Windowsill Water Garden: Part 2 – The Build

March 19, 2017June 2, 2024 admin

Potting containers that will hold the water for the windowsill garden — Potting containers that will hold the water of the water garden.

I’m currently building a little windowsill water garden. I wrote about the origins and thinking behind the design for this neat little DIY project in a post here. Here I describe how the build went.

The containers will be stacked like so so the water can cascade down in the windowsill garden — The containers will be stacked like so so the water can cascade down

The idea is to stack three successively smaller rectangular potting containers one upon the other and pump water into the top one so it flows down in a cascade. This hopefully will give a babbling brook sound and help aerate the water to prevent algae growth and keep mosquitoes from breeding in it. I’ll be using a small fish aquarium water pump to move the water from the lowest container to the top one.

Plugging the drainage holes in the potting containers with hot glue for the windowsill garden — Plugging the drainage holes in the potting containers with hot glue

The potting containers all have drainage holes, so the first step was to plug them. As usual, I busted out my trusty hot glue gun for the task.

Lighter used to smooth edges of hole of a container in the windowsill garden — Lighter used to smooth edges of hole

Next, using an electric drill, I drilled holes for the water to flow out of and where to feed the water tube from the pump. Since this left rough edges, I used the flame from a lighter to soften and smooth them out. Be careful of the hot plastic! It’s very sticky and extremely hot and will burn you like the dickens if you’re not careful!

Stacking the containers of the windowsill garden. — Stacking the containers. Hot glue is great!

Will the necessary holes drilled and smoothed, the containers were stacked on each other with hot glue. Hot glue (and duct tape) truly are a makeshift engineer’s friend!

Time for the tube to go in through the containers of the windowsill garden. — Time for the tube to go in

Water pump tube was secured with hot glue in the base container of the windowsill garden. — Water pump tube was secured with what else? Hot glue, of course!

After everything was together, the pump tube was up next. Again, this was secured using, what else? Hot glue!

The final assembled water garden — Everything’s together

So, now everything is assembled. The next step is to test to see if water actually can circulate in this thing and if there are any leaks!