Water element always attracts a person: a murmuring brook, splashing of water in an improvised pond, like melodies that are pleasant to hearing, create an atmosphere of harmony with nature. When ennobling a suburban area, a desire often arises to equip a pond that will give the landscape a unique charm. But what if the conditions do not allow to decorate the territory with a pool, a pond or a stream? An excellent solution to the arrangement of the territory will be a dry stream – an element of landscape design that visually resembles a bed of a dried river. Properly planned and designed dry stream can hide unsightly places on the site and visually increase the size of the territory.
Content
- Dry creek in landscape design: the advantages of arrangement
- The main stages of construction
- Marking the source channel
- Foundation preparation and stone laying
- Decoration of the banks of the stream
Dry creek in landscape design: the advantages of arrangement
Such an unusual element of the site design will become a bright decoration of the house territory. At the first glance at it, it seems that transparent water ran through the dried up stones yesterday, and with the first drops of rain the spring will come to life again and fill with moisture.
Dry creek in the country is one of the most popular methods of improvement
The reason for this is a number of undeniable advantages, the main ones of which are:
- The ability to decorate unsightly places on the site.
Under the composition of stones, you can take any place on the site: on a picturesque mound or in a lowland. You can place it, both in the sunny and in a slightly shaded area. Making the composition of plants, you can not be limited to hygrophilous herbs and flowers. For the decoration of the “coastal” zone using any varieties of plants.
- Minimum trouble to care for the “pond”.
A natural water source, on the bottom of which silt deposits accumulate, requires regular cleaning of the bottom and water using filters, compressors and pumps. Care for the imitation of the stream consists only in maintaining the contours of the composition of stones and watering the “coastal” plants.
- Safety for young children.
Kids with great pleasure will delve around a dry brook. Parents can be calm, on dry stones children will not slip and will not fall into the water. In addition, a lot of midges and mosquitoes always accumulate near a natural reservoir, which cause a lot of inconvenience. Being near a dry stream you can not worry about this scourge.
The main stages of construction
If you decide to depict a dry creek on your own site with your own hands, get ready to do everything in stages. It is not as simple as it seems at first glance.
Marking the source channel
The shape and size of the source is best selected taking into account the characteristics of the area. For areas with a small area, winding streams are more suitable, which visually expand the territory and deepen the space.
In spacious open areas you can equip a whole lake of stones
When brewing an arrangement of a dry stream, you need to focus on the landscape design elements already available on the site. The source of the stream can be a stone rock, rockery or alpine hill, and the mouth can hide in the thickets of hedges.
Before you make a dry stream, you need to outline its boundaries. For this purpose, it is convenient to use sand, with which you can “draw” the contours. It is better if the source has a slightly tortuous shape, and its banks become narrower and wider as the “water flows”.
Foundation preparation and stone laying
A ditch with a depth of 15-20 cm is dug along the outlined contour, which will serve as the basis for the channel of the stream. As in a natural source, the depth along the axis should be somewhat greater than offshore. The bottom of the pit is covered with a “pillow” of sand 4-6 cm thick, which is covered with agrofiber. Non-woven fabric allows moisture to pass through but prevents weed growth.
Some craftsmen use a dense polyethylene construction film for this purpose.
For the arrangement of the stream, both small smooth pebbles and large faceted blocks are suitable. Flat pebbles and bare, covering the channel of the source and filling the crevices, will imitate the movement of water.
When choosing stones, it is better to give preference to local breeds. Thanks to this, the stream will fit into the surrounding landscape as organically as possible. To create a channel in gray-blue shades, it is better to use slate, gneiss or basalt. Lime and marble gives the source a milky and light shade..
You can always give individual stones the desired shade by painting them with waterproof paint.
An original addition to the composition can be flat glass stones, which, being poured in the sun, will imitate frozen drops of water for a moment.
First, the largest stones are placed, outlining the boundaries of the stream, and then lay out smaller pebbles and crushed stone, filling with a dry stream
Decoration of the banks of the stream
Although a dry stream is almost ready, do not rush to take a photo. After all, the composition will not be complete without a decent frame. To create the maximum similarity of the stone composition with a natural source, it is necessary to arrange it with beautifully flowering and decorative deciduous plants. Along the coast of the source it is better to place ground cover and medium-sized plants. It is better to refuse to plant tall varieties, because they can “overload” the coast, turning it into a pile of plants and stones.
Since a dry stream represents a water element on a site, it is better to use plants with flowers of blue, green and yellow shades for its decoration
This may be blue fescue, Chinese reed, tenacious creeping, sunflower loosestrife and all kinds of daylilies. A reminder of the freshness of clear blue water will be plants decorated with flowers of gray-blue hues: mosquito cereal, function, lobelia, buffalo grass, bell.
Against the background of small pebbles, plants with long green leaves look spectacular: bamboo leaf-grate, cane arundo, bearded iris.
When choosing plants for composition, one should also take into account the composition of the soil and the illumination of the site.
When designing a stream, you can use not only herbal compositions, but other elements of landscape design
A wooden bridge thrown over the brook looks picturesque, decorative frogs placed along the coast, “shallows” of sand.
