Materials & Equipment

When some fountain ornaments clock in at over 150 kilos and you need to support the ornament over its reservoir of water, without some heavy duty engineering the only alternative is a product that will do the job that is cleverly designed for the job. For years now Room with a View has been supplying the very solution to the problem

Finia stays top of the list for performance article by gardenforum.co.uk

Selling all over the world the Finia really comes into it’s own with the heavier water feature, the largest size reservoir can take a full tonne in weight and live to tell the tale. This has made the Finia so popular that it’s had rivals of course, but quality of material and design are the key to success and poor imitations don’t last five minutes.

With the landscaping industry on the increase in the UK and overseas good quality products for this sector are in higher demand than ever. The success of Finia Water Feature Reservoirs is due to 100% suitability to the job and increase in demand for them shows that water features are an enduring part of the market and that the Finia is the number one favourite to support them.

Suitable for all types of landscaping from the professional to the lay gardener the Finia is easy to install, easy to use and easy to maintain. No longer does the user have to remove the water feature to get at the pump; the Finia has a dedicated hatch through which access is gained. No more excuses not to clean the pump!

There comes a time in all our lives when the temptation to resort to technology seems like perfect the opportunity to play with some more big boy’s toys. When it comes to building a water garden, the ageing process and the inevitable bad back make the prospect of excavating your water garden by hand a little daunting. So you begin to look into the prospect of hiring a digger and possibly someone to drive it. This month I just quickly want to point out a few tips that I have accrued from years of sometimes bitter experience as things go wrong in these operations.....I shudder to think back at some of the near disasters that might have occurred on some of those projects.

COST: WILL THE BUDGET STAND IT?

A piece of excavating machinery can do wonders, especially in the hands of an experienced driver. If anyone has seen the JCB formation dancing team in action they will know what I mean. But they are designed for the building trade for digging straight sided trenches and levelling. This makes them the perfect tool for excavating large formal pools. The organic shape of most informal pool creates more difficulties, especially if definite marginal areas need to be cut into the profile of the hole. Their main use in these cases comes in digging out the bulk of the material and leaving the detail work around the edges to someone with the spade and shovel.

What size of pond liner do you need for the strange shape of pond you had in mind? What size of pump do I need for my waterfall fountain or biological filter? If I have a limited number of makes to choose from which is the best for me? What if I want to have a fountain and a waterfall and or a filter from the same pump, what size of pump will cope with all this? What if I have loads of fish in my pond, will that afect the size of filter I need? Will plants make a difference? Does it help to be in full sun? All these things make a difference, an although 'how much' is measurable, as a new comer to the subject all these considerations just seem a little bit too much. Here is the machine to set you going and to set you right and its called the pOndbOt(TM).

There is no doubt that a water feature makes the perfect focal point in a garden. In a small garden where there are pets and children, the difficulty is finding something safe and in the current trends, something that looks natural and informal. A stone feature gushing water that flows down its surface onto some surrounding pebbles is the perfect solution.

However many people may be put off a moving water feature on the basis that they think they may need regular topping up, but if the feature, like this monlith stone, is cleverly installed it will use hardly any water, even on a hot and sunny day. Besides that even if there was a hosepipe ban in the region at some future date, the law does not prevent you from topping up your pond or water feature. In fact a feature like this can actually save you water in the garden by providing a humid micro-climate for surrounding plants that will actually help them to tolerate less watering. There was good reason for the central water features used in the fantastic enclosed gardens of the arid areas of the Middle East where many of the concepts of the garden were borne.
So if a monolith fits the bill exactly, water garden centres and builder's merchants have a huge selection of drilled stones. Pumps and fittings are probably best sourced from the water garden centres. At this time of year there seems to a particular flurry of sales of monoliths at water garden centres and when many people get them home they find that after installing them that they lose water exceedingly rapidly, they dry out, the pump may even burn out as a result and the whole thing has become a very disappointing and expensive excercise.

So you need a couple of simple tricks to help reduce the water loss and some simple tips to bear in mind when you are setting up.

