Spillway bowl on a hidden basin

A spillway bowl is a shallow stone basin with a notch cut in the rim. Water fills the bowl, finds the notch and leaves it as one smooth sheet. Everything that makes it work sits under the gravel: a basin, a pump, and a hose back up to the bowl. What you see is a bowl, some rock, and water falling about a foot onto stone.

The first two photos are the same bowl. It sits in a pocket of boulders with a piece of driftwood leaning against it and tropical plants crowding in. The sheet lands on a flat stone, foams for a moment, and is gone. The clip is a second bowl outdoors, aimed at a boulder, with a red-stemmed elephant ear growing out of the gravel beside it.

A bowl is a quiet feature. The sound is a steady pour, not a splash, and it carries just far enough to cover a neighbour's air conditioner without announcing itself across the street.

The basin goes in first, below grade, with the pump vault at one end. Jordan sets the bowl on a stand over the basin and gets it dead level, because a bowl that is a quarter inch off pours from the wrong side of the notch. Then the plumbing comes up through the stand and into the bowl.

Then the landing. The sheet has to hit something, and what it hits sets the sound. A flat stone gives the steady pour you can hear in both photos. The stone sits on the gravel over the basin, so the water drains straight back down to the pump.

The last job is hiding the work. Boulders around the stand, gravel over the basin, and in this case a piece of driftwood and a bank of plants so the bowl looks like it was always there.

Water onto stone, not into open water. A bowl pouring into a pool splashes. A bowl pouring onto a flat rock makes one clean note, and there is no standing water for mosquitoes or a small child to find.

Driftwood against the bowl. It breaks up the round shape and ties the stone into the plants. It is the one piece in the first photo that most people would not think to add.

A bowl where a pond would not fit. Both bowls sit in a few square feet. That is the point of a fountainscape: the sound of water in a bed or beside a path, without giving up the lawn.