What makes the ‘best’-sounding water feature could be a deep, philosophical question. There are those who like the soft sounds of ASMR, and those who think it’s equivalent to nails on a chalkboard. Some love the bagpipes, while others are wrong.

As Primrose is an online garden centre, we’re going to stay surface-level with our exploration of water feature sounds.

Fill your head with sound

When it comes to water features, the best sound is what you want. Do you want something loud and unmissable, or calm and understated? You can think of water feature heights (that’s the distance the water falls, not the total feature size) as a visual guide to audio volume.

The further the water falls, the louder it will be, the same with the breadth of the water. Large volume of water = loud volume of water.

Water Wall Sounds

Water Wall water features have some of the most impressive sounds, imitating waterfalls with their loud cascades. This Higgledy 3-Tier water feature has multiple cascades, each building on the last for a neverending (as long as the pump is switched on) sound stream.

Every water wall that ends in a broad blade cascade sounds similar, but you can’t go wrong with three of them.

Water Fountain Sounds

Fountains make a splash physically and sonically, creating rain-like sounds in their surrounding pools. Once again the size and height of the fountain is what makes an impact, where a high-shooting fountain will be louder than a low-flying one.

Consider also the number of jets, in that multiple streams will multiply the sound. But as the streams will likely be thinner, the initial sound is quieter. In general, multi-streamed fountains will be more calm-inducing than the cascades above.

Small Water Features, Small Sounds

Small water features will reduce in sound impact the further you are from them, so to enjoy the sound from them you’ll need to sit or lounge close by. Most of them generate a gentle trickle, a low-level white noise to aid in relaxation and meditation.

The water isn’t forceful and rarely travels far, so these are perfect noise-makers if you’re looking for minimal atmosphere disruption. 

Need sound indoors? Then tabletop water features are your safest bet, sitting on a desk, table or windowsill with the faintest of sounds echoing out.

The Best Sounding Water Feature

Of course, we couldn’t write about water feature sounds without calling out the most famous of them all: the bamboo water feature that goes ‘donk’ in Japanese-themed gardens, the shishi-odoshi or sōzu. It was designed to scare deer away from crops, but now people love it for its bamboo-plus-rock sound. 

This isn’t one, but you can imagine

We currently don’t sell them at Primrose, but we’ve put together a handy guide if you’d like to make a shishi-odoshi of your own.

To find the best sounding water feature just for you, shop over 1000 Water Features, Pumps and Ponds at Primrose

Seljalandsfoss Photo by Robert Lukeman on Unsplash