LIVING FOUNTAINS

If you have ever watched enrapt and enchanted at the dance of a fountain, even a small one in a small pond, and then someone turns it off, it is as if you had been rudely awoken from a pleasant dream. There is something spell binding even about a simple fountain. But it cannot be just a dribble: there must be some trajectory and noise when the water lands.
“Mind, mind alone, bear witness, earth and heaven!
The living fountain in itself contains
Of beauteous and sublime.” Mark Arkenside
The Pleasures of Imagination (1744)

First of all lets examine the -

• If your pool is heavily stocked with fish then a fountain is almost essential. They help to provide a supply of oxygenated water at times when any plant life has ceased to releaseA formal garden at the Chelsea Flower Show in 1997. The fountain is an essential focal point.: Does anyone know the designer? any or enough. Dark sultry hot summer days and humid summer evenings with fish metabolism high and oxygen dependent bacteria exceedingly active in the bottom of the pool, oxygen is more in demand than at any other time. And what is worse, the oxygenating plants are doing less than providing oxygen; at night they absorb it.
•An Otterbine pump that aerates and munches up algae for serious pond and lake maintainence. There are some fountains that not only oxygenate but also munch up and damage algae (the type that causes green water) in their dramatic spray action. They tend to be like those big ones in golf course lagoons. (If you want to know more about this before a forthcoming article on the abilities of this type of fountain go to the Otterbine website and learn how the Americans manage their ponds and lakes. )
• The noise of a cascade fountain provides a pleasant blanket for background noise like traffic or other people talking. It enables you to talk in private in a relatively crowded place because your voice will not carry very far over the sound of splashing water.
• Water in the air provides a cooling effect that is most easily appreciated in the precincts and courtyards of Spain, where for centuries the fountain has provided a social point at which to relax and refresh your self.
• The fountain lifts any small pond to a more significant status, giving it life (in more than one sense) making it an energetic focal point. They work best from a design point of view, in formal gardens. Placed at a central point or duplicated across a garden scene, they help to define a formal design.

UNRAVELLING LINERS

Liners are the most cost effective method of making a waterproof pool in your garden, but what is there really to choose between all the makes and materials? Peter May tells you how you can make it neat or natural and also introduces the new Greenseal liner from Gordon Low.

Don’t you hate all those fancy scientific names and acronyms; those strings of letters that only mean anything to ‘them that’s in the know’. Somehow you feel excluded from all the information. But then again all you arePutting in preformed or rigid ponds can be pretty easy. Getting the level right can be the difficult bit. after is to make a hole in the ground waterproof.
You have already vaguely contemplated going ‘au naturelle’ by puddling it in clay, but then there is all that mess. And then you thought of manufacturing the pool itself in concrete, but a few sums quickly made you realise not only the muck and disruption involved but also the expense. So then you continue your investigations down the aquatic centre and find a huge range of products that all have different names but all look pretty much the same: black, some are shiny, some are not. Admittedly some are rigid and already pool shaped. They will tell you these are made from are generally HDPE (High Density Polyethylene) or ABS (Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene) and those are also fibreglass – mostly bigger heavier pools.
Others liners look like sheets of plastic, whilst some look like rubber. And its here you discover all these exotic names like Pondalene, Aqualast, Maxipool, Alfafol and now everyone is talking about Greenseal - now what’s that?

Despite the variety of brand names most of the liners available are one of several quite distinctly different materials that will all do the same job, and as individual materials they only come from 2 and 3 factories around the world. So it is highly likely that products, or at least the raw materials, with similar specifications will have come from those same factories in America, Belgium or Sweden.
The flexible sheets of material are either PVC (Polyvinyl Chloride) or Polyethylene – those are the shiny ones – and matt coloured ones are EPDM rubber (Ethylene Propylene Diene Monomar) or Butyl rubber. Well as your eyes are glazing over and you feel no wiser, you still aren’t finding the choice any easier.

THE COMPLETE WATER GARDEN SPECIALISTS

When good advice comes free with every purchase, there is not only the knowledge that you have made an informed choice, but whatever that purchase was, you know that it was appropriate. If it was a fish, you know it will survive; if it was a dry product, you know it will work and if it was a treatment, you know it will be effective. If that information were not freely available you would pay for it because you know that is the sort of knowledge that will save you money in the long run. Where can you get it? You certainly wont find it in the 'pile 'em high, flog 'em cheap' DIY sheds. You need a connoisseur of water garden products and our first retailer of the month is one such, and to get it, you will have to wend you way right down to the tip of Pembrokeshire within ten minutes drive from Tenby - Manorbier.