Simple Fountains for Indoors & Outdoors: 20 Step-By-Step Projects - Hardcover

Adkins, Dorcas

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1580171907 ISBN 13: 9781580171908

Publisher: Storey Publishing, LLC, 1999

Synopsis

Everything readers need to know to create elegant, soothing water fountains. Easy-to-follow instructions explain choosing and installing pumps and constructing fountains.

About this title

About the Author

Dorcas Adkins lives in Washington, D.C., with Pat Munoz and their two cats, Harrie and Sushi. They share a large garden boasting a pond and five fountains with innumerable tadpoles, dragonflies, and hummingbirds. With her partner, Steve Meyer, Dorcas can usually be found running Adams & Adkins, Inc. of Alexandria, Virginia, making fountains and other garden ornaments for sale to catalogs, retail stores, and individuals.

From the Back Cover

Bring home the soothing sounds of water

The endless murmur and flow of a bubbling fountain adds a touch of elegance to both homes and gardens. Now, fountain designer and manufacturer Dorcas Adkins reveals her trade secrets for making 20 creative fountains-from a small, tabletop fountain put together without a single tool to a dramatic outdoor spouting wall fountain or a full-sized waterfall-and at far less cost than for those found in upscale catalogs. Step by step, Simple Fountains for Indoors & Outdoors explains everything you need to know.

Projects include:

--Tabletop fountains made from shells and stones

--Lava rock bonsai garden fountain

--Cedar water garden with bamboo flute

--Birdshower fountain

--Small mosaic fountain

--Concrete and ceramic spouting wall fountains

--Shishi Odoshi(or Japanese Deer-Scare Fountain)

From the Inside Flap

Nothing smoothes the furrowed brow like the soft lap of wavelets on a lakeshore, the rythym of surf on a barrier island, or the silvery tinkle of a stream falling through the spring forest. At home-in the house or in the garden-the gentle, melodic patter of water spilling from a fountain offers the same tranquility.

Dorcas Adkins, a fountain designer and manufacturer, brings this soothing relaxation to your home using readily available materials, simple crafting techniques, and her own step-by-step instructions. She explains everything you need to know about fountain materials, supplies, and assembly, whether you choose to work with wood, stone, ceramic, or other materials and whether or not you have any building experience.

Throughout Simple Fountains for Indoors & Outdoors, Adkins's can-do attitude will give you the confidence to experiment and have fun: Relax, she urges, and let your creative talents take over.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Introduction

Of all nature's elements, water is perhaps the most essential to life, health, and happiness. For many species of plants and animals, falling water provides increased oxygen. This all-important ingredient combines with carbon, enabling waste from these organisms to decompose quickly. For aquatic animals such as fish, snails, and crayfish, adequate dissolved oxygen in the water is required for life itself.

Since the earliest times, we humans have acknowledged the vital importance of water in our lives. Our bodies are made up mostly of water, and without sufficient water to drink or to humidify the air around us, we quickly become uncomfortable.

When water is in motion, it humidifies the surrounding air more readily. It also produces sounds that relax us. Nothing smoothes the furrowed brow like the soft lap of wavelets on a lake-shore, the thunder of surf on a barrier island, or the silvery tinkle of a stream falling through the spring forest.

The Sound of Moving Water

Modern life is very busy. Technological advances have resulted in a world where sensory overload is common. Many of us recognize that the only antidote is frequent communion with natural forces, yet too often we cannot spare the time to go into the wild to find the peace and relaxation we need. Instead, we create increasingly elaborate garden refuges for this purpose. For many reasons, not the least of which is that the splash of falling water can be used to mask traffic sounds, fountains enhance these gardens, both indoors and out.

The indoor fountain can provide the melodic sound of falling water in the workplace. By setting this piece of the outdoors beside your computer, you can add humidity to air often dried by heaters and monitor fans. The release of negative ions that takes place in falling water is thought by many to soothe the human spirit as well.

In the outdoor garden nothing could be more natural than the inclusion of a water feature. Even the most formal fountain - one in which the water decorates an elaborate sculpture and falls into a pool scoured clean of life forms - contributes cooling humidity to the garden environment while masking the noise of the street. A more natural fountain bubbling into a pond full of fish, frogs, snails, and water lilies quickly becomes a successful and sustainable ecosystem. The lessons we all can learn in such a classroom are invaluable as we face the challenges of sustaining our own planet's environment into a complex and crowded future.

Modern Fountain Design

The convenience of the electric pump, recently developed in tiny yet reliable models, allows all of us to easily create small fountains for our own gardens. The style we choose for a water feature can range from a formal pool, soothingly geometric in form, to a natural mountain cataract. Or a spare and simple Zen garden, complete with koi pond and bridge, can appear in what was once an unused alley.

And the same small pumps allow us to

Edition details

• Publisher: Storey Publishing, LLC
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1580171907
• ISBN 13: 9781580171908
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 160