Water Features – Inspiration for your Backyard Landscape

Water features can help you transform your backyard into an aquatic paradise. And now it’s easier than ever.

When you create an escape at home just plan to compliment your beautiful new landscape with a pond, waterfall, or fountain.

Heartland Landscape Group, Inc. can help you create something special. There is nothing more soothing after the stresses of daily life than to surround yourself with the tranquil sounds of moving water.

Additionally, this is a great way to attract wildlife for you to enjoy. Water features are also an excellent choice to provide a dramatic focal point in your landscape.

Decorative Outdoor Fountains

Decorative outdoor fountains are beautiful water features that can be as simple as small water fountains in small containers, or as elaborate as large waterfalls spilling into a pond over boulders and ledge stone steps, stylized with elements of fire and water.

Other enchanting choices can include water gardens, stand-alone fountains, bubbling boulders, or any type of fountain that incorporates an in-ground reservoir. By landscaping around it with natural stone and other whimsical touches, you can create the perfect oasis. And, it can still blend with the natural surroundings using rustic landscape elements such as pebbles, various sized rocks and boulders, decorative gravel, and flowering plants.

Landscaping Around Water Features

Water features can benefit many different lifestyles and gardens. To this end, a modest piece of land is transformed into a relaxing backyard hideaway that’s both practical and surprisingly low maintenance. So if you love water and want to maximize your landscaping around a water feature, your lake home affords you a wonderfully pleasant environment surrounded by nature’s beauty at Lake of the Ozarks.

Create a Focal Point

If you are looking to create a focal point, there are many options offered by water features. A very popular choice is to have a large water feature placed in the middle of your business or backyard landscape, such as a waterfall, or a fountain in the center of a pond.

When building an ornamental pond or garden pool one can include interesting materials for the bottom such as smooth colored pebbles or underwater tiles and lighting. Including aquatic plants is a natural complement to the environment. Statuary and ornamental fish will complete your pond nicely.

The best part about choosing a specific focal point is that it allows you to experiment with a variety of landscaping ideas.

Enhance the Surrounding Area

Once you’ve decided on your focal point of interest, think of how to augment it with other landscaping elements. Would it look better surrounded by decorative gravels or by a mulched area with small boulders, flowers, and other greenery? Or, perhaps a natural stone wall or a stone bench to help create a sitting area.

You may also consider building a patio and/or a firepit nearby. When you mingle the natural elements of fire and water, it can transform an ordinary backyard into that tranquil oasis so many dream about.

Create Access with Paths or Walkways

If you have installed a fountain, pond, or a water garden you may want to create peaceful and rustic walkways or paths to access it and to be able to walk around it.

Walkways made with pavers are beautiful and enduring hardscapes worth considering. And this is especially so here at the lake with all the hills. It’s nice to have solid footing when navigating sloped yards.

Natural stone, like flagstone or bluestone, is also excellent to design and build amazing walkways or paths. Likewise, decorative gravel with rock edging makes a nice, rustic path when your yard doesn’t have hills with which to contend.

Dry Creek Beds

Some people prefer not to have the wildlife that a pond attracts. Mosquitoes can become an issue, too, if you aren’t careful to keep the water clean.

Instead, you can simulate a water feature by building a dry creek bed. Dry creek beds (or dry stream beds) are often ditches or small washes that are made of rock and smooth colored pebbles.

For added interest, one can add ornamental grasses along the “banks” which creates movement and a pleasant, relaxing sound. Lighting in the bed or alongside it creates a nice effect at night.

No Limits

Water features are not only limited to fountains, ponds, and waterfalls. There are many other water-related ideas that you can incorporate into your yard. Landscaping is an art form and should be considered a fun and educational hobby for all ages.

When creating a landscaping design, remember that there are no rules. You can spend days on end creating an extravagant yard or you can simply take a weekend to spend hours planting trees and adding some water features.