What Are The Benefits Of Water Features
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- 25-10-2022
What are the Benefits of Water Features and Ponds? From offering a calming environment to attracting wildlife, we look at reasons why you may want to add a pond or water feature to your garden.
What does a water feature do?
So many styles of running water features will make incredibly stunning additions to your home and backyard or garden, providing a calm atmosphere with its endless soothing sights and trickling sounds that promote relaxation and a beautiful and interesting focal point for any outdoor space.
If you want to enhance your property's curb appeal, a water feature purposely placed in your front yard is a surefire way to entice potential buyers and receive compliments from neighbours or bypasses.
Those with anxiety or high-stress levels may be persuaded by the health benefits promised, as flowing water soothes the heart and mind, returning the heart and blood pressure to normal levels. If you live in a particularly noisy area or neighbourhood, the sound of waves can help drown out the noise pollution you may experience during the day or night time.
Main Benefits of Ponds & Water Features?
You'll uncover many benefits to installing water features under the following headings that will prove their existence outside your space or household to be well worth the purchase or maintenance.
A Striking Focal Point
One of the most eye-catching elements of an outdoor landscape or garden space can be the water features involved, as it can add immense visual interest that reflects off the plants and trees in its perimeter, offering beauty and a glance at aquatic wildlife.
We highly advise you to select options that perfectly match the style, feng shui and theme of your home and garden. A minimalist design with elegant, clean lines and geometric shapes offers a cutting-edge contemporary appearance.
However, a more traditional pond may suit older properties with elements of Greek ornamental fountains and Japanese garden styles with plenty of lily pads.
Relaxing & Entertaining
They are an exciting form of entertainment for many households and properties that you can place on decking areas or along patios, meaning you'll obtain the complete visual and aesthetic benefits whilst being able to engage with and de-stress by the feature with friends and family.
We highly recommend investing in patio lighting to create beautiful visual effects that all can enjoy and people flock to long into the evening or late at night.
Calming Influence
Plenty of studies across the UK and various other countries have proven that being beside or in water can provide calming or therapeutic effects and properties.
Such is typically why you see pools and water features included indoor spa treatments or why they may play the sounds of waves crashing as you enjoy a massage instead of white noise.
Flowing water movement and its powerful air quality release negative ions; thus, the brain will curate more serotonin, helping to relieve stress levels by steadying your heart rate and boosting energy, according to the science involved! It can be a positive attribute to improve physical and mental health.
Keeping Fish
For those that don't have the time, energy or patience for larger pets like cats and dogs, having a pond in your garden with plenty of fish can grant the same simple pleasures without the need to take them on extensive walks!
Small children will be fascinated as they can watch and feed them, making the whole experience in the garden much more fun and exciting.
The only downside is that the pond's pump needs to be maintained to ensure the water circulates in a healthy, clean condition and the fish receive enough oxygen; however, they are primarily minimal maintenance.
Water Plant Life
In today's day and age, we are hyperaware of the need for wildlife conservation, which is why it is a great reason to invest in and implement a pond in your garden to nurture and attract wildlife.
At least 70% of British ponds have disappeared within the past 100 years, according to The Royal Horticultural Society, which isn't a good sign for the lifespan and existence of our dragonflies, birds, frogs and various other existing insects and creatures.
Adapting your pond to make it more wildlife-friendly, like sloping with layers of pebbles or stones, can enhance and improve its existence, ultimately better for the overall planet and ecosystem.
Are water features good for wildlife?
You can find and implement water source features of all forms or shapes into your garden or outdoor landscape designs. Covered water butts and various other locations provide minimal wildlife, yet there are so many other spaces that offer fantastic potential for wildlife to come to gather.
Whilst you must be wary that straight-sided, formal ponds with vertical sides aren't as wildlife-friendly without the instalment of a ramp or sloping end, you can pretty much change your garden pond into any size you desire.
However, we encourage you to opt for more natural shapes that offer more wildlife-friendly aspects, like long grass and meadows.
A pond in a pot is essentially what a container pond is, and they are most suitable for patio gardens and courtyard-style outdoor landscapes. They may also be ideal features for roof gardens and balconies where there are plenty of flying insects and pond skaters, like dragonflies.
As long as you plug drainage holes inside old baths, sinks, plastic or glazed pots and stone troughs to allow water to flow through, anything can be utilised as an efficient container pond.
A safe and child-friendly water feature option can be found in installing a birdbath or bubble fountain, as these provide thin films of water and attract plenty of birds that your whole family can sit and watch.
We would encourage you to implement pebbles, perhaps if the one you buy doesn't offer them already, as these make excellent drinking spots for bees.
Formal rills are a pure form of water feature, so you're less likely to find plenty of aquatic wildlife.
Yet those cascading with mossy rocks, wet ponds at the bottom or dedicated specifically for drop pools and planting pockets are likely to experience far more biodiversity.
You can position your independently lined bog garden next to existing ponds, make good use of an already wet site, or they can be standalone parts of your garden space.
We recommend using log piles, water lilies and stepping stones to enhance the damp landscape; this will entice toads, frogs, and newts as they manoeuvre between breeding sites.
If you find you're lucky enough to have a riverbank or stream running through your garden or outdoor landscape, you can utilise it to the fullest extent to maximise the presence of local wildlife.
Dig out one or several pools within the stream to provide the option of fast and slow water; you can also plant various moisture-loving British plants that grow native to the countryside, like willows, to encourage animals of all kinds.
Rain gardens are another form of water feature and an excellent way of using rainwater, especially in the UK when we receive plenty of it. They rapidly reduce stormwater run-off and produce attractive garden elements.
Such features are often linked to numerous different types of water, for example, pools, planters, swales, depressions and rills. Rain gardens make a rich habitat for a broad range of wildlife across the UK.
Does a water feature add value to a property?
Many smaller or larger water features available don't add specific monetary resale value; however, they successfully provide significant aesthetic property values. They are known for adding immense curb appeal to your property or household, ensuring it is far more beautiful and inviting.
Water features add an element of serenity and calm, allowing its owners or viewers to feel relaxed and at peace, which is often why you see water features inside and outside spa venues; this effect may encourage homebuyers to stay a while longer to view a home or property.
Many homeowners purely install working water features for personal enjoyment year round and to enhance the visual quality of a home and not necessarily its value. In rare cases, a water feature could make a property or home more challenging to sell due to maintenance.
Are water features hard to maintain?
One of the most common questions homeowners ask when wishing to include or install a water feature into their outdoor landscapes or gardens is their required level of maintenance. Truth be told, water features need far more maintenance than you may assume; they can be incredibly challenging to upkeep.
Water features come in many forms, whether they are garden ponds, rain run-offs (rain gardens), bog gardens, cascades and rills, birdbaths or even bubble fountains, yet they are much like acquiring a mini pool outside your home or property.
Its water level requires frequent observation, especially in the colder parts of the year and the early spring when rainfall is much heavier. You may find that you need to add chemicals to the water or waterfalls to ensure it stays clear, and the equipment used inside or to curate efficient water flow in your environment will also need maintaining.
Over time, with the changing nature of the seasons and lifespan process, your outdoor water features' debris, dirt and leaf litter will accumulate and cause many issues; you'll want to reduce pollution as much as possible by doing regular clean-ups.
The pumps and other mechanisms will require filter cleaning after they wear out, and calcium can often build up and must be cleaned out. Before purchasing and installing a water feature, you must ask yourself whether you're willing to work regularly to keep it in good condition.
Are you looking for hard landscapers in Maidstone and Kent for Water Features and Ponds? We recommend visiting the following pages on our landscaping services website: