Garden Water Fountain

A Houston couple by the name of Turner hired us to design a landscape that reflected their passion for collecting contemporary art. They wanted an abstract style built around stonework and vegetation. Their passion for contemporary art would be refleted in right angles and a sense of linear movement, and it would link the separate elements of the swimming pool, they yard, and the back of the house into an organic unity that looked both natural and contemporary.

We began our work by installing a fountain basin immediately adjacent to one end of the pool. We used a gunite concrete substructure that would provide waterproof containment, and we decorated the top of the concrete with a bluish-gray stone clad overlay that matched the color range in the house. This created the illusion of a small stone wall just slightly higher than the stonework surrounding the pool. Just inside the wall next to the pool, we built a garden water fountain out of three stones planed into cubes. The cubes were piled one on top of the other, so that when the structure was complete, it looked like a sculpture made from boulders on some far Pacific island. The water rose out of the stone at the top and flowed down all four sides of the sculpture into the basin, then into the pool.

The new water fountain and surrounding basin now gave us an ideal center point around which to plant a flower garden replete with a number of species. On the left side of the basin, we planted Mexican sedum that added a lime green color to the borders of the natural landscape. We also planted golden globe to provide flowering ground cover. To add a three dimensional element to the garden, we planted foxtail ferns (for year-round greenery) and bird of paradise (for seasonal blooms). Farther back from the fountain itself we planted a river birch tree that helped frame the scene and gave us ample opportunity for up lighting. To the right of the basin we added pentas, which are pink and red flowers that draw the eye toward the stone sculpture in the water.

We then completed the project by building a walkway that led from the front of the property to the home. We constructed this walkway out of stepping pads that actually float on water. This allowed us to build the walkway straight over the water in the center of the garden. We deliberately used this design in order to blend regular material with irregular material. The stones move in a progression from asymmetry to symmetry the closer you get to the house. The very first stepping stone has only two straight sides, for example, and the second has three. Each stone that follows becomes increasingly square as it passes over the garden water fountain until it finally reaches the back patio of the home.