The magic of a babbling stream in the country. Do-it-yourself decorative stream - a fast river in miniature

Every gardener can make speeches at his dacha with his own hands. This does not require financial investments or the use of heavy equipment. decorative stream done with your own hands using simple technology using available materials. This article talks about how to make a decorative stream quickly and ensure an uninterrupted water supply. Before you make a stream with your own hands, study the structure of this artificial reservoir.

A stream in the garden looks nice, but before you start enjoying its gentle murmur and admiring the birds and birds that will be attracted by the water, you need to carefully plan everything, think through not only the location of the stream and the shape of its banks, but also the design of its beginning and end. If we forget about poetry for a while, then a stream is a water “strip” flowing between its beginning and end (source and mouth).

Where can an artificial stream “flow” from? From under a large boulder or a crack in it, a pile of stones, a picturesque bush will do, the source could also be a waterfall, technically this is just disguising the hose in order to create the impression natural source. The end of the stream most often is a pond, or it can disappear under a large stone or group of stones, under which there is a reservoir with a pump. You can design one or both ends of the stream so that they are “lost” in the garden. Of course, the stream is man-made, but it is quite possible to make it “natural”, natural in appearance.

Installation of a stream in the country house and garden

First of all, the construction of a stream is his design, then transferring it to nature. Be sure to draw the lines of the stream, its beginning and end on the plan, then transfer it to nature using a hose, changing its configuration until it seems ideal to you from all possible views. If you don’t know how or don’t like to work with plans on paper, you can immediately try to “draw” it on the ground using pegs and construction tape.

And then, to ensure the structure of a stream at the dacha - dig a stream bed, compact the earth, lay it (or cover the bed with a small layer of sand), then lay a black pond film, cover it with gravel or pebbles, carefully pour in water, lay out stones on the bank, hide the edges films and plant plants in the right places. Hostas, Siberian and marsh irises, loosestrife, astilbe, swimworts, marigolds, ferns, sedges, etc. will look natural on the banks of the stream.

To carry out the water cycle, the design of a stream in the garden involves the use of an electric pump, with the help of which water will be supplied through a well-disguised hose from the mouth to the source. In the most natural way, a stream will flow where there is a difference in height, but it is quite possible to arrange it on a flat area.

Before starting work, you need to purchase all the necessary materials:

• film PVC thick 0.5 mm or 0.8 mm black or much stronger and more reliable, although more expensive, butyl rubber (EPDM membrane), they can be glued and repaired if necessary using special tapes and adhesives;
• sand or geotextiles as underlying and shock-absorbing material;
• submersible pump, which will be placed in the lower storage tank; the longer the stream, the louder its sound is planned, the more power the pump needs;
• hose;
• stones for decorating banks and riverbeds;
• plants for planting near the stream and in the bed itself.

Decorative stream: photos and care rules

The photos of a decorative stream presented on this page show all the splendor of flowing water:

Photo gallery

However, maintaining this beauty requires timely care. The rules for caring for a stream include the following measures: in the spring, it is advisable to drain the water from the reservoirs using a drainage pump (by the way, think in advance where you will drain it in the spring), then you need to thoroughly rinse the stones with a strong stream from a hose and fill it with new clean water, adding a little (a couple of buckets) of the old one so that biodynamic balance is established faster.

You don’t have to wash the stones, but then they become covered with silt and become dark. After a couple of days you can release the fish. In the summer, you need to remove leaves that have fallen into the pond from the pond, feed the fish, remove green algae with a net or your hands if they appear, sometimes you have to clean the pump if it becomes clogged with silt. At the end of September you need to transport the fish to the aquarium, turn off the pump, wash it, dry it and put it away. winter storage V dry room. The water from the pond does not drain; the hose remains in the ground.

A babbling brook surrounded by stones and flowering plants will decorate any country property,
Its construction is usually trusted to professionals, but on a small scale it is quite possible to do it on your own.

