A splash of life: Moses Lake gardener learns how to maintain, operate fountains

For most gardeners, their yard and landscape is constantly growing, as they’re adding new plants, flowers and fixtures into the mix to find that perfect aesthetic composition.

Bobbie Bodenman of Moses Lake moved into her new home with her family in April and inherited a new garden and some features to go with it, including three water fountains. As someone who hasn’t had water fixtures in her garden or yard before, she discussed some of the lessons she’s picked up maintaining and operating her new garden fountains.

“One’s kind of a small, one with angels, one’s a three-tiered fountain and one is more magnificent in the front,” Bodenman said. “It’s bigger and fancier, it features two little kids kind of grabbing their mom carrying a water pitcher.”

The larger fountain in her front yard is a concrete fountain originally from Italy. She said the home’s previous owners were from Italy and the fountain was too heavy to move.

She said she’s not sure what material the other two fountains are made of, but they’re a lighter sort of faux stone. The three-tiered fountain was full of dirt and broken down when Bodenman arrived and she wasn’t sure if it would be fixable.

But, she said she and her husband, Joel Bodenman, were able to fix some of the broken seals between the separate tiers, replace the pumps in the fountain and get it operational.

“We had to buy some tubing, you need to figure out the right size of tubing to connect the pump up to the fountain fixtures,” Bodenman said. “My husband was more of the fountain-fixer but I kind of understand the workings of them. It’s really pretty simple.”

Bodenman said she referred to the Garden Answer YouTube channel for a lot of tips on some of the finer details about the fountains. Installing pumps can be tricky in the fountain’s tight space, so having the tips from a professional helped out that process.

One of the biggest concerns she’s dealt with is the buildup of algae in the fountain.

At first, she said the couple tried using bleach in the fountain. She said it worked in eliminating the algae but was detrimental to some of her flowers and plants surrounding the fountain. Bodenman said she’s just recently picked up some algaecide to help keep the algae buildup at bay.

The algaecide is safe for live plants, but can be dangerous for pets, so it’s a good idea to keep dogs or cats away from the fountain as best as possible. Bodenman said she has a bird bath on the side of her home next to the fountains for them to use.

In addition to the buildup of algae on the outside of the fountain, it can clog up the pump hole, too.

She said the couple has used some of the stainless steel wool dish scrubbers to act as a filter for the pump hole where there isn’t a pump gate that shuts. Bodenman said the pump will slow down as the gunk gathers up inside. She said cleaning the outside with a toothbrush seems to work well if algae or gunk is caked on by the heat, but adding the hose water will usually remove most of it.

A cool idea she mentioned trying was adding blue food coloring into the water to give the fountain more of a “tropical look.”

“If you have an event coming up, you want to clean the fountain up and then put the food coloring in so it’s gorgeous for the day,” Bodenman said.

Refilling the fountains is a daily routine, especially with the recent high temperatures, she said. She said she will often unplug them during hot spells due to how quickly the water evaporates.

Bodenman said it’s hard to say how much water it takes to refill the fountains, but her husband was initially using a five-gallon bucket, so it’s at least that much. She said she will usually just fill them up with the hose as she’s making her rounds in the garden beds.

After just a few months maintaining and setting up her new water features, Bodenman said it’s been exciting and nice to have them. She said she’s looked into possibly adding another three-tiered fountain and a “waterfall” type of feature, now that she and her husband have traversed some of the learning curves. Even her new next-door neighbor, her mother-in-law, recently picked up a new fountain complete with LED lights.

Overall, she said the benefits have outweighed the troubles and having the fountains is “definitely worth it.”

“It’s just sort of a centerpiece for your eye and when we have people over, it just feels like a vacation spot,” Bodenman said. “It was just fun to uncover them because some of them were broken down pretty badly. Repairing them was a treat.”