Water Feature -- Before and After

When we bought the house 6 months ago (wow! that long?) there was a fenced swingset area that didn't serve any purpose for us, since we have one grown child living on the East Coast. At my old garden I had a pond that my son and I dug ourselves one summer, with shovel and pickaxe. I had goldfish, which I miss, but it was a lot of work. We had raccoons, and birds that would try to eat them, not to mention the snakes in my previous post. I  once ran out into the garden in my nightgown to take a fish out of the jaws of a snake and toss it back in the pond!

Plus, it always seemed to have a leak somewhere that was hard to track down. So, at this garden I decided I wanted a disappearing stream, also called a pondless waterfall. It started with taking out the swingset and fence. The swingset was taken apart, and sat on my driveway for a while, till someone from the contractor's church came to take it away and reinstall it where it would be appreciated. I'm glad it didn't go into a landfill, or even to a scrap metal place.

Then they brought in lots of boulders.

Arranged some in a semi-circle and installed the waterfall.

Dug a big hole for the pump. Even though it doesn't have a pond, it still needs a big reservoir for the water. It gets covered by stones.

Then they placed the liner.

And very carefully placed the boulders along the sides. Our contractor was very good, he used the backhoe like a delicate instrument. You don't want to make a wrong move and tear the liner!

Then they cut the liner back a bit and filled the streambed with small stones.

They turned the water on for a test run! A very dirty test run...

It needed to be filled and pumped out several times before the water started to run clearer.

Now, this is the view through my garden gate....

Sparkling water!

The stream decorated with a gift from a friend...