To create a stream at your dacha, a small difference in levels in the garden is enough. You are lucky if your site has a natural slope - we simply place the source higher and dig the channel down the slope. What if the area is horizontal? We will have to raise the source above the mouth. How much depends on the goal: whether you want a quiet stream or a stormy stream. To obtain a “swift” stream, the difference should be about 3 cm per 1 m of length.

Accordingly, if the length of the future stream is 5 m, the difference is needed 8-15 cm, for 10 m - 30 cm, etc.

We organize the movement of water

The water in the country stream moves in a closed cycle (that is, in a circle), so it needs a pump. Using a powerful surface pump to pump water involves installing a special pit near the source that protects the pump from weather influences. The water, having passed through the pump, flows down the stream to the receiving pond at the mouth, from where it is sucked in and delivered back to the pump through a pipe, completing the circle. The submersible pump is simply lowered into the receiving pond.

Water from the pond flows under pressure through pipes or hoses upward to the source, from where it flows back into the pond. This option is suitable only for short streams with a slight slope and a leisurely flow.

We are installing a water supply system

The depth of the receiving pond must be sufficient to fill the entire system with water. At the mouth, overflow is required to drain excess water formed after a heavy rainfall. A polypropylene pipe is used as a water supply. Most often it is laid along the shortest path from source to mouth, but this has its drawbacks. For example, if you plan to plant a coastal zone woody plants or build a gazebo, then repairing such a water supply may later become a problem.

In this case, it is better to make the channel less winding so that pipes can be laid along the bank or used for the same purpose flexible hose increased strength. In this case, the trench for laying the pipe is dug simultaneously with laying the waterproofing at a distance of 60-90 cm from the riverbed. At the point of emergence water pipe decorated large stones, imitating a spring.

Making a stream with your own hands

1. Choose a location for the stream. If the area is flat, then the movement of water will be calm. On the slope you can create something like a mountain river with rapids and water flowing over flat stones. Mark the riverbed, the receiving pond at the mouth, and the line of bank fill with pebbles using twine stretched over pegs.

2. Dig a receiving pond about 80 cm deep and a trench in place of the riverbed about 40 cm deep, with a slight slope towards the pond. Clean the bed of roots, small stones and other inclusions. Compact the bottom along its entire length, cover it with a 15 cm thick layer of sand. Lay geotextiles and PVC film, or butyl rubber.

3. Press the edges of the film with bricks without stretching it.

To ensure that the film presses tightly to the bottom, run water down the stream.

Form folds of film and press turns and large folds with boulders or flat stones, scattering them picturesquely along the entire path of the water flow.

4. Fill the bottom with small pebbles with a layer of 5-7 cm. Lay stones of different fractions so that, in addition to a skillful decorative imitation natural reservoir, they pressed the walls of the film along the slopes of the stream and hid the film from the sun's rays.

By placing large stones on the bottom, you can get a beautiful effect from small thresholds.

5. Fill the stream again with water to check how correctly the place was found for each stone.

Trim the excess edges of the film. In places where the film extends far enough to the shore, you can not cut it, but make cross-shaped cuts, bend the edges and plant plants in the resulting windows.

Moisture-loving hostas, astilbes, and volzhankas are perfect for this purpose.

Our advice

To connect the pump cable to the electrical network, you can use the sockets of nearby buildings or arrange a special outdoor electrical panel, hiding it in plant compositions or behind large stones.

6. To form a wide coastal zone with rocky fill, lay PVC film on the area cleared of weeds and stones. Tuck its edges under the folds of the pond film or place it on top with a slight overlap. The film will serve as a barrier to weeds. Then lay out large and medium stones and cover with fine pebbles in a layer about 4 cm thick.

