The luminous "dry reservoirs" - a fashionable direction in landscape design

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Each owner of a country cottage, cottage, and just a house in the private sector would like to have not only a beautiful residential building on his plot, but also a landscaped area near the house, where it would be nice to spend time with his family and who was not ashamed to invite friends, work colleagues, and even business partners.

One of the options for a fashionable, still unique for our country arrangement of a personal plot is the creation of luminous "dry streams", the channel of which is not filled with water, but laid out with special sand or stones glowing in the dark, as well as luminous "dry ponds".

The ancestors of this technique are the Japanese - it was they who first began to decorate their world-famous gardens using this technology.

In general, there are two types of glowing sand. The first is the fluorescent visible sand, which has its color both under normal daylight and under ultraviolet BLB lamps (in this case, the light becomes acid-bright). The second type is fluorescent invisible (i.e. colorless) sand, which in ordinary daylight has the color of ordinary quartz sand, but acquires its own color under ultraviolet light.

At the moment, there are a huge variety of colors and shades of fluorescent sands. There are sands of blue, green, white, brown, violet, purple, blue, lemon, yellow, orange, raspberry and other colors. However, for the arrangement of dry reservoirs, sand with shades of blue and green is most often used.

The original luminous "dry stream" or "dry pond" can be built to your taste in any garden, while the cost of arrangement and operation will be incomparably lower than with a conventional stream filled with water.

The main advantages of dry reservoirs over traditional are the following: no need to carry out a significant reduction in relief; no source of water is needed, so dry streams are not afraid of problems such as clogging of the water supply system with lime deposits; the opportunity to save on an expensive creek water pumping system. It is also important that dry reservoirs do not attract mosquitoes, because they cannot lay eggs in the sand. The only thing that is required is to think over the lighting, but this requirement, as a rule, applies to ordinary streams.

So, the choice is made. You firmly decided to build a dry reservoir in your area. First you need to decide on the form. But for this, it is necessary to immediately establish the sources of ultraviolet light and with the help of luminous sand to outline the contours of the future stream. Of course, this should be done not at noon, but at twilight, and better after dark. In order not to waste sand in vain (if for some reason the initial form of the stream was not to your liking), you can use an ordinary plastic film, preferably dark (it will come in handy later). If you don’t have your own imagination, you can consult with landscape design specialists, or you can look at a number of photos of ordinary streams or small rivers (found on the Internet will not be a problem) and come up with something based on this. The main thing is that the shape of the stream matches the shape of your site. For example, a thin wriggling brook will make your site appear larger, deepening the space. It is also advisable not to make the width of the stream the same throughout the entire length of the stream - this is rare in real nature, so such a stream will not look natural.

After you have finally decided on the form, you should deepen the channel a little (it will look more natural). A depth of 15-20cm will be enough. After this, the “channel” of the stream must be laid out with a dark film - this will prevent your dry stream (or pond) from germinating weeds. Stones are laid on the banks of the reservoir (which, incidentally, is nice to paint with a phosphor-based paint, also glowing in the dark). Ordinary boulders will come in handy for the channel of the stream - even something like rapids can be built from them - everything is at your discretion. It remains to fill the "channel" of the stream or the "surface" of the pond with luminous sand or special luminous pebbles. If possible, you can cover the glowing sand with a layer of glass balls or granules - this will give your pond a special shine.

The final touch to your dry pond is decoration with vegetation. For this, it is better to use plants that look similar to those growing in water - as a rule, these are plants with long narrow leaves. Just do not overdo it with flowers, otherwise instead of a pond you get a flowerbed. Therefore, tall plants with dense inflorescences should not be used for pond decoration.

In the future, a finished pond or stream will not require care, but will endlessly give aesthetic pleasure to you and your guests. Enjoy it!