Garden Fountain Tutorial

3 years ago Joe and I made this fountain, we've enjoyed it every summer since.

Today I thought I'd share with you how we made it. I wish I had thought to take step by step pictures back then. I'm sorry, I will try to talk you through it.

Our fountain consists of:

1 Copper pipe (About 4 feet long)

1 piece of plastic tubing (6 inches long)

2 flower pots (large & small, preferably with drainage hole in bottom but you can drill a hole if necessary)

1 small pan style pond liner

1 pond pump

bricks (10)

rocks (lots)

plants (4 Hostas)

Our pond liner looks like this.

We started with a small pond liner, dug a hole for it, so that the top rim of the pond liner was level with the surrounding concrete. Ours is only about 6 inches deep and 24 inches across so there wasn't much digging involved.

Our pump looks like this.

We purchased a small pond pump for $24 at Lowes and placed it inside of the pond liner. The cord hangs out over the back of the liner but is covered in rocks so you don't notice it. {Do not cut a hole in the liner for your cord, you want this to be water tight.} 

We attached a small piece of plastic tubing (available in the pond section of your hardware store) to one end of the pump and one end a piece of copper pipe to create a water tight joint. We then added 4 bricks (stacked 2 on top of 2) to support our large flower pot with copper pipe in the middle. We then fed the copper pipe up the center of the large flower pot through the drainage hole. Added 4 more bricks and fed the pipe through the drainage hole of the small pot.

The water cascades over the rim of the top of the flower pots and ends up in the pond liner to be pumped back up to the top.

No special fountain head is needed. This is just the copper pipe. You can control the pressure of the pump to achieve this effect. I suggest adjusting it before adding the pots to make sure it doesn't have too much pressure. {We did it the hard way, filling the entire thing up with water turning it on and it soaked us! Then had to start completely over.}

To hide the pond liner pan we added a layer of slate that we found while hiking, so it was free. We placed it so that the water hits it and slides back into the pond liner. This took some trial and error but we discovered that if you angle it towards the large planter you can't go wrong.

I planted Hostas here because they require little to no maintenance. They pop up every spring like clockwork. I rarely water them because the fountain tends to splash enough.

 

The possibilities are endless. The sound is so soothing. It's such an easy weekend project. Feel free to email or comment me if you have any questions.