Icicle-Gardening

I know, it's getting cold outside. Time to wrap it up. We've had some "flurries" and yes, any leaf piles left on the lawn are now welded there until spring. Or maybe next week. Could rain next week. This is Vancouver after all.

Nevertheless, this is the best time of year for big thermoses of homemade soup and thick-cut-cheese sandwiches, and I don't mind when frosty mornings and early darkness bookend a short and sweet working day.


Ran about Sheena & Terry's garden on Friday, in a last-minute clean-up before the "flurries" in the forecast. I want Nick and Terry to see their little waterfall below, because Nick will be constructing his own version of similar size in the spring. The catchment pond (in which the pump is submerged) is obviously iced over.

In particular, notice the evergreen Lonicera pileata--one of the shrubby honeysuckles (that bears no apparent resemblance to the vine) which I have stockpiled for Nick & Terry's new waterfall planting. I really like how its horizontal branch structure softens the sides of a man-made waterfall, and it gets a surprising crop of very purple berries in late spring. The great big spiky purplish New Zealand flax (Phormium tenax) that is usually visible in the gap on the upper right is still a shadow of its former self after last winter.
I built this mini-fall and pond...eight years ago? Hol-ee. With the help of Paul Sra, a very funny man. We used a layer of pond felt and pond liner under the falls and pond (I have the construction pictures in the July 28 2008 entry) and basalt slabs for the step-down falls. As I recall, the pump was about $400, chosen for the height of water drop, and it has churned away for eight years and counting. Now there are pre-form plastic waterfall runs available, which probably does help water loss on longer, more convoluted waterfall configurations.

It's verrry important, if you do have an exposed catchment pond (unlike some of the "secret springs" water bubblers) to position a "rescue/perching rock" for birds that might fall in.

The water level can sink in summer due to splashing or evaporation so has to be topped up. And-ha-if you think, oh, my waterfall doesn't splash that much, these photos have pretty much caught those splashes, frozen in the act. That's why it's also important to extend the pond liner farther out than you think along the sides, and angle the grade back to the falls/pond, so the splashes drain back in.