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Italian Water Garden

Designing an Italian Water Garden

Corrine Dolezal

There may come a time when you're trying to landscape your yard that you run into a brick wall as far as creativity goes. Maybe there's an area of your property that needs something, but you can't decide what, for example. These are times when it's good to stop and step back and take a look at what others have created which may stimulate your own creative juices. In designing a water feature for your yard, you should investigate different types of water gardens that have been developed over the years in order to find elements that you can update and work into your own design. One of the searches you can do to find inspiration is to look at pictures of some of the lovely Italian water gardens, some of which have graced the landscape for centuries.

One of the most famous water gardens is Longwood which was created in Pennsylvania by Pierre du Pont, a man who truly loved to design with water. Naturally, you aren't going to try and emulate his garden in your own yard, unless you have a lot of extra space, because Longwood covers 1,050 acres, but you can find ideas while looking into the many elements that were incorporated into Longwood. Take a look at the use of fountains, sculptures, and topiary which turned this ordinary lawn into a showplace. You can take note of the lavish use of flowers to create carpets of color and seen how they were woven into the overall design of the property. On the Longwood website you can view pictures of layout and find ideas for such features as a children's water garden and a woodland garden of native plants.

Spend some time looking at the photo of the Italian water garden at Thanksgiving Point that you'll find at http://www.dpchallenge.com/image.php?IMAGE_ID=103102. Although you probably can't build anything this elaborate, you can still get an idea about what a chain reaction fountain can be and the use of generous arrays of flowers surrounding it. Another example of a sunken Italian water garden is at http://www.gardens-to-go.org.uk/higham_park_watergarden.htm. This is a picture of Higham garden, a very formal, meticulously maintained garden with sternly clipped hedges and stone walkways.

Any time your creative juices stop flowing while you're building a water feature in your own back yard, you can turn to Internet resources to get the ideas rolling again. Although these old Italian water gardens are much more formal and lavish than what we need for private water gardens at our homes, they can still provide us with the inspiration we need to keep ourselves excited about the project.