Pondless Waterfall & Streams

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Years ago, an excited Landscape Contractor recruited Snowden Landscape Design to design the landscape around something new: a pondless waterfall.

Without the algae, mosquitoes, drowning hazard, and wasting water to evaporation of a standing pond of water, all it really requires is some slope and imagination.  The water is stored underground at the bottom of the system, under a gravel pool over a plastic grate on a buried tank, and is then pumped to the top when switched on.  A lined channel carries the water down between rocks placed &/or stacked to create waterfalls, and within minutes it looks very realistic, and was fun to treat as real when selecting the plant material to be next to and near the stream and waterfall system.

The second waterfall system in the Gallery is the result of building a house on a somewhat rocky, sloping site and having to move a long staircase from the top/ house entry level down to the back deck/pool   level closer to the house to the point that the planting area between the stairs and the house is mostly rock. “What do I do with this?” the good doctor asked. “We build a stream” was the reply. It was on the shady side of the house, so even dwarf Rhododendrons made use of the available soil pockets.

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