BUILDING FOUNTAINS AND PONDS - Fountain
and Garden Pools 3
On the other hand most of today's gardens
are
informal in spirit if not in shape, and
informal pools are in order
in the majority of gardens. Flagstones,
particularly flagstones of
irregular shapes, are the natural materials
for the coping of informal
pools. Flagstones of fair size should
be used
so that the coping can be used as a walk
and also as a place to kneel
when caring for fish or plants or when
cleaning the pool. Some
cutting and shaping of flagstones is
usually required even
for a quite informal border. A stone
coping should always be firmly
set in mortar. Cut stone is not widely
used for pool borders, but
it is a good material for use in conjunction
with formal and semi-
formal pools. Pools of such shapes are
readily given a formal air if their borders
are made of dimensioned
building stone set with even joints.
At the other extreme are pools
with no visible coping. A pool without
an edging is, oddly enough,
highly decorative and suits both formal
and informal gardens. The color of the
pool sides and bottom has a considerable
effect
upon the appearance of the filled pool.
Black, for example, makes
the pool seem much deeper than it actually
is. Light blue and light
green make interesting backgrounds for
goldfish, and some species
of water lilies look their best against
a pale yellow pool. There are
several ways of producing the colors.
One of the best and certainly
the most permanent is to color the concrete.
The disadvantage of this method is that
the color cannot be changed
easily. Another good way of obtaining
black is to paint the pool
with either a rubber base paint or an
asphalt paint. Whitewash
is an interesting paint material for
pools, but under certain conditions it
can make the water too alkaline for some
plants
and also for fish. This is not likely
to occur, however, if water flows
through the pool constantly. Lead-and-oil
paints should be avoided
for they will not adhere long to wet
masonry, and they may be toxic
to plants and fish.
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