Gardens I want to visit next year...(day dreaming again)

1. Winsford Walled Garden in the north Devon countryside.. a renovated walled victorian flower garden, includes renovated glasshouses for collections of Bougainvillea & Hibiscus.
2. Dunge Valley Gardens in the Peak District, a woodland garden featuring many Rhodos, Acers, Azaleas, & Magnolias. Also has a Double Hellebore event starting on 1st March.
3. Cascades Gardens, Derbyshire
4. Sir Harold Hillier Gardens, Famous winter gardens in Hampshire.
5. BlueBell Arboretum & Nursery in Derbyshire
6. Kiftsgate Court Gardens, an Arts & Crafts style garden in the Cotswolds, neighbour of Hidcote Gardens.
7. Westonbirt Arboretum, in Gloucestershire, a collection of over 3000 trees & shrub species in 600 acres!
8. Oxford Botanic Garden, the oldest Botanic Garden in Great Britain, founded in 1621
9. The Wagon House Gardens, in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire. I've heard great things about this fairly new garden which has many brick follies & features, & of course plants!
10. Stone House Cottage Garden & Nursery in Worcestershire. Many unusual climbers & herbaceous plants.

There are many more of course! but this list is of local (ish)  gardens & some have winter interest which will definately cheer me up in the cold long months of the new year.  I must also revisit my favourite ones again- Batsford Arboretum, Winterbourne Botanic Garden,  & Bourton House.

Narcissus Xin

Sustainable water features?

Waterfall from Bliss aggregates
At the moment I'm working on my main design project at college & learning about design & construction & graphics in the process!

The 2 areas I'm concentrating on at the mo are 1) The water feature. 2) The raised semi-circle deck.

In the concept plan, its more about working out the design solution overall than detailing everything..however I'll need detailed construction drawings for the design in the future... what looks good on paper is just a starting point & many things need to be considered (more & more I'm realising!)                                                              
Firstly, design considerations for the water feature in my concept design, it's a slate edge that protudes from a brick wall & a cascade of water will fall into a pond below:

• A cascade of water into a pond from a fair height is going to be really noisy...what height & flow rate is acceptable (& hopefully pleasant?!)
• what pumps to use- power (gallons per hour), direct-drive pump, or magnetic driven, or solar driven?
• Materials. I've already decided on a brick wall & slate pieces, but there may be other materials.
• Filtration system 
• Water quality
• It's on a boundary wall (which is actually hedging at present!) -party wall agreements etc. & hiding the tubing for the water feature within the wall.
• I'd like ideally to make it sustainable,  run-off water from houses that would normally go into drains could be diverted to the pond..making it better environmentally!  Storm-water can cause overflow & flooding problems in mains drains (& leaching chemicals into drains?) A Very important future design concern considering the flooding in the U.K- could better design limit the flooding we've seen hit areas recently?- rain gardens (technically an Infiltration pond but also known as a bog garden) & could potentially be used for a formal pond? see this page on Garden Visit 
• & this page on Irrigation Irrigation systems
• By using a sustainable water source for the pond & cascade it will not use mains water which is costly & un-environmentally friendly. Use mains electricity or could use solar power? 

'Some small pumps can be connected directly to solar panels but it is better to use the solar panel to charge a car battery and then use the battery to operate a 12 volt DC submersible fountain pump.'

Read more at Garden Visit on the above solar power link.

So for ultimate sustainability I'm aiming to design it so that the water-run off can be gravity fed to the water-fall with a solar-powered pump to circulate it...
More on this later as I work through these considerations.
There seems to be a lot of scope for things to go wrong, so designing a water feature needs to be carefully thought out.