Five tips for creating natural-looking waterfalls

TIP: Ground your boulders. Trying to reproduce erratic placement in your backyard tends to look spotty-dotty. If you like the high-mountain look, tuck plants and smaller rocks around large rocks to help them fit in. The accompanying rock garden-type plants appreciate the extra drainage these planting pockets afford.

4. Water works. Streams move straight downhill in steeper areas, stopped only by rocks that form pools. The area under a falls is dug out by the force of the stream, pushing smaller pebbles up to the outer edges.

TIP: Place the deepest part of your pool under the falls. If you have a drain, that’s where it should be. Arrange the basin’s pebbles so they curve up to the surrounding rocks and plants.

5. Sounds, not silence. When you go to see waterfalls in nature, don’t forget to listen. Try to determine what makes the water’s various notes. A cascade pouring off a ledge resonates differently from one trickling around large rocks. Water splashing into a deep pool can be distinguished from water hitting partly submerged stones.

TIP: Avoid “Niagara syndrome.” That’s the term artists George Little and David Lewis shared with me to define, as David puts it, “Too much volume of water in too small an area, without considering the intimacy of the site.” Installing a pump that allows for flow control solves the problem.

Mary-Kate Mackey is one of eight garden writers who blog regularly at Diggin' It. She is co-author of “Sunset’s Secret Gardens — 153 Design Tips from the Pros” and contributor to the “Sunset Western Garden Book,” writes a monthly column for the Hartley Greenhouse webpage and numerous articles for Fine Gardening, Sunset, and other magazines. She teaches at the University of Oregon’s School of Journalism & Communication. She writes about water in the garden for Diggin’ It.

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