7. The receiving reservoir is arranged similarly to the bed of a stream - it is lined with geotextiles and butyl rubber film on top of a sand cushion. Then the bottom is covered with small pebbles in a layer of 5-7 cm and large stones are laid. If the edges are steep, they may require reinforcement with a special mesh or gabions. More flat banks are tightly lined with large flat stones, which are installed at an angle.

8. Landscaping coastal zone carry out in such a way that there are not too many shoots hanging over the water, otherwise the water will quickly become clogged with falling leaves. Excellent for this purpose conifers, hydrangeas, Siberian irises, low-growing shrubs such as Japanese spirea, dwarf birch.

9. If there is a lot of soil left after digging a water feature, it can be used to form a steep slope near the stream. It is terraced and covered with materials that suit the style. They plant on the hill alpine plants or continue the theme of decorating the shore.

Stream arrangement

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A cheerful babbling brook in the countryside adds inspiration to any garden. How nice it is to let streams of clean and cool water run through your fingers on a hot summer day! In addition, murmuring water promotes relaxation and stress relief, which, unfortunately, is enough in our hectic lives.

A dacha stream presupposes the presence of at least a small reservoir on the site, but what if there is none? In this case, you can create a small pond with your own hands. There is already a good article about this. It’s so nice to have a pond in your dacha, and a cheerfully singing stream – even more so! In addition, the stream will saturate the pond with oxygen and will not allow the water to stagnate. This is the mini-circulation of water on your suburban area 🙂

Having even a small reservoir, making a stream on the site will not be difficult. To equip it, a powerful pump is installed at the bottom of the source reservoir, from which hoses are pulled or polypropylene pipes(depending on the configuration of the pumping equipment) along the entire bed of the stream. Then the reservoir is filled, the pump is turned on, and water under pressure is supplied to the source of the dacha stream, and then the stream returns “home” again - to the dacha pond. The shores are decorated to taste. Now let's look at how to do all this correctly.

Sectional diagram of the stream

Planning the bed of a dacha stream

The “character” of the dacha stream will be determined immediately and will depend on the topography of your site. If the slope for the stream equipment is gentle, then it will flow slowly, without a soothing murmur. But to create a babbling stream, you will need steep slopes and large boulders in the center of the channel, from which the water will fall in a continuous stream, revealing in your pioneer all the signs of a real “highlander.”

When planning the course of a stream, take advantage of the natural topography of the area. A stream can bend around your flower beds, flow next to trees, babble near recreation areas, or meander beautifully around garden sculptures, somewhere creating quiet backwaters, and somewhere – small waterfalls, shallows or islands. Make it as natural as possible, observing smooth natural shapes. Some summer residents draw the bed of a country stream along garden paths, trying to give it the correct geometric shape. But replacing natural lines with strict geometry does not look very aesthetically pleasing; in addition, such a stream in the countryside often turns into an ordinary ditch and may well blur your garden paths during heavy rainfalls.

At the stage of planning the stream bed, consider creating an artificial waterfall (if the terrain allows), as well as organizing a receiving reservoir, that is, a second pond in the dacha. This is necessary if you plan to create a fairly long stream that goes around a decent part of your site. In this case, you may have to buy additional pump equipment to install it in a second reservoir, it will depend on the length of the stream and the features of the terrain where it flows.

The coast of the ponds can be decorated beautiful flowering plants, which love constantly moist soil: sedge, meadowsweet, hosta, bergenia, bathhouse and others. Choose the length and width of the stream bed at your discretion, but standard sizes usually vary between 0.5-1.5 m - width and 0.3-0.5 m - depth.

Stages of creating a stream on the site

Stage 1. So, you have decided on the terrain and figured out where your stream will flow. Now arm yourself with a rope and pegs and walk along the bed of the future stream, driving the pegs close to each other and loosely connecting them with a rope (we don’t need strict geometry).

