Posts Tagged ‘garden fountains’

Glass is an amorphous solid material made up of sand, silica and soda. Glass is also referred as” Super cooled liquid”. Glass can be made transparent and flat or into other shapes and colors.

During manufacturing of glass metals and metal oxides are added to change the color of glass. For example, for decolorization a small amount of selenium is added and or added in excess to impart reddish color. Small amount of cobalt is added to yield blue glass. Adding titanium produces yellowish-brown glass. Based on the concentration, nickel produces blue or violet or even black color. On adding 0.1 to 2% of uranium produce fluorescent yellow or green color. Small concentrations of cobalt (0.025 to 0.1%) yield blue glass.

The most familiar form of glass is the silica-based material used for windows, containers and decorative objects. The basic ingredients of glass include silica, ash and lime. From these basic ingredients, a variety of glass can be formed. Float or annealed glass, molten glass, plate glass, tempered glass, laminated glass, self cleaning glass are some varieties of glass.
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Garden Sculpture & Fountains added much to the decorative effect of the Roman garden. Carved balustrades, benches, tables, bas-reliefs, and statuary were considered the most important part of many gardens, and were beautifully designed. To supply this ornamentation, shiploads of the finest sculptures, statuary, and artistic fountains were exported from Greece to adorn Italian pleasure grounds.

As in Greece, garden statues were usually set up in honor of some appropriate divinity. Accordingly, images of the Graces, the Seasons, Pan, Sylvanus, Flora, Pomona, and Vertumnus were frequently erected. Terminal statues with knobs below the shoulders, from which a votive garland of flowers might be hung, seem especially fit for the open air.

Refreshment being one of the most desirable luxuries for human beings and a necessity for the vegetation, an abundance of water fountains were indispensably connected with out-of-door dwelling-places. In the baths, fish-ponds, and fountains, great ingenuity was displayed to please the eye while the body was being reinvigorated.

From an elaborate chateau d’eau to a slender font of a drinking water fountain, almost every form of ornamental hydraulics with which we are familiar, and many others now unknown, seems to have been employed by the ancients. At Pompeii there are a variety of outdoor water fountains in a good state of preservation. Hardly any main area is without a rectangular basin of water a foot or two deep, either lined with marble or mosaic. Usually they are placed entirely below the level of the pavement, but occasionally the edge of the basin is surmounted by a marble statue rising a few inches above the surface. A marble table or statue was often placed in connection with these fountains.
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Garden fountains come in a huge variety of decorative styles, from ornately carved wall fountains to floating pond fountains. If you’re looking for a way to bring a soothing ambiance to the sanctuary of your backyard or patio, then a water fountain can be a wonderful feature. The sight and sound of flowing water can have a lovely soothing effect, helping to wash away the stresses and strains of daily life. An outdoor fountain can become a stunning focal point of your garden design. The gentle trickling sound can help drown out the sound of the city and create a peaceful and inspiring environment.

Outdoor water fountains run on either an electric pump or solar power. They come in a range of sizes and styles, to suit all kinds of garden themes. Tiered cascades, birdbaths, wall mounted and traditional pedestal designs are some of the many options available. Designs based on mythical figures, animals and cherubs are popular, as are more contemporary designs. Having a pond fountain not only adds to the atmosphere of relaxation and calm, but also helps keep the water circulating and prevents it from becoming stagnant.
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Fountains are one of the most comforting and beautiful elements found in garden design. Any time you think of a world-class garden that you have seen and been impressed by, it almost certainly will include some sort of fountain or other water element. Whether it is in Italy, Japan, Spain or any other country, everyone around the world understands the need for a beautiful garden to also be a place of relaxation and meditation. Not just visually relaxing, but every bit as important if not more so — calming and soothing to the ear. Nothing accomplishes that more than water in motion.

The Japanese, especially, seem to have a deep understanding of how important water elements are because they blend it so magically with the calm of their beautiful and serene gardens. They immediately bring to mind Koi ponds and the art of Feng Shui.

The types of garden fountains today are almost endless. They include every material and every design imaginable. From indoor to outdoor, floor to wall, tabletop to pedestal; you will find them in virtually every natural and man-made substance known to man. Some of the most popular are natural stone, brass, copper, etched glass, slate and stainless steel.

