Ok, I made a backyard fountain.  As I have mentioned before, YouTube’s algorithm has been serving up gardening or homesteading videos recently.  Including videos on making backyard fountains.

I have long had fantasies of putting a water feature in my backyard.  My backyard is sloped so I thought I could have a little water fall and maybe even put water plants in it.  But, there have always been higher priority things to do with the house, and now that I plan to sell and move in a couple years, I’m not going to do it.  But I still want a water feature, so the YouTube videos intrigued me.

Most of the ones I have seen are very elaborate.  They have multiple tiers and rocks and plants.  Another, smaller subset is very simple.  They put a floating solar panel/pump in a bird bath along with some rocks and call it good. My sister has one like that.  I decided to do something in the middle*.

Materials I used:

I bought a solar powered pump (not floating) from Amazon. I got a small hanging pot and a sturdy plant saucer to put on the top of it from Lowe’s and some tubing from the pet store. Some pumps come with tubing, but this one didn’t, so I had to buy tubing (and it didn’t fit all that well.) I used to have a bowl of black and white rocks on my coffee table.  The cat used to kick them out of the bowl onto the floor, so I got rid of it.  But I still have the rocks and thought they would look nice as part of my fountain.  The cat in question is pictured and is optional for making the fountain. In fact, making the fountain would likely be easier without his “help”. Not pictured – duct tape.

What I did:

The hanging pot has holes around the edge.  I can’t fit the cord for the pump through them, so I cut into the pot.  This gives me a space for the cord to exit the pot.  Next, I drilled holes in the plant saucer.  I need a hole for the water to leave the basin and more holes for the water to return to the basin.  I threaded the tubing from the pump to the central hole in the saucer.  This was a problem because the tubing was coiled and didn’t want to be straight. I had to secure it with duct tape or it would spray all over the place. If I do this again, I would use a hair dryer or something to warm the tubing and straighten it out. Then I put the saucer on top and piled rocks on top.  It looked a little plain so I added some pink sea glass that I had.

It works well as long as the sun is strong.  The pump has no batteries, so how strongly it pumps depends on how bright the sun is and how directly it hits the panel.  When a cloud passes, the strength of the pump decreases noticeably or it …spurts.  It doesn’t really burble, though.  But it is low maintenance and scratches my itch for a little water feature in the backyard.

That’s all it took.  I spent about $35 on the materials and I now have a water feature that is portable and can be disassembled and the parts easily repurposed.  I think that I will definitely make a more elaborate one with multiple tiers that actually burbles soon.