It was such a hot summer. Such a long hot summer. Water drew us like magnets to throng the riverbanks, crowd the beaches and dangle over the fountains. The South Bank water rooms were solid with wet children, and every single civic space with something similar was similarly rammed.
Water in the backgarden was more of a problem. Water planters overheated and fell to evaporation, ponds exploded with algae and blanketweed, fountains clogged and struggled to draw and in the heat our water features became containers of a kind of tepid pond stew rather than anything refreshing, bright and re-invigorating.
With autumn in the air, I'm eyeing my water planters and considering plans for next year (not least because the cracks are implying I might lose them in a frost-related incident this winter). How can we get that sense of civic refreshment on a back-garden scale?
Counter-intuitively, I'm going to go BIG for the answer and draw in two great water-related arts items from London this summer, the London Mastada and the Serpentine Pavilion.
Inspiration 1 : Floating water sculptures
High summer comes and even my tiny water pots are choked with vegetation in and around them. The water -- its coolness, its reflection -- gets easily lost. And of course you need to keep the vegetation there, to reduce evaporation, shade the water, etc. But how to hit a good balance? Could something in the water make that focal point to arrange the vegetation around? The base could also make a fish shelter, tether the horizontal and promote visibility of the water through glints of reflected colour. The water would come out both visually and (depending on the sculpture's shape) literally, though meniscal creep and evaporation. Get it right and you also have a bee island to help insects drink.
Inspiration 2 : Watered surfaces
These two young magpies are playing in the Serpentine Pavilion, which this year featured a shallow "water floor" - an area of the ground dropped by an inch or so and filled with slowly-flowing water. This, combined with the perforated wind-friendly roof-tile walls, created an area of delicious shade and coolness, full of sheltering mums, blissed-out babies and those two magpies, who clearly felt they owned the space. There were admittedly people put a bit off-balance by this sudden, slightly treacherous drop; observe the yellow alert placed on the corner of the water floor.
Strangely, bar a few splashing toddlers, there wasn't much paddling. It was too shallow to be a pool, and felt more functional than fun. It chilled a chill-out space, it made a rill into something broad enough to have an environmental effect, and it gave the wall a glittering bass note.
The Pavilions are too temporary to get settled and start growing moss and slime and ivy, but this style of wall-base shallow stream isn't as unfamiliar as it seems (I grew up in a farmhouse with one running along the side of the garden, albeit a rather more rustic version) and it spreads the water out, cooling and air-irrigating a wider area. A greener version of this could start to reduce the parch and translate the high summer garden into a space of deep chill and tropical moistness.
Water in the backgarden was more of a problem. Water planters overheated and fell to evaporation, ponds exploded with algae and blanketweed, fountains clogged and struggled to draw and in the heat our water features became containers of a kind of tepid pond stew rather than anything refreshing, bright and re-invigorating.
With autumn in the air, I'm eyeing my water planters and considering plans for next year (not least because the cracks are implying I might lose them in a frost-related incident this winter). How can we get that sense of civic refreshment on a back-garden scale?
Counter-intuitively, I'm going to go BIG for the answer and draw in two great water-related arts items from London this summer, the London Mastada and the Serpentine Pavilion.
Inspiration 1 : Floating water sculptures
High summer comes and even my tiny water pots are choked with vegetation in and around them. The water -- its coolness, its reflection -- gets easily lost. And of course you need to keep the vegetation there, to reduce evaporation, shade the water, etc. But how to hit a good balance? Could something in the water make that focal point to arrange the vegetation around? The base could also make a fish shelter, tether the horizontal and promote visibility of the water through glints of reflected colour. The water would come out both visually and (depending on the sculpture's shape) literally, though meniscal creep and evaporation. Get it right and you also have a bee island to help insects drink.
Inspiration 2 : Watered surfaces
These two young magpies are playing in the Serpentine Pavilion, which this year featured a shallow "water floor" - an area of the ground dropped by an inch or so and filled with slowly-flowing water. This, combined with the perforated wind-friendly roof-tile walls, created an area of delicious shade and coolness, full of sheltering mums, blissed-out babies and those two magpies, who clearly felt they owned the space. There were admittedly people put a bit off-balance by this sudden, slightly treacherous drop; observe the yellow alert placed on the corner of the water floor.
Strangely, bar a few splashing toddlers, there wasn't much paddling. It was too shallow to be a pool, and felt more functional than fun. It chilled a chill-out space, it made a rill into something broad enough to have an environmental effect, and it gave the wall a glittering bass note.
The Pavilions are too temporary to get settled and start growing moss and slime and ivy, but this style of wall-base shallow stream isn't as unfamiliar as it seems (I grew up in a farmhouse with one running along the side of the garden, albeit a rather more rustic version) and it spreads the water out, cooling and air-irrigating a wider area. A greener version of this could start to reduce the parch and translate the high summer garden into a space of deep chill and tropical moistness.
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