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Reflecting Pool Help

MarkIOMMarkIOM Posts: 2
in Garden design

Hi, new to the forums, and looking for help building a reflecting pool.

Background is Ive built a modern cedar clad garden room and now need to landscape the surrounding area. Ive bought some dark grey granite paving, but as its quite a decent sized area need to break it up a bit and thought about a water feature.

however trawling through the web theres not a lot of info on reflecting pools, so dont rerally know where to start and if its suitable for my garden etc.

 

So any other ideas/advice etc gratefully received!

thanks

Posts

  • nutcutletnutcutlet Posts: 27,312

    never done this Mark so just some thoughts.

    First that you'd need quite a large pool to capture reflections. that it needs to be rectangular with the long dimension running towards what you want to reflect. That it needs to be plain and unplanted. That you'd need more space to stand back from it to see the reflection. 

    There may also be light direction issues but that's physics. I remember sticking pins in a board in front of a mirror at school, this was to show something about refection. Hmmmmm. 



    In the sticks near Peterborough
  • MarkIOMMarkIOM Posts: 2

    oh lordy! although i dont necessarily have to use it for its reflective qualities, as I quite like the look of them, and imagine its a fairly low cost option to breaking up the patio a bit

  • BookertooBookertoo Posts: 1,306

    It doesn't have to be rectangular, round ones work very well.  You don't need much depth of water.  You do need a dark background for the water, smooth black is best.  No treees which can drop leaves into the water, as nothing makes a reflecting pond look more like a forgotten item, than rotting leaves causing water to be murky.  Many people use a little bleach in the water to keep it clear, but as it is likely to be used as a drinking place by all sorts of creatures I`d not go this route.  There is More to keeping a really good reflecting pond beautiful than you might imagine, but they are stunning when well done and positioned.  If you want to grow plants that reflect rather than just sky, then you run into the game of keeping the leaves and flowers out of the pool too.  You also don't want it to  be a breeding ground for mosquitoes and so forth - hmm, maybe a wildlife pool is easier!! 

    Do give it a go, there may well be books in your local library with good advice in them  -  quite a good place to start maybe? 

     

     

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