Pickle Bucket Water Feature

I've wanted a little water feature in the flower bed by our front door for a couple of years. We get so much shade there that flowers just aren't an option. I wasn't sure how to go about creating it, so I just put my rock collection in the bed and hoped someday I'd get around to it. Well today was the day! It all came together. After doing a little research I came up with a plan. I discussed it with the husband (he hates to be mentioned in my blog!) and before I knew it this morning he was digging a hole for the bucket. We used a 5 gallon pickle bucket with a lid and buried it in the bed. We placed a fountain pump in the bottom of the bucket and drilled several hole in the lid. Two of them a little bigger, one for the electrical cord for the pump and one for the flexible hose for the water outlet. We cut a large square of heavy duty plastic and cut a hole in it just smaller than the diameter of the bucket. Once the bucket with pump was in the hole we draped the plastic over the bucket and snapped on the lid. Then we back-filled around the bucket with dirt under the plastic....being very careful not to get dirt in the bucket. The idea is to create a drain pool for the water to get back into the bucket. Then we filled the bucket with water. With helpful direction from family we arranged the rocks on the bucket lid and around the plastic sheet to hide it. My rock collection that I have been collecting for years came in handy. Some were from my Mother-In-Laws old homestead and some were picked up on trips and vacations. I had a couple of special rocks hand picked from Fish Creek, Wisconsin. We hid the plastic hose between the rocks and wedged it in between two flat rocks so the water would cascade down like a little water fall. With a lot of adjusting and rock placing we came up with a combination that worked. Once the fountain was complete we added a couple of ferns, some hosta and some mulch to the bed. A design on a nickle and pickle bucket project! It makes a nice welcoming feature by our front door.