Choosing The Right Backyard Water Features For Your Home

Large pond with waterfall in backyard

Is your lawn an empty expanse of grass? While this backyard style is good for kids and dogs to run around in, it isn’t the most exciting-looking yard. If you want to take your yard to a whole new level, try adding one or more of the different types of water features to it!

Before solidifying which outdoor living space ideas and design you want, consider your choices in which backyard water features to include. If you have a wonderful outdoor living space, you can use a water feature to enhance it further. 

You have plenty of options, designs, and more to choose from. This means you can create the ideal water feature for your front or backyard. If you need help exploring them, check out these water feature ideas.

Why You’ll Want A Backyard Water Feature

The following water features are common additions to modern backyards. Customizing your own backyard water feature offers benefits including:

  • Reinforcing the motifs within your landscape design
  • Giving family and guests a wonderful and relaxing experience
  • Adding unique variety to your outdoor spaces
  • Enhancing your curb appeal if you install one in your front yard

Each time you welcome someone new to your home, your water feature can be a springboard to stories and conversations. 

A Few Considerations

Fountains on top of multi tier waterfall

Think about how you use your yard every day. Place your water feature so that it accentuates any paths or walking areas instead of becoming an obstacle. 

You can make your yard a captivating sensory experience. Emphasize color and movement, create a soothing space to close your eyes and relax in, and use one or more of these water features to help you achieve your outdoor living space goals.

Water features do need maintenance so they stay clean, clear, and beautiful. With an ecosystem pond, you can greatly lower the amount of maintenance it needs.

4 Amazing Backyard Water Features

1. Streams

A manmade backyard stream

If you spend time camping or in any of America’s forested areas, you no doubt appreciate the gentle sound of a stream running through a wood or a field. 

You can bring that sound home and enjoy the natural beauty of your own stream. Adorn your stream with a decorative bridge, path, or stepping stones. Streams pair nicely with waterfalls and ponds.

2. Ponds

Backyard pond with waterfall

Ponds are fantastic for relaxing beside, viewing, and for kids to explore. The stillness of the water calms the spirit on sunny days and erupts with life with every rainstorm. They are a unique feature homeowners love to install around their homes.

3. Waterfalls

Waterfall in backyard

If you have hilly terrain that is challenging to mow and difficult to climb, turn unused land into an impressive waterfall feature. Enjoy the sight and sound of the energetic yet calming rush of water. 

4. Water Walls

Water falling down a stone wall

For another visually impressive display, consider a water wall. A sheet of falling water adds natural beauty and elegance to your yard, garden, retaining wall, or patio.

Integrating Water Features with Your Backyard Landscape Design

Backyard water features are fantastic additions to sparse yards, but they work even better in tandem with other landscape features.

Add Color and Sound to Your Garden with a Koi Pond

Koi are hardy, eye-catching fish that round out Asian-themed gardens, ponds, and other types of water features. They are a surefire way to entertain children and impress neighbors.

Some industrious homeowners use their ponds to raise and sell popular types of koi fish. We can’t guarantee that you will make money in this enterprise, but building a perfect habitat for fish is the first step.

Adorn Stairs with a Water Feature

If you have stairs cut into your yard, putting a waterfall next to them or having a stream run beside it is a great way to decorate it.

Complement a Swimming Pool

Water wall falling into a pool

If you already think of your pool as a giant water feature, why not expand on it?

  • Add a pond so you can watch the fish while you swim
  • Capture the grandeur of a Roman bath by flanking your pool with water walls or a waterfall
  • Position a birdbath within sight of your pool to keep nature close at hand

Blend the Elements, from Fire Pits to Wind Chimes

Add water features to your fire pit to experience the mesmerizing glint of flickering fire off the water’s surface.

Hang wind chimes beside your water wall and enjoy the mingling sounds.

Experiment with different shapes and textures of stone when creating waterfalls and sculpted streams so that your visitors experience a precisely calibrated combination of sight and sound.

Create a Natural Look for a Retaining Wall

An unassuming retaining wall on your property can take on new life with the help of water features. A pond behind the retaining wall can give it the stately and imposing look of a medieval moat. Fountains add motion and enliven a feature that might otherwise seem slow and dull.

Use Different Types of Water Features Together

Mixture of backyard water features including fountains and waterfalls

You don’t have to just have one water feature. Combine multiple water features strategically to achieve a coherent, overarching design.

You can build a path leading toward a garden flanked by small ponds that crosses a small stream. Stepping stones across the stream can match the style of the pavers on the path. Place a bird bath at the end of the path to give visitors a chance to watch the birds against the backdrop of your garden.

Water’s reflectivity can amplify other design elements. Consider placing a pond within view of your deck or patio so that the pond’s surface reflects treetops, statues, or other landscape features.

Create an Innovative Water Feature with Classic Home Concepts in Springfield, Missouri

Classic Home Concepts has the right design concepts for your outdoor living space. We put our years of experience in landscape design to work on all our creations.

You will appreciate our attentiveness to our customers and our diligent work in the Springfield, Missouri, community. Fill out our contact form today so we can start talking about your outdoor living space project.