for late summer vegetables such as pumpkins, which should be put in a sunny, dry place like a window to harden the skins off a few weeks before storing.

* Sow seeds of beetroot, broccoli, broad beans, cabbage carrots, radish, spinach, swedes and potatoes.

* Carefully draw up soil around the necks of leeks to keep them white.

* Test dig a pit in the soil to see if it is yet moist enough to move or plant established trees and shrubs.

* Continue to plant spring-flowering bulbs and order tulips now.

* Continue to sow hardy annuals and perennials, some of which will flower through late winter into spring.