Water features add a sense of movement and tranquillity to a space, with the soft sound of gently flowing water, enhanced by the surrounding textural and colourful planting near this outdoor dining area in West Sussex.
Adding a water fountain to your backyard has always been a popular garden design ask from most clients. Sourcing and installing water features can be quite a simple process for clients and designers with the range of off the shelf options available depending on the brief, theme, access and location.
This garden in West Sussex has been an exciting design process with several challenges along the way, as the feature for this garden upgrade was not intended as a simple ready-made element, they were looking for something more bespoke. The intention for this area was to include an attractive feature adjacent to the outdoor dining and cooking space, which would function as a feature/sculpture as well as the option to integrate water.
The client specifically liked the idea of large standing stones as well as including feature pots into the design, we included a simple mirror to reflect the planting and light and as all mirrors do, it helps with making this space feel larger and more inviting.
An oval basin was created within the ground, which the standing stones fixed down into, and then filled with pebbles, with underground piping connected to a nearby pump, small steel tubes terminated at the top of each stone to allow a gentle flow of water over the stones when the water feature was turned on. The remainder of this area and around the large pots was filled with imported topsoil for the proposed plants to be planted in.
As seen in the before image here, this area of the garden was a rather chaotic space of pots, furniture, tools and a patchy weedy lawn. The area was cleared, boundary hedge trimmed and new timber boundary fence was installed. The client wished for as much of the lawn to be re-installed as well as including additional planting beds. The area was drawn out on site, with stepping stones used to indicate the location of the stones prior to any excavation works to ensure the client approved of the layout and remaining space available for the lawn.
I'm happy to say that the clients are pleased with their new and improved from the kitchen within the house, one of the main focal points for this design.
We sourced these beautiful textured standing stones from CED Stone, the cool tones blending well with the green planting and pops of colour, with all plants sourced from Provender Nurseries, and the pots from World of Pots.
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