Do you still have a lot of roof battens and squared timbers lying around from your last building project and don't really know what to do with them? We have a few ideas for you here, because the wood can be used as a substructure for an artificial stream.
How do I design a stream out of wood?
A wooden stream can be designed with roof battens, squared timber or halved tree trunks as a substructure. Use durable types of wood such as oak or beech and protect the wood from moisture with non-toxic wood preservatives or pond liner.
Versatile wood
Wood is an extremely versatile material that can be used to realize all kinds of exciting construction projects. You can use processed and unprocessed wood for composters, raised beds or garden furniture - or as the basis for a babbling stream on your own property. There are lots of great ideas for this:
- Construction of overlapping wooden channels that allow water to flow down a slope
- halved and hollowed out tree trunks are put together to form a stream
- Substructure made of squared timbers and slats, which is covered with pond liner (and can no longer be seen at the later stream)
Especially if you have just had to cut down a few trees, the tree trunk stream is recommended as an unusual garden decoration. Unless, of course, you want to use it to make logs for the fireplace. In addition, wood can be used not only for the construction of the actual stream, but also or instead for its naturalistic decoration - for example in the form of thick branches that form the barrages.
Choosing the right type of wood
So that you can enjoy your wooden stream for a long time, you should use the most robust and resistant types of wood possible for the construction. Softwoods such as birch, poplar and willow are less weather-resistant. These rot within a very short time when exposed to water and therefore require very good moisture protection. Hardwoods, on the other hand, are significantly more resistant and should therefore be preferred. These include species such as beech, oak, walnut or maple. However, these types of wood have a serious disadvantage: they are significantly more expensive than spruce etc.
Protect wood from moisture
In order not to break the budget for building a wooden stream, you can use soft wood - and you have to protect it very well from moisture. This can be done, for example, by using wood preservatives (€5.00 on Amazon), although you should only use varnishes and glazes without toxins. Otherwise the poison could be washed out and harm the fish in the pond. But even without a fish pond, such toxic substances have no place in a biotope. If the wood is only used as an invisible support structure, we recommend covering it with a good pond liner. Be sure to place a fleece under this so that any wood splinters do not tear the film and cause it to leak.
Tip
Not only dead wood can be used to design a stream. Some trees, such as willows or alders, love the moisture on stream banks and can therefore be wonderfully planted in the garden.
