![Get the soothing sound of water in your garden. Picture Shutterstock Get the soothing sound of water in your garden. Picture Shutterstock](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/Z4Q6sUEHdcmw72MBPYgZkU/2269f666-4953-4fd3-829a-7b9c550987d2.jpg/r0_53_1000_642_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
"Isn't it quiet?" they say when they visit our garden.
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Quiet? The decibel level here is probably similar to 52 orchestras tuning around Lake Burley Griffins. The birds are tweeting (no, not on social media), the frogs are yelling in wild discord, and the creek is murmuring, babbling, or roaring depending on the latest rainfall. Even the trees are noisy - there are millions of leaves out there, all set to rustle in a breeze.
All of those sounds, however, are ones that make humans happy, that restore our energy levels and help us heal. So how do you get them in your garden?
First: choose extremely noisy shrubbery, like trees with high canopies to catch the breezes and with a lot leaves to rustle. Think a lemon-scented gum or snow gum, for example, rather than a magnolia grandiflora that has fairly static leaves.
I've just checked out our window, and the noisiest plants around the house just now are the kiwi fruit on the pergolas outside, and the melaleuca - masses of foliage, but also supple branches. The various eucalypts up our mountain are also doing their bit to increase the noise level. The more movement in the branches and leaves, the more "white noise" your trees will give you to block out human sounds.
Tall, clumping grasses are also excellent planted near the windows for white noise. I've always been hesitant to plant them, in case they turn out to be weeds, but if you're prepared to watch out for any spread, Stipa gigantea is possibly the best tall, wave-in-the breeze-type grass in our climate. It's evergreen, growing over two metres high with glorious golden seed heads. You get a lot of rustle from a small area. Miscanthus "Falling Water" will give you gentle sounds just like its name. It grows to about two metres high by two metres wide, with arching feathery heads on leafy stems. A few of either close by will give you a heck of a lot of rustle.
Next: water. I've just looked online and you can buy a solar-powered bubbling recycling bird bath for anywhere between $26 and several thousand dollars. I'd be wary of the $26 one, but most don't cost much more. Place one outside your bedroom window, and one by the living room, so you can hear the water bubbling. The sound of birds splashing and calling will be a bonus.
For an even louder water experience, a four-tiered water bowl fountain with LED light using recycled water costs $250. It will give you a constant gentle splashing sound that can be heard a couple of rooms away, if the doors are open. Artificial fountains were once tacky and fake looking, but there are now some lovely ones around.
Wall-mounted fountains, suitable for courtyards, cost about $170, and again, the water is recycled and birds will love them. Tiny, tidy ceramic fountains to put on your work at desk are mostly under $100.
READ MORE JACKIE FRENCH
I'm a fan of garden ponds, though only if they contain tadpoles and frogs to stop mozzies breeding in them. If you have a water-loving dog, insert strong mesh below the water line, or you will simply be installing a dog paddle pool. The easiest pond option is to buy a large, free-standing ceramic one. I had a gorgeous ceramic one, filled with bright blue water iris and a good crop of "duck potatoes". I adored it. So did the birds. So did the wombat who clambered into it one day, so it crashed and broke. The wombat escaped injury but the pond was unrepairable. I highly recommend these, as long as you have neither a large water-loving dog or wombats.
We also have a garden pond, much loved by the wildlife, made from a prefabricated fibregrass shape, shallow at one end, deep at the other. (Make sure you have a shallow end for frogs to get out.)
We dug a hole, inserted the mould, then placed soil, plants and rocks around it so it looks, well, not natural, as neither us have the artistry for that. But we can both spend hours just watching the birds and animals drink from it.
You can create your own pond by digging the shape you want, covering it with sand and then a pond liner, too. Cost? From about $74 up for a preformed pond, or less if using pond liner. A reasonably easy way to make a pond is to dig the shape you want, line it with about 30cm of sand, cover with wire mesh for reinforcement, then cover that with concrete you mix yourself. It's a bit like play dough for grown-ups.
But if you want your pond to give you the sound of running water, you'll need a pump to create a fountain, preferably a solar-powered one. These cost from $97 up, though most hover around $200. You can have a small bubbling fountain, or one that spurts high into the air, and a catalogue of other choices.
This will take time, energy, planning and some artistry to install yourself. If you don't have all of these qualities, but you do have money, there are many companies who will give you anything from Versailles-type grandeur to a bubbling stream across natural-looking rocks.
Want something in five minutes, under $10, with no work at all? There are apps for that, ones that will give you the sound of waterfalls, forests, or the waves on a beach. But it won't attract the birds and frogs, or give you the sheer unexpected joy of an echidna or goanna padding up for a drink.
It took us months, on and off, to create our pond with its bubbling water. It's amateur looking, and the wombats keep pushing off the rocks that are meant to cover the fibreglass, but we don't care, nor do the birds and animals who use it. It was fun to make - and we have the memories of creating it, too. I wouldn't swap it for any of the most magnificent fountains in the world.
This week I am:
- Planting out seedlings, and putting in seeds of corn, beans, tomatoes, lettuce, basil and all the other spring glories. To my shock the advanced tomatoes put in a month ago are flowering, even though we've had no day over 19 degrees. The carrots have germinated, and the silverbeet are beetling upwards. But they have had water, and moist soil to help protect from frost damage. Planting now is still a gamble, but I'm giving it a go.
- Restraining myself from putting in a new flower garden to grow some of the new cosmos range, in doubles and fabulous colours, or Californian poppies or rambling petunias. I will make do with the one ornamental bed of perennials, plus many flowering shrubs. Probably. Maybe just a few sunflowers...
- Remembering I haven't sprayed the cherries, apricots, peaches or roses with Bordeaux spray to kill black spot and various leaf and fruit moulds and mildews in the damp summer to come. It isn't too late...
- Quickly planting the dozen or so small trees ready to go out, so they can establish before the heat of summer.
- Feeding all the glorious spring growth.
- Informing every helpful male who might mow our garden that no, daffodil and jonquil leaves may look messy now, but must not be mown, or even plaited neatly. They'll vanish soon, but just now are storing up the nutrients needed for next year's blooms.
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