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Give your garden a bubble bath!

© Lorraine Flanigan

It's been one of the driest summers I've seen in a while. Every second night another section of the flower bed gets a dowsing from the soaker hose. With all this watering, I've been thinking a lot about adding a water feature to the garden. Not a pond with plants and fish. No, I learned my lesson several years ago when the racoons used our pond as a swimming pool and the waterfall as a water slide. This time, I'm adding a bubbler -- no plants, no water lilies, no fishing!

A bubbler does just that. With the help of a small pump and tubing, water bubbles up and through a structure, cascading over the sides and into a reservoir where it cycles up through the pump again. It's simple, compact, and racoon-proof.

The water can bubble up through an old millstone, a craggy rock, even a collection of clay pots. The reservoir can be a stone basin, a shallow pot, or a large dish. Or, sunken and hidden beneath the ground, the reservoir could be topped by a beautiful urn. You can also use river stones, seashells or coloured glass in a bubbler. It's easy to assemble a small one yourself from materials you may have already, or you can look for bubblers in a garden centre or nursery. The options are limited only by your imagination and by your budget.

One major consideration when siting a bubbler is access to electricity. The pump needs electricity to operate, so either locate the bubbler near an existing outdoor outlet, or have an electrician run wiring underground to the bubbler.

Without water, pumps burn out, so once the bubbler is assembled, check the water level in the reservoir frequently and replenish as needed. Otherwise, you'll be running to the garden centre to buy a new pump. The smaller the reservoir, the more vigilant you'll need to be. With a very small basin or dish, water splashes over the sides and evaporates quickly on hot days. Top up the water often, and only run the pump when you're out in the garden.

I've decided to construct my bubbler using a concrete wheel that was lurking beside my neighbour's shed. She was delighted to roll it from her yard to mine on the proviso that I site the water feature where she can see it. The wheel looks like an old millstone and has a hole through the middle. This is where the water will bubble up from a reservoir that I'll bury so that the top rim is slightly below ground level. Since the reservoir will be hidden, I'll use one of those preformed plastic pond liners that are available from garden centres and pond specialists. The millstone will rest atop an upright clay chimney tile which I'll balance on top of two bricks on the floor of the pond liner. On a third brick I'll place the pump, snaking the plastic tubing from the pump, under and up the chimney tile and through the hole in the wheel.

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