How to Create Your Own Water Feature: A Simple DIY Garden Project

 

Welcome back,

In today's post, I am sharing with you how to create a water feature for your garden, balcony, or any other outdoor space. 

Below is a photograph of the water feature in our garden. 

My daughter Alicia made it as she is the gardener in our house since my health decided I wouldn't be able to do it anymore. She has always loved gardening, and as a little girl, she helped me. She had her own little tools and gardening gloves, and she loved to go outside every morning to check the progress of "her garden" This is something she still does now as an adult. 

I love that Alicia enjoys gardening. I loved it too. Sadly, since becoming unwell and disabled, I am no longer able to do the gardening, but I enjoy seeing what Alicia has done with it. I go to the garden centre with her to choose new things, and then she loves to show me where she's planted them and how they're doing. It's something we both love. 

Alicia is also growing vegetables this year and really enjoying that too. 

What You'll Need: 

1 Large Planter. 

1 Bowl Style Planter.

1 Solar Water Fountain.

1 Bag Of Compost.

Bedding plants of your choice. 

A hosepipe or watering can. 

We Bought These:

Large Planter - Click me to buy

Bowl Style Planter - Click me to buy

Solar Fountain - Click me to buy

Compost - Click me to buy

Bedding Plants - Click me to buy

Because the large planter is very large, a tip is to either place some cardboard or broken pots, any will do, if you have any chipped mugs you don't want, you can smash them and pop those in, or cut up a pool noodle into 2/3 inch pieces and pop them in the bottom of the planter. This just saves on how much compost you will need to use and is good for drainage. We had a big box from the planters, so Alicia ripped those up and put them in.

How To Make Your Water Feature:

Before starting, put your large planter where you want it in your garden, ensuring it's in a sunny spot. 

1: Drill or use scissors to make quite a few holes in the bottom of the large planter. 

2: Use cardboard, cut up pool noodles, broken pots or plant pots and put them in the bottom of the large planter. 

3: Put the compost into the large planter, leaving a big enough gap to put your bowl planter in. 

4: Once the planter is filling up to where you want the compost, take the bowl planter and put it in the middle of the large planter and add compost around the sides. DO NOT DRILL HOLES IN THE BOWL STYLE PLANTER. 

5: Once you have the amount of compost you want surrounding your bowl planter, plant your bedding plants around the bowl planter in the space around it. 

6: Add water to your bowl planter and water your bedding plants. 

7: Open your solar fountain, read the instructions and pop it in the water. 

8: You may need to swap out the different spray options on your fountain until you find the one you like best. 

9: All done, you now have a water feature. 

10: Alicia added some solar lights in our water feature, it looks lovely at night. 

Our Water Feature At Night:

Total Cost Of Our Water Feature:

Large Planter - £25.00 

Bowl Style Planter - £15.99 

1 Solar Water Fountain - £8.99

1 Bag Of Compost - £8.00 

Bedding plants of your choice - £14.99 

Total = £72.97 

The same costs we had were the two planters and the solar fountain. Our bedding plants were bought at a local garden centre and cost around £10.00, and our compost also came from our local garden centre and was around £6.00. So it was slightly cheaper, but the items I have listed aren't badly priced, as I searched for the best prices.

So, that's how to create a water feature like ours, which is easy to create and looks really pretty. I especially love our water feature at nighttime when it's lit up. Alicia has done such an amazing job, our garden looks so lovely, and she's worked really hard on it, especially since she currently has a broken foot in two places! 

To buy all the items listed, you can find the direct links by clicking HERE.

Do you think you'll create your own water feature? Or do you already have one? I'd love to see if you do have one. 

Thank you for reading, 

Zoë x

Links included in this post are affiliate links, and if you buy something through my links. I may make a small amount of commission. 

How To - Homemade Dog Ice Cream - An Easy Recipe

The weather in the UK the past few days has been what I can only describe as insane, it has been horrendously hot and finding ways to keep cool has been a top priority for most of us I would imagine. It has been unbearably hot for us humans so our furry friends must have felt awful, I know our fur baby, Bear hasn't known what to do with himself bless him, it's been awful to see. 

Every summer our youngest daughter,  Alicia makes Bear homemade dog ice cream, it's perfectly safe for all dogs (unless your dog has certain allergies) and is so quick and simple to make, so I thought I'd share with you how Alicia makes the homemade dog ice cream so you can make it for your dogs too if you like.  

Today I'm going to share with you how to make a fruit flavoured dog ice cream, but you can use any ingredients your dog likes. Bear loves fruit so he adores the fruit flavoured dog ice cream,  but one of his other favourite flavours is peanut butter and banana. 

What You'll Need

1. Low fat natural yoghurt - 280g 

2. Any fruit your dog likes, Alicia used two of Bear's favourites, strawberries (10) and blueberries (15).

3. A blender, hand blender or vegetable masher.

4. Ice lolly moulds or ice cube trays.

Method

1. Wash and chop the 10 strawberries and 15 blueberries into small chunks, removing any stalks.

2. Measure out 280g of the low fat natural yoghurt.

3. Put the fruit and yoghurt into a blender, if you don't have a blender, pop the ingredients into a bowl. 

4. Blend all the ingredients together until the consistency is smooth. If you don't have a blender, you can use a hand blender or masher, the mixture might not be as smooth using a masher but it doesn't matter, your dog will still love it. 

5. Once blended, pour the mixture into the lolly moulds and/or ice cube trays, or whatever you have to hand to put it in, any container you can put in the freezer will be fine. 

The lolly moulds we use are from B&M we have some pineapple shaped ones too, they both have cute faces on when the ice cream is frozen which is cute. 

6. Pop into the freezer for a couple of hours or until frozen, once frozen, the mixture will keep in the freezer for up to 8 weeks. 

More Ideas

You could also spread the mixture onto a Licki mat or fill a Kong type of toy with it and freeze it, Bear loves his licki mat and Kong, especially when frozen, they keep him entertained, are good for mental stimulation and are a great stress reliever, especially if your dog is finding the hot weather stressful. 

Licki mats are reasonably priced and you can find lots of different ones on Amazon like This One which is priced at £6.87 or if you prefer a Kong, you can find those on Amazon too, I found This One which is a medium size for £10.09.

Alicia is going to try some other ice cream flavours with Bear maybe apple and banana, or strawberry and peanut butter, he loves peanut butter so I'm sure he'll like it.  If you do use peanut butter, please make sure it doesn't contain Xylitol, this is an artificial sweetener and is highly toxic to dogs and can be fatal if consumed. 

We give Bear a peanut butter from Morrisons, you can find it on the website HERE, but if you're searching for a doggy friendly peanut butter, always check the ingredients, the one we buy is 100% peanuts and nothing else. 

I hope your dog likes the ice cream as much as Bear does.

How cute are those moulds? I love the smiley faces they leave on the ice cream, they always make me smile and judging by that big smile on Bear's face, I think he likes them too! 

Do you have fur babies? How have they been coping in the heat? 

Will you make this simple homemade dog ice cream? If so, which flavour will you make? Let me know in the comments and if you do make some of the ice cream, please tag me in any photographs you share or you can email me some if you'd rather. 

Zoë x

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