Beautiful water features can please the mind and relax the senses for people enjoying the great outdoors in their backyards and private gardens. Yet you don’t have to just accept the same old water features that you would come to expect in your grandmother’s flower garden. The sky is truly the limit, and only your imagination holds you back when it comes to selecting the right fountains for your outdoor backyard or indoor space. Get wacky, wild and downright bizarre when searching for the right fountain for your yard. Here are 10 strange and whimsical water features that you may want to have for your next outdoor dinner party.
1: Tuba Fountain
Get the music playing and jazz up your garden with the tuba fountain. Water is funneled up one tuba so that it cascades down into another to be circulated back up. Perfect for people who love classical music or for those parents who don’t know what the heck to do with their kids’ old band instruments once the young adults head off for college. Just make sure that none of your children want to replay their instruments again because there is no way they will be able to drain out these spit valves.
2: Watering Can Fountain
When you think about gardens, you automatically think about watering all the flowers with your old metal watering cans until the flowers are lush and full. Watering cans used as garden fountains makes this whimsical scene even better. Line up the fountains in tiered steps as the water flows down from one can to the next. You can also place fountains at different levels in a spiraled sculpture as if they are filling up a pool below.
3: Wine Glass Fountain
Everybody likes a taste of the little bubbly now and again. Take it to the next level and show off how you are a true wine aficionado with a wine glass fountain. From wine bottles pouring clear water into a pond below to colored water gushing from bottles positioned over large wine glasses, people will be toasting your decor theme. Just make sure you have a designated driver among the party guests.
4: Children At Play Fountain
Mix children and water together, and it becomes splashy fun for hours on end. Fountains around the world have showcased children enjoying the water in various ways such as pouring it from pots, catching wiggly fish and holding an umbrella over their heads to keep dry during an unexpected spring drizzle. These fountains capture the innocence of youth while your own children grow up. Yet these statues won’t constantly ask you what you are having for dinner on the deck or take mud baths with the dog in the flower beds as they always keep their watery messes in one place in your garden.
5: Car Fountain
You have that one neighbor who just hates all the old cars in the yard. Turn them into water features. While we are not suggesting you suspend a Spanish Ibiza hatchback up in the air like the car fountain in Rome, you can certainly set up that old Vega with a bit of greenery and some water shooting up from the engine compartment. It will certainly become an interesting talking point the next time the neighbor calls the township on you because of the extra scrap in the yard.
6: Face Fountain
When it comes to wall fountains, you can get pretty creative in the design. People have even gone so far as to create a public art exhibits that show a human face on an LCD screen with water pouring out of puckered lips. While you may not be able to afford the electric bill to keep the LCD screen lit up like this, you probably could get pretty creative and create a mosaic tile face while pumping water out of a hole in the wall. You’ll have your own exhibition to show off.
7: Bathtub Fountain
You would probably never expect to see a bathtub as a garden fountain. Yet this receptacle is the perfect way to hold water that fills up and flows over the porcelain sides. So instead of chucking out that old porcelain tub with the lion’s feet, take it outside and set it up in your garden. You won’t mind if someone leaves this faucet running. Also, bathtub fountains work double-duty as you can fill up your water cans to hydrate your begonias; and the dog can get something to drink while playing outside.
8: Tea Time Fountain
Let’s lighten the mood a bit and sit down for a cup of tea. Nothing is more relaxing than enjoying a midday snack in the middle of your garden. Let your garden fountains embody such a feeling. Tea time fountains show off a table with two cups of tea bubbling water. A small pillar of teapots overflow to send waterfalls onto the table below. This water feature will have people gathering around to sate their thirst on a hot day.
9: Tabletop Fountain
Sometimes the prettiest type of fountains are the easiest to create. Imagine having a glass, round tabletop that you no longer use because it is scratched, chipped or cracked on one end. You can place this table into the ground vertically and pile up rocks to hold the table in place. Then hook up a water line so that it sprays water onto the glass surface as droplets slide down the surface. It is a very creative way to reuse old glass tabletops without throwing them into the local landfill.
10: Kitchen Sink Fountain
You would have thought that we have included every single type of fountain including the kitchen sink. In fact, we have with our last entry. Those old porcelain kitchen sinks make wonderful water features if you have a wall big enough to support the sink, faucets and small counter space connected to it. Not only does this water fountain give a unique decor element to your landscape, they are also functional as you can water potted plants under the dripping faucet. Hide the pipes leading up to the water line by hanging up old, colorful kitchen curtains around the edges. The kitchen sink fountain gives a quaint farm cottage feeling to your garden.