If you have a large estate or lot, they are especially beautiful in ponds and lakes. On smaller lots, simple backyard fountains or swimming pool fountains can also be very attractive.

Something new to me and absolutely charming is a “rain chain”. You add them to your gutter system and they become linked funnels that channel the rain gently from the roof to the ground, sparkling and bubbling as it flows.
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Above all, the pleasure garden was intended for the diversion of the chatelaine. As early as 1250 we learn from a contemporary record that Henry III, to gratify Eleanor of Provence, ordered his bailiff at Woodstock “to make round about the garden of our Queen two walls good and high with fountains so that no one can enter, with a well-ordered herbary befitting her position, near our garden pond, where the said Queen may roam about freely.” Here she might have meditated in solitude under a leafy bower, have enjoyed a tete-a-tete with a bosom friend enthroned on a turfed seat, or in pleasant company have paced up and down the sanded alleys, flanked by the pleasant sound of water from the fountains.

As an agreeable alternative from the smoky castle hall, the pleasure garden was evidently the favorite place for recreation; and why not, since the pleasant forces of nature and tranquil sounds of falling water from the fountains was certainly a pleasing environment. It was often chosen for giving audience and receiving friends. Entertainment was furnished by the troubadours, who sang their Chansons de Geste, interspersed with romances of the Crusades, of prowess, and of love; by the jugglers and tumblers, who performed wonderful tricks and gymnastic feats; and by the dancing-girls, whose graceful motions were of an Oriental character. The guests themselves also frequently caroled, or danced in a circle, sang songs, and played musical instruments on the steppes of the fountains for their own diversion.
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English gardens had degenerated into meaningless repetitions of French and Dutch fashions by the end of the seventeenth century. Conventional plans were mimicked or exaggerated until the formal manner became merely an affected mannerism. Finally, nothing remaining but the defects of the old system, a reaction resulted in its entire destruction. On the ruins was created the Landscape Garden, in the strict meaning of the word no garden at all, but a stretch of cultivated scenery.

The English — perhaps because they had most abused the conventional system — were the first to raise an outcry against formal gardening. Formality could certainly be carried to no greater excess; it was logical to seek beauty in a contrary extreme. Freedom from every restraint was the gospel of the new school. Kent, its leader according to Walpole, was the first to jump outside the fence and insist that the garden should be “set free from its prim regularity, and the gentle stream taught to serpentize.” His method, as described by Lord Kames, was, “to paint a field with beautiful objects, natural and artificial, disposed like colors upon a canvas.”
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The Cistercians, following in the footsteps of the Benedictines, did much to further the progress of horticulture and decorative gardens on the continent and in England. Their monasteries, lush with flowing water from large fountains and dramatic statuary, stood in contrast to those gardens as conspicuously bare of decoration as those of the Benedictines. These gardens were built in the hollows of valleys, where culture could fertilize the soil, and where there was an abundance of water to fill the fountains and irrigate the land.

St. Bernard founded the most famous of all Cistercian garden communities in the wild and gloomy valley of Clairvaux, beside a clear stream that provided plentiful water for the surrounding garden fountains. An ardent lover of nature, he wrote, “You will find more in woods than in books, trees and stones will teach you what you can never learn from school teachers.” One of the most sacred spots in the monastery, now sadly deprived of all its ancient glory, was a little plot of ground whose cultivation was his special care. Centered around several beautiful garden statues, large gardens belonging to the community lay within the cloisters, and outside others surrounded giant water fountains, with jets spraying 20 feet into the air. The several divisions of ground were separated by intersecting canals, with water supplied to the fountains by the river Alba.

The Carthusians, belonging to an order founded by St. Bruno in 1084, dwelt in monasteries planned to isolate, as completely as possible, each member of the
community. This was to fulfill the rules peculiar to their order, obliging them to live in absolute silence and solitude, the only sounds coming from the small, ornate fountains found in the corners of the courtyard. Each of the brethren, like the Egyptian monks, occupied a detached cottage, to which was added in the twelfth century a small garden, decorated and cultivated by its tenant. Numbers of these cottages and gardens surrounded the cloisters with central water fountains for water supply which eliminated the necessity of having large centerpiece garden fountains for the grounds under cultivation.
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