Falling Water

The homeowners’ request was simple and straightforward: They wanted a landscape that required very little fuss and attention. Both husband and wife worked and they had two small, active children. Daily watering and weekly yard maintenance were not part of their busy schedules.

Thank the Heavens: The evergreen plant, heavenly bamboo, has a variety of colored foliage, from green and cream to pink and deep red.

Landscaper Richard Long, of Reliable Landscaping & Sprinklers, designed and installed a simple, straightforward Japanese-style rock garden, featuring large stretches of gravel and river rock and small islands of hardy plants (juniper trees, dwarf date palms and dwarf mondo grass), which require very little care once grown in. In addition, he added an assortment of ground covers and low-growing plants, such as lariape, Indian hawthorne, heavenly bamboo and podocarpus.

In addition, Reliable Landscaping installed lawns of low-maintenance el toro zoysia grass along the side of the house as well as in the roomy backyard. In a far corner of the backyard, the company created the landscape’s focal point: a “dry” water feature, including a bamboo fountain and several well-placed stones, but not a drop of water.

Once a dry and spare xeriscape, the garden now features a cascading waterfall that disappears into the rocks below.

“Because the couple had two small children, they weren’t ready for a fully functional water feature just yet,” Long says. “But I told them that when they are ready, the fountain could be converted to a real pond with little alteration to the surrounding landscape.”

Fast forward a little more than three years. The kids are bigger and so is the house. The addition of a new family room and a large patio gobbles up approximately 800 square feet of the once spacious backyard, leaving the family with little room and a lot of rock and concrete. The homeowners were now ready for a real water feature, which would provide an eye-catching and pleasant-sounding focal point for their suddenly small backyard. However, they still weren’t ready for the extra maintenance that a full functioning and fish-filled pond would require.

“The construction really tore up the backyard,” Long says. “We could have re-installed the original landscape, but that would have been an awful lot of rock and gravel in one place. The area really needed a focal point.”

The homeowners decided to go pondless. Long got to work, digging a six-foot-by-six-foot pit and installing a rubber liner, which serves as an underground reservoir with a capacity of 500 gallons of water. He installed a re-circulating pump and filled the pool with gravel and river rock. Around the dry pool, he arranged large rocks to form a small hill and waterfall.

On top of his rock outcropping, he installed a small bio box. In conventional ponds, the plastic bio box houses a biological filter, which grows beneficial bacteria that cleanses the small body of water below. But in Long’s design, the box serves as a small reservoir of water and is home to a variety of plants, such as taro and water lettuce. In and around the water feature, Long installed hardy plants, such as date palm, papyrus, kokutan and heavenly bamboo. When he flipped the switch of his wet and rocky creation, water bubbled up from the bio box, cascaded down the rocks and disappeared into the stone- and gravel-filled pool.

Rock & Roll: A heavily foliaged rock garden provides a gentle transition to the more sparsely landscaped backyard.

Going pondless provided the homeowners with many of the advantages of a conventional water feature without many of the disadvantages. Because the underground reservoir gets plenty of oxygen, beneficial bacteria grows easily and without assistance, so the water doesn’t have to be circulating 24 hours a day. Long says that homeowners can run their water pumps as little as once a week and still have good water quality. Also, mosquitoes aren’t a problem, since the insects can’t reach the water far below the rock.

“Installing a pondless water feature is within the abilities of the do-it-yourselfer,” Long says. “But if they do want to tackle something like this, they should pay close attention to where they install it. You want to be able to appreciate it both inside and outside.”

Solid as a Rock: The slow-growing kokutan plant is a staple of Hawaii rock gardens. Not only does the plant provide spot color with its tiny blossoms (left), but its gnarled branches (right) also provide visual interest, and the plant drops very few leaves.

With the addition of devices that automatically fill the reservoir when it is short of water or drain it when there is too much, the water feature is nearly maintenance free. The homeowners only have to look and listen. Of course, there are no fish to view and appreciate. But, then again, there are no fish to feed and clean up after, either. Besides, there is always next time.