Essential Tips for Incorporating Water Sounds Into Your Garden

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A well-designed garden is a balancing act. You want to balance landscaping selections with water availability. You will balance color, plant heights, and seasonal interest. Hardscaping installations are balanced with plants to create focal points and functional spaces. In most cases, landscapers get so focused on the visual aspects of their garden that they forget how a garden can please the other senses as well. Incorporating sounds into a garden is a wonderful way to enrich your outdoor experience.

Ideas for Incorporating Sound Into Your Garden

Thinking of your landscape as a soundscape will be particularly satisfying for those who live in more urban settings or near noisy neighbors. By adding sounds – or working with natural materials to buffer sounds – your outdoor spaces will feel more like a wild sanctuary and less like an urban garden.

Harness the wind. Think about how certain plants respond to wind. Aspens rattle and click, tall grasses whisper, ornamental trees may sigh, and a stand of conifers may mimic the sound of ocean waves. Pay attention to how wind moves on your property, and then plant trees, shrubs, and grasses accordingly to make the most of it.

Think about your ground cover. The way a foot falls on concrete is much different from the way it falls on soft bark, mossy ground cover or gravel. Analyze how your family, guests, and pets move in your outdoor spaces. What do you want to hear? What do you not want to hear? These thoughts can help you design walkways, stairways, and pathways that contribute to your outdoor soundscape.

Design water elements that produce the sound you want. The sound of water flowing through a fountain or mock stream will be very different depending on the type of pump you use, the container the water flows into, and the objects in that container. For example, place a rock at the base of a waterfall, and you’ll hear the roar of the water with a brighter splash. Take it away, and the effect is entirely different. Design water features, so they yield the sound you desire.

Lifescape Colorado takes a well-rounded approach to landscape design. Contact us to schedule a consultation, and we’ll show you what a difference incorporating sounds into a garden can make.