The last 10%. How many times have we heard that the last 10% of a pond installation project is where all the magic happens and the newly designed water feature truly comes alive?
Is it true? Yep! The last 10% is truly where everything comes together to finish off your masterpiece.
Most of our clients at Universal Aquatics look at newly constructed waterfalls before they are completely finished and have no idea what they’re looking at except for a big pile of rocks. It’s up to us as contractors to take out all of the guesswork, make our creations appear to have sprung from nothing and look like they’ve always been there. The finishing touches help us do just that.
Ponds and waterfalls look the worst that they’re ever going to look immediately after completion. Natural materials such as moss, plants and driftwood help soften up the edges and provide instant age to help take away the raw factor.
The finishing touches on your water feature are the icing on the cake
What are the finishing touches in a pond or pondless waterfall project? For us pond folks, we’re going to say that it’s the icing on the cake. It’s the final add-ons that give a feature that signature look and makes the client say, “Holy crap, that’s in my yard!”
From our experience, the top materials that can be used as edge treatments or finishing touches when completing a water feature include rocks (including stone and gravel), plants, wood, mulch, moss, soil/dirt and grass.
Stone washes or washout areas can be used in smaller or larger-sized spots in and around the feature. Larger-sized concentrations of assorted sized cobble and gravel with bigger footprints can also help break up more uniform areas, but only if it makes sense to do so. Mixing small, medium and large gravel together is also a more natural approach than using the exact same-size stone everywhere.
I leave pockets in the stonework open for plants, and, yes, you can still see the liner in spots occasionally after the project has been completed. If we are not doing the landscaping on the project, I explain to the client what the overall plan is to soften the edges with plantings. They are generally always on board.
Larger planter pockets in ponds, waterfalls and wetland filters can also be installed from time to time. Don’t be afraid to use dirt in a water feature. Planter pockets can be created for all types of different plants. If you’re wanting more of a boggy look, bring in some peat moss and plant some carnivorous plants, such as pitcher plants.
The pitcher plants that John Adams brought for Shaquille O’Neal’s house are still doing great! They’re doing so well, in fact, that they are multiplying. I actually brought some home and planted them in my front yard pondless waterfalls. In wetlands, larger-sized planter pockets can be built at different depths to accommodate plants that like to keep their feet a little wet. I absolutely love plant pockets in wetlands. They really help to disguise the squareness of the excavation while breaking up the rocks lined up in a row effect.
Underlayment padding can be used to create smaller or larger-sized planter pockets where the containment of soil is desired.
Strong Accents
We incorporate at least one piece of driftwood or log accent in all of our features. The character that wood accent pieces bring to a freshly built design is spectacular! More often than not, it also provides another great place to add more plants, either terrestrial or aquatic.
Here in Georgia, we have several types of mulch. The two types that we use the most come from pine trees in the form of pine straw and pine bark. Mulch can be used to instantly soften up more visually hard spaces.
Foaming moss into the waterfall itself is a neat trick that we picked up from The Pond Girl, April Dugan. Not only does it instantly naturalize an area, but it also starts to grow on the other surrounding stones. The foam stays wet and constantly feeds moisture to the new planting. Adding and foaming in moss during the initial design process in a stream and waterfall section is honestly like planting seeds. The moss grows and grows. Thanks for the tip, April!
A lot of folks forget about using dirt to help break up water feature borders. If the stonework is placed properly, soil can be brought up directly to the rocks, hiding the liner tucked nicely underneath. On larger-sized waterfalls in pond projects, having grass come up to the water’s edge is quite stunning. Underlayment padding can be used to help wick moisture to the grassy areas, keeping it nice and lush.
The Natural Touch
As water-feature contractors, we all are artists. We build what we like, and, hopefully, we like what we build when it’s all said and done. As an artist, I am personally always looking at how to get better. How do we make this thing more natural?
First, don’t make too many areas look the same as others. Make sure you have a good mix of materials. Try not to have too much of the same, exact material on many of the borders. A great goal would be to have a good combination of natural materials already on site during the finishing process. You don’t want to compromise creativity due to a lack of readily available materials.
Any combination of these materials can make or break an entire design or natural presentation. If natural is what you’re going for, look to nature for inspiration. Walk around the property where the job is located. See if you can scavenge anything on site already to aid in the final touches. We often find lots of goodies just lying around.
Draw inspiration from the surroundings. Take hikes. Look around at what is already at your fingertips. Hiking allows you to see what you’re trying to create. You might see rock slides or weeping, marshy bogs where a salamander is likely to be nestled up for the night. You might find where a piece of driftwood has washed down and created a waterfall.
We’re not the best at formal. The more rustic, the better for us. The rawer button ferns and thick moss that can be harvested from the woods, the better I feel about the natural aspect of what we’ve created.
Beyond Water Features
I’ve worked at a handful of public zoos and aquariums throughout the United States, and we would always design new exhibits for critters the exact same way as we design ponds for someone’s backyard.
Although we’ve built exhibits for fish, both saltwater and freshwater, snakes, turtles, frogs and even alligators, they all had the same goal in common — to build naturalized exhibits that are not just pleasing to the eye, but also make the critter feel more at home by building them something they can feel more comfortable in. The goal with building exhibits is to make their new home seem as though it was simply plucked from nature. Although it takes years of refinement to get better at your craft, nature is always there to be your guide for inspiration.
The bottom line is that the details matter when creating more naturalized water features. Whether you take hikes, look at other pond builders’ work or simply learn through trial and error, the finishing touches can determine whether your feature looks like it truly came from nature.
