Garden Notes
Water, and where to put it
A pool is not the only way to bring water into a garden, and often not the best one. On rills, basins and the sound of moving water.
Water in a garden does two things, and they are not the same job. It reflects, which is about stillness and surface; and it sounds, which is about movement and fall. A design that asks one body of water to do both usually does neither.
The quietest interventions are often the best. A basin at the end of a sightline holds the sky. A rill three centimetres deep, falling twenty over its length, is audible from a window two floors up and costs almost nothing to run.
