Morning Garden and Disappearing Water Fountain

A couple Memorial area couple named John and Jennifer Randall asked us to do create them a morning garden behind their French-style home. This was to be the premier element of their landscape, and was intended to be set apart as a separate space just for them. They wanted a personal space that was consistent with French landscape design, but one that had the feeling of Zen as well. It was to be located near the east end of the yard, so they could sit outside at sunrise to read the paper and enjoy conversation over coffee.

Creating a Zen consciousness in the middle of a French landscape required constructing the morning garden around a unique central element. We decided that the best feature for this purpose would be a very distinctive type of fountain called a disappearing fountain. This type of fountain is designed to let the water overflow its sides and disappear into the ground. To create this effect, we built a steel mesh grating that we then concealed under a layer of gravel. The fountain itself was built to mimic a Louisiana sugar cauldron (in honor of John’s Acadian ancestry). When the water poured over the sides, it appeared to vanish into the stones below. In reality, it was collected in a tank and then recirculated into the cauldron by means of a remote underground pump. Night lighting was suspended from the underside of the steel grating to create a sense of light coming up from the ground at night.

We landscaped the area around the disappearing fountain with a hardscape and softscape pattern of travertine blocks. We arranged them in such a way so as to create a checkerboard pattern in the grass. In some of the green spaces, we further ornamented the softscape areas with the same gravel we surrounded the fountain with. This combination of green, white, and black further alluded to Zen garden elements that extended into the French landscape but did not overpower it.

White stones walls surrounded the property and provided us with ample structure to create linear planting areas. In order to soften the right angles of the hardscape/softscape, we integrated gentle curves into planting areas along the walls. Palm and bottlebrush trees helped give this area a sense of height. Azaleas and seasonal flowers added color to the landscape, and boxwoods provided dark ground cover that provided clear boundaries needed to set apart the morning garden as separate space.

We then completed this project by building the Randall’s a small patio just large enough to seat the two of them. Small steps ran up to its surface, and the east wall formed connected to its base. Here, in the mornings, they could read the paper overlooking their morning garden and Zen fountain, while the sun rose over the wall and fell across the landscape to begin the day.