The enduring popularity of the water feature

The enduring popularity of the water featureFrom the old and bucolic to the sleek and modern, it seems that these days, no garden is complete without a water feature.

Garden water features have been around for decades but really grew in popularity with the advent of gardening shows such as 'Ground Force' in the late nineties.

Taking old and disused gardens before turning them into idyllic urban paradises, gardening programs such as these illustrated the way in which the lay man could renovate a garden with relative ease, often topping it off with a water feature.

Now, of course, they are hugely popular, with DIY stores and websites dedicating whole areas to display water features that could fit in with any garden.

The more traditional-looking water features often take their inspiration from early sculptures, with designs featuring children at play or large, font-like basins. These are typically made of ceramic, bronze or other such material to keep in touch with the more traditional design of the piece as a whole. These types of water feature would usually work well as a centrepiece of a sprawling lawn garden or as a break in the flower beds.

Modern water features, on the other hand, are usually more metallic in design and made to be used as a statement piece. They are often of geometric shapes and have water gushing all down them as opposed to the small trickle usually found in their traditional counterparts.

These more modern designs would fit well in a garden with paving or decking, as a design piece to finish the whole thing off. Usually twinned with solar lights to illuminate the water feature after dusk, these water features can give a garden a much more avant-garde feel, using all available mod cons to achieve the desired result.

It has now been well over a decade since water features first came to real prominence but their popularity has endured, long outliving the shows which gave them their fame in the first place.