Stage 2. Dig the soil under the stream bed to the depth you planned. Add steps if the slope allows. Instead of thresholds along a steep riverbed, you can fix large boulders in some places (you can use concrete mortar) or make masonry, but the riverbed itself must be thoroughly cleared of stones and plant roots and the soil compacted. If you are building a large stream, then it is better to concrete its bed, and in the places designated for rapids, lay down flat stones and fasten them with concrete mortar.

Stage 3. You may want to build a stream mouth and decorate it with aquatic and riparian plants (for example, like in this photo).

In this case, from the edge of the reservoir where the stream will flow, expose waterproofing coating and make a trench for the mouth. Sprinkle it with a layer of sand or crushed stone 5-7 cm high, then cover it with geotextiles so that there is a margin around the edges. Then thoroughly moisten the geotextile fabric (you can water it with a hose). This is done so that the geotextile fits tightly around the mouth. Then secure the canvas on the sides with large stones, and make masonry in the middle of the riverbed: stack flat stones, securing them with concrete mortar. Apply another layer on top of the masonry concrete mortar and decorate the structure with pebbles.

Stage 4. Dig shallow (up to 10 cm) grooves parallel to the stream bed and lay hoses (or pipes) from the pump there. Fill the grooves and mask them with a layer of turf. Connect the pump, turn on the water and that’s it - the babbling dacha stream has come into its own!

There are many other ways to build a country stream with your own hands, but more on that in the next article. I described the most the simplest way, which even a novice summer resident can handle without dwelling on the details.

We beautify the dacha stream

Now your babbling friend needs to be refined. Along the entire path of the stream, you can place beautiful rounded stones on its banks, alternating them with water-loving plants: low-growing moss, primroses, daylilies, ostrichberries, ferns and others. And the bed of a country stream is usually decorated with creeping plants: tenacious, loosestrife, speedwell, etc., which gives it a piquant decorative effect. It is better to plant all plants along the path of the stream in groups to give a natural look to the landscape. Also, the banks and mouth of the stream can be beautifully decorated with “weeping” plants with a crown hanging down to the water, for example, goat willow or tree caragana. And a little further away you can plant jasmine, forsythia or lilac and enjoy not only the sound of water, but also the wonderful smell of flowers.

Caring for a country stream

If you have built country stream correctly, taking into account all the features of the relief, then further care behind him is not complicated at all. You just need to adhere to the following rules:

As necessary, add fresh water to the source reservoir where the pump is installed, so it will eventually go into the ground.
Completely drain the water from the reservoir and fill it with fresh water once a year.
Keep your submersible pump in order: regularly clean the filters and ensure that the hoses (pipes) are in good condition.
Clear away silt decorative stones on the shore as they become polluted.
In winter, it is better to drain the stream, completely freeing it of water.

It is always pleasant to see the fruits of your handiwork, but it is doubly pleasant to hear and feel them. A babbling brook can turn into a true friend for us. It will comfort you in difficult times, calm you down, help you relax and allow you to forget about pressing problems at least for a while. Is there a dacha stream in your suburban area?

So, we make a stream in the country with our own hands

You will need:

large pump, water line and adapters, PVC putty, cement, tank 45 x 75 cm with lid, circular drills, waterproofing, geotextiles, foam water sealant, gravel, stone, decorative boulders, drill, hand tamper, level, 2- wheelbarrow without sides. (about material for the construction of garden ponds and other reservoirs)

1. Mark the stream bed using a garden hose, then apply paint along it. Also mark the locations of the upper and lower reservoirs, waterfalls and large decorative boulders.

2. Dig a hole for the upper tank 0.6 m wider than the diameter of the tank and 15 cm deeper. To frame the edges of the tank and banks, place the first layer of stones with the flat side facing up so that the next layer is more stable. Using a rubber mallet, tamp down the soil and gravel around the stones. Dig a hole for the bottom tank. Place boulders along the edges of the top reservoir and the top of the stream that is above ground level.

3. We complete the work with the lower reservoir. Drill holes in the tank using drills different sizes. Coat the hose adapter with putty and cement and insert it into the pump.

