Water Features!

I come from a long line of "real" gardeners which have influenced my idea of what a garden and yard should look like. My mother's mother and father lived in Ellijay and had an acre vegetable garden as well as a beautiful yard with almost all native plants. My father's father grew up on a cattle farm and had an extensive home garden here in Atlanta. I have also watched my mother create an enormous pond with a waterfall in her yard. To give you an idea of the size pond she created, she is using a pool pump and filtration system to keep it up and running. Pretty big. SO, I decided I wanted a little water element in my yard as well. My first course of action was to fix the little elephant fountain I already owned, but had let go.

My dogs had decided to dig out from behind the fountain (which is solid cement) so my first task was to level the area out again. I used the weight from the elephant to rock the back of the basin up far enough to wedge bricks under it. Then I cleaned the pump, crossed my fingers and plugged it in. It worked! All that I was left was cleaning the area around the fountain up and planting some new azaleas. They are a bright reddish orange. The next task was a little more daunting. I needed to prepare the area I wanted to put my new water feature, an overflowing urn.

I chose the area to the right of these steps as the new home of my fountain. This is an area I have never tackled in my yard, and have really tried to ignore. There is an old cinderblock retaining wall, a huge tree, and lots of junk. But, I am trying to tame my yard, and this is the next spot on the way to the lower forty.