DYI stone fountain plans?

Does anyone have a plan for how you build a stone fountain?
What I would like, is stones stacked together, with water coming out of the top, ending in a container at the bottom, where I want to grow lotuses. My bees love drinking water this way. They land on the leaves and drink, and sometimes bumble bees will take a nap there. I tried doing it with bamboo, but the bamboo cracked because of the desert climate. I would also like the bottom container to be deep, potentially half buried, to it can hold more water.
I have found some online, but they start at a thousand dollars, which is too expensive for me.
I also like the idea, and filling holes between the stones with moss and other humidity loving plants.
So, something similar to the picture below, but larger and with a basin at the bottom.

Well, it depends how natural you want your fountain. You're already going to be using electricity from solar or the house for the pump to circulate the water. The water will need to be moved through the rocks via a pipe of some sort. The basin at the bottom can be a big rock that is concave enough to hold enough water to run your pump. It can also be some other container. There are pond supply stores or other places that sell something if that's the way you want to go.

Once you find a suitable base, you can dig a space for it and secure it. The pump can be placed in the container and rocks stacked above the container to the side-ish so you can put your plants in there. Run your hose/pipe through the rocks as you stack them. If you want multiple water outlets then use T's to run additional waterfalls out the different stacked rocks.

There are different ways to connect the rock in a more permanent manner but they aren't so organic. Stacking the rocks will work if you have some flat surfaces on them for stability.

Tina Wolf wrote:Well, it depends how natural you want your fountain. You're already going to be using electricity from solar or the house for the pump to circulate the water. The water will need to be moved through the rocks via a pipe of some sort. The basin at the bottom can be a big rock that is concave enough to hold enough water to run your pump. It can also be some other container. There are pond supply stores or other places that sell something if that's the way you want to go.

Once you find a suitable base, you can dig a space for it and secure it. The pump can be placed in the container and rocks stacked above the container to the side-ish so you can put your plants in there. Run your hose/pipe through the rocks as you stack them. If you want multiple water outlets then use T's to run additional waterfalls out the different stacked rocks.

There are different ways to connect the rock in a more permanent manner but they aren't so organic. Stacking the rocks will work if you have some flat surfaces on them for stability.

Thank you so much for your input. I already have the solar for the electric part. I will see if I can find a pond supply shop to find a base. There are several reasons I want to have it in the forest garden. It will of course look and sound good, but my bees really need a water source from July through October, and so does many other insects and birds.
We do have a bird bath, bit the hummingbirds are having difficulties drinking from it.
We tried doing a regular bird bath with a sprinkler fountain, but it runs dry too fast (within 12 hours), so we need something larger, that we don’t have to fill every day. There isn’t room for a pond, so I figured a smaller but deeper pond base with stones stacked on top and a water fall from the top. If I put in plants between the stones and small lotus or similar leaves on the pond surface, there should be enough options for the insects and birds to get water.

i built my dads by digging a shaped hole out and lining it with EDPM pond liner. It's pretty cheap in small pieces. I dug this into the side of a bank beside his house and ran a hose into a "vertical trench" in the bank. I used pex but you could use cheap black roll pipe or whatever else you want. A piece of an old garden hose would work just as well. In front of the vertical trench, we wanted a drystack river rock look, so we stacked the rocks, using concrete on the back edges to hold them together as we stacked. When we got to the top, we tried out a few locations for the pipe to be mounted to get the right look of water flowing down the rocks before we secured the pipe. We ended up splitting the flow into two to give it a wider flow down the face of the rocks. A few weeks later, we brought some moss in and placed it in the rock face in a few places so now the water flows down the rock faces, across the moss and into the pool below. The pump doesn't need to be high flowing and can be run off of a solar panel and small battery if desired. Depending on your access to rocks, the whole project shouldn't be more than about $300. If you are wanting this to be a stand alone structure like the one pictured, it would complicate things just a little, but i would start by building a structure with steps out of wood, then covering it with EDPM, then go about covering it with rocks and plants.

Ulla Bisgaard wrote:Thank you so much for your input. I already have the solar for the electric part. I will see if I can find a pond supply shop to find a base. There are several reasons I want to have it in the forest garden. It will of course look and sound good, but my bees really need a water source from July through October, and so does many other insects and birds.
We do have a bird bath, bit the hummingbirds are having difficulties drinking from it.
We tried doing a regular bird bath with a sprinkler fountain, but it runs dry too fast (within 12 hours), so we need something larger, that we don’t have to fill every day. There isn’t room for a pond, so I figured a smaller but deeper pond base with stones stacked on top and a water fall from the top. If I put in plants between the stones and small lotus or similar leaves on the pond surface, there should be enough options for the insects and birds to get water.

They have basins for everything. I'm sure you'll find a suitable one! Please post a picture of your finished fountain. I love stone and fountains!

Rusty Ford wrote:i built my dads by digging a shaped hole out and lining it with EDPM pond liner. It's pretty cheap in small pieces. I dug this into the side of a bank beside his house and ran a hose into a "vertical trench" in the bank. I used pex but you could use cheap black roll pipe or whatever else you want. A piece of an old garden hose would work just as well. In front of the vertical trench, we wanted a drystack river rock look, so we stacked the rocks, using concrete on the back edges to hold them together as we stacked. When we got to the top, we tried out a few locations for the pipe to be mounted to get the right look of water flowing down the rocks before we secured the pipe. We ended up splitting the flow into two to give it a wider flow down the face of the rocks. A few weeks later, we brought some moss in and placed it in the rock face in a few places so now the water flows down the rock faces, across the moss and into the pool below. The pump doesn't need to be high flowing and can be run off of a solar panel and small battery if desired. Depending on your access to rocks, the whole project shouldn't be more than about $300. If you are wanting this to be a stand alone structure like the one pictured, it would complicate things just a little, but i would start by building a structure with steps out of wood, then covering it with EDPM, then go about covering it with rocks and plants.

Rusty is right about the EDPM pond liner and swing riser pipe to run the water to it from the faucet. You could put it on a battery operated controller and have clean water added automatically every couple days...run it for a few minutes. I just bought a couple small pond liners off amazon for $20.