4. Place a layer of geotextile and waterproofing in the lower tank, extending the material 60 cm beyond the edges of the tank. After installing the pump tank, insert the pump into it, connect the water supply line and check that it reaches the upper tank. Connect the hose. Place the stone and cover the tank with a lid.

5. To create cascades at each height difference, dig out or, conversely, build a ledge to the height of the water drop. Starting at the bottom of the stream, dig a channel 0.6-1 m wide, 15-20 cm deep. Then dig shallow reservoirs under the waterfalls to slow the flow of water.

6. Line the banks with stones 15 cm high. Fill the gaps between the stones of the upper waterfalls with a mixture of soil and gravel. Then compact the soil around the top reservoir and bed. Align the waterfall ledges horizontally.

7. Start laying geotextiles and waterproofing at the bottom of the stream, starting from the lowest point, releasing the material 0.6 m beyond the riverbed. At the base of each waterfall, the material should sag a little so that the stones installed later do not break the tensioned waterproofing. Place decorative rocks at the waterfalls, placing an additional piece of waterproofing under each heavy boulder.

8. To the shore

the streams are not washed away, fill the gaps between the stones with a mixture of soil and gravel. Lay the geotextile and waterproofing in the top tank, covering the stone banks by 0.6 m. The waterproofing does not need to be glued, just make sure that the top insulation overlaps the fabric underneath by at least 45-60 cm. Then lay upper layer stones around the top tank.

9. After you have placed decorative stones in the waterfalls, install flat stones through which the water will flow. Apply expanding foam pond and waterfall sealant to the underside of the overflow stones to secure them to the waterproofing. Insert smaller stones into the gaps between the water overflow stones and the boulders of the shore.

10. Fill the voids around the overflow stones with gravel so that the water only overflows from the top, then take a garden hose and run the water down the riverbed. Fill leaks with foam.

11. Place stepping stones in the center of the riverbed for easy crossing of the stream. Cover areas of uncovered waterproofing with gravel.

12. Fill the lower reservoir with water and turn on the pump. Run water into the stream until the water coming out of the pump is clear. Insert the pump hose into the upper reservoir. Trim any exposed waterproofing and adjust the water flow by moving the stones.

Making a garden stream with your own hands - tips

1. On light soils, it is better to lay the channel in the ground. If the soil is too heavy, the stream will have to be placed on a stone foundation.
2. For a continuous flow of water, a small slope is sufficient - 5 cm per 3 m of stream. To make water flow faster, the slope must be steeper.
3. When planning flow volume, first determine how much water should be held in the lower and upper reservoirs when the pump is off. Plan the volume at the rate of 20 liters per 0.1 sq. m of flow (76 cm width x 7.5 cm depth). In our case, the volume of the lower tank is 150 l, the upper one is 900 l.
4. To make the water in the stream gurgle, make a waterfall 5 to 10 cm high. more difference altitude, the louder the murmur of water. In addition, you can make several waterfalls.
5. Waterfalls should be visible from your deck, patio, or window of your home. If you like to listen to the sound of running water at night, it might make sense to place the stream outside your bedroom windows - you can always turn it off if it bothers you.

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Nothing can so captivate the eye, make you think and delve deeper into your thoughts, as the sight of moving water, living its own life. There is already a calm pond on your site and it’s nice to relax near it, but sometimes you really want to fill it with movement... Create some semblance of a fast river, albeit in miniature. Well, nothing is impossible! If you already have a pond, then it's time to add a decorative stream to it. However, if you do everything correctly, then none of the neighbors will even guess that it is artificial. The water in it will be real, and the movement will be created by a pump, skillfully disguised in a homemade stone grotto.

Decorative stream - a river in miniature

The first step in creating a stream is to select suitable place. In principle, there will be no choice as such, since the stream should only be located next to a pond or other garden reservoir from which the pump will “draw” water. For an outside observer, the final composition will look like this: from an inconspicuous spring gushing out of the ground, water enters the bed of a stream along which it moves and flows into the pond. In fact, we understand that there is no spring - the water is taken from the pond!

Scheme of a decorative stream (click to enlarge)

Ideally, the mouth of the stream should be on a slope of the site (slope 30°-45°) so that the water can flow down into the pond by gravity. This is not necessary, since the water flow will still be provided by the pump, but its speed at horizontal flat areas will be less than on a slope.

Step 2. Digging a ditch of the required depth

As a rule, the depth of a homemade stream varies between 25-50 cm, and the width can reach 1-1.5 m. Having determined exactly how you want your stream to look, you can start digging a ditch.

Its dimensions will largely depend on the material from which the bottom and walls of the water structure will be made. We'll talk about this below.

Step 3. Create a stream bed

Now we will proceed to the most important thing - creating a full-fledged riverbed. To do this, you must first remove all stones, roots and other debris from the dug ditch, and then compact the surface. Subsequent work will depend on the material of the channel. For this purpose, you can use a waterproofing film or concrete.

If you have chosen the simplest option - film, then a sand cushion 5 cm thick is first laid on the bottom of the groove, and a sand cushion is spread on top of it. non-woven material(butyl rubber, for example). Now all that remains is to carefully spread the film over the resulting surface.

If you choose concrete, the principle of operation will become somewhat more complicated. First, a gravel-sand cushion 25-30 cm thick must be laid at the bottom of the groove and covered with plastic film and fill the surface with a 15cm layer of concrete. Thus, the groove depth when choosing concrete surface initially should be 40-45 cm greater than the desired depth of the stream. Accordingly, the width should be larger.

Step 4. Decorating the stream with stones

We can say that the stream is ready, but its appearance is still far from natural. It is necessary to decorate it so that its artificial essence is not visible even close up. First, pay attention to the bottom of the structure - in a real stream there will never be a perfectly flat surface. In the place of the riverbed where a weak current is expected, small flat stones, preferably pebbles, should be placed on the bottom. Where the speed will be intense, it is better to give preference to large rough stones.

For a waterfall effect, large flat stones can be placed at the bottom of the stream.

The banks of an artificial stream also need decoration - place boulders and small stones there irregular shape. Pick up stones different sizes and shapes, laying them individually or in groups.

Pay attention to landscaping coastline. Shrubs and perennials that prefer moist soil can be planted at the source. Viburnum and astilbe, juniper, bergenia, various ferns - all these plants will not only feel good near the water, but will also decorate the picturesque coastal landscape. Along the banks, between the stones, other moisture-loving plants will find refuge: marsh iris, loosestrife, daylily, brunnera, ostrich. Ground cover plants They will crawl onto the stones and become an interesting addition to the overall picture.

Select mosses, sedum, periwinkle or creeping tenacious for these purposes. Having planted all these plants in coastal zone, it is worth remembering that most of them take about three weeks to root. During this period, you should not turn on the pump at full power, so that the stream of water does not tear out the plants and carry them into the pond.

Step 5. Enter into the system and connect the pump

The stream bed will flow into the pond and it is there that the submersible pump should be lowered, which will force the water to circulate along a given route. The power of the device must provide the necessary intensity of its movement.

Hidden in a clay jug... is a hose from a pump

Considering that the water will rise to the sources of the stream, it is necessary to connect polypropylene hoses to the pump, which are easy to install and quite frost-resistant. It is advisable to decorate the outlet of the supply hose at the source. This can be done by hiding the hose behind a large boulder or by building a grotto from several small stones.

A wooden bridge spanning a stream invites you to approach the cozy pergola

And finally, if the stream is wide enough, it would not be a bad idea to throw it across decorative bridge or several large flat boulders. This way, the water will not become an obstacle for those walking through the garden, but, on the contrary, will turn the walk into an interesting adventure.