A pond pump costs about what a takeout dinner does, and that one part is the reason DIY fountains are worth making instead of buying. Everything else here is a pot, a bucket, a wheelbarrow or a stack of clay saucers you probably already own. That is the whole trick: a submersible pump, something watertight to hide it in and a basin at the bottom to catch what comes back down. So here are 20 backyard fountain projects, from a twelve dollar pump sitting on a leveled liner to a concrete sphere cast in a four dollar thrift store globe. Some are finished in an afternoon on the patio, some are a real weekend build, and a few of them run on nothing but sunshine. Perfect for a small balcony, a front porch, a fence line that needs softening or a garden corner that is quiet in the wrong way.
1. Junky Water Fountains
Start here if your taste runs to salvage rather than statuary. This is a gathered set of upcycled water features, including the wine bottle fountain that started it, spotted at the World’s Longest Yard Sale, plus an old kettle pouring into a barrel, a vintage sink turned into a spout and a tipped clay pot. The honest note from Funky Junk Interiors is worth repeating: a pond in the yard was a whole lot of work, but a fountain can be unplugged and drained when the weather turns. That difference is the reason to build one.
Get the full tutorial at Funky Junk Interiors.
2. Watering Can Fountain
Two galvanized watering cans hung off a fence, pouring one into the next and down into a galvanized tub. The build is cheap and specific: a large tub or half barrel set about two and a half feet out from the fence, the top can hung around five feet up, the cans spaced roughly two feet apart, and six to eight feet of tubing. Two details do the real work. Drill a hole through each can’s handle so it cannot shift and burn out the pump, and run the tubing in through a hole in the back and out the spout so no tube ever shows.
Get the full tutorial at Sophisticated Junkie.
3. DIY Recirculating Fountain
The classic buried bucket build, and the one worth learning because half this list is a variation on it. A five gallon bucket goes into a hole in the ground, aluminum L brackets are cut to sit across it and carry the weight, a square of wire mesh caps the bucket with a hole for the hose, and a glazed ceramic pot sits on top. Tatertots and Jello rests the pump on a container of rocks so debris stays out of it, runs the tubing through black painted PVC to keep it straight, and uses a silicone caulk rated for standing water. Plug it into an outdoor GFCI.
Get the full tutorial at Tatertots and Jello.
4. Make A Clay Pot Fountain
A pyramid of terracotta, and the sizing is the useful part. Flying Kitten used sturdy Italian clay pots at twenty, sixteen, twelve and eight inches from the bottom up, with a few smaller eight to ten inch pots hidden inside as risers, each drain hole wide enough to take the tubing. She followed a magazine version first, using foam sealant, and it was messy, slow to dry and never actually sealed the hole. Waterproofing tape solved it in an afternoon instead. Their first fountain built this way was still running five or six years later.
Get the full tutorial at Flying Kitten.
5. Bamboo Water Feature
Proof that a fountain does not need a yard. This one was built for a city balcony to cover traffic noise, and every part is small and cheap. A few lengths of three quarter inch bamboo, bound with garden twine, hold a bamboo artist’s brush cup on its side as the spout. A three eighths inch hole drilled in the bottom of that cup takes clear flexible hose, and because the pump had no adapter, several hose diameters were nested together to step down to the nozzle. River rocks from the dollar store hide the pump. The whole thing sits in one bowl.
Get the full tutorial at saf affect.
6. Backyard Bubble Fountain
A bubble fountain is the low drama option: water wells up over the top of a pot and vanishes into stones, with no falling sheet to splash. This DIY Life used two glazed terracotta pots, one large and one smaller, a plastic pail as the reservoir, automotive fibreglass to seal it, and rocks, some decorative and some large and free to take up space. Pick a pump with enough vertical lift to push water above your stacked pots; the spec is printed on most fountain pump kits. They talked themselves out of a pond first, on the grounds of a dog who would never be dry again.
Get the full tutorial at This DIY Life.
7. Succulent Fountain Garden
One big planter doing two jobs: a fountain set into the middle, succulents filling in all around it. Moving water plus a tight mosaic of color and texture is a better combination than either one on its own, and succulents are forgiving enough to make it easy. One buying note actually decides whether this lives past October. If the planter stays outdoors year round, buy from the nursery’s hardy stock, the plants kept outside. Greenhouse succulents are not hardy; they are fine outdoors through summer and need to come in for winter, where they do perfectly well as houseplants.
Get the full tutorial at DIY Joy.
8. Small Vase Fountain
The budget version, and the numbers are the point. After finding only one store fountain worth having at four hundred and ninety nine dollars, Garden Stew spent twelve dollars on a pump at Harbor Freight and built this from things already in the yard for about sixty dollars total. Dig a hole, drop in a black liner, and then level it, because a leaning liner sends water down one side of the pot and means tearing the whole thing apart later. Drill a half inch hole in the pot, set it on a cast iron plant stand so the tubing comes up from underneath, and hide the liner edge with rocks.
Get the full tutorial at Garden Stew.
9. DIY Fountain Anyone Can Do
An old bird feeder turned into a fountain and dropped into a planted garden cart on the front porch. The bowl underneath is chosen slightly larger than the feeder and holds the recirculating water; a hole drilled through the top and bottom of the feeder takes the tubing, which then disappears behind a faux plant set inside it. A grill rack, also drilled, spans the bowl to hold the feeder up, and rocks hide the rack. Poofing the Pillows used a smartpond submersible pump, model FP170AS, which shuts itself off if the water runs low and has adjustable flow.
Get the full tutorial at Poofing the Pillows.
10. Small DIY Patio Fountain
Small enough to move, which matters if the patio is already finished and you are not about to dig it up. A large pot gets holes drilled in the bottom, a bucket goes inside the pot as the reservoir, and a square of hardware cloth is cut and bent to sit over the top with an opening in the middle for the fountain head. Fill the bucket, lay the mesh across, then wash your river rocks before you lay them over the wire. That last step is the difference between clear water and a week of cloudy grit.
Get the full tutorial at Shelterness (their page credits Frilly Details).
11. Wheelbarrow Garden Fountain
An old wheelbarrow with a flat tire and a rusting leg, retired into a garden fountain instead of going to the dump. The rust is the finish, and water plants in the tray make it read as a small pond on legs rather than a broken tool. The one fabrication step is about stability: weld a short piece of flat bar, around two inches, vertically to each wheelbarrow foot so the whole thing stands level on soft ground. Set it where you will walk past it, because a wheelbarrow at that height puts the water right at hand.
Get the full tutorial at Mother Earth News.
12. Rain Chain DIY
Not a fountain exactly, but the same pleasure for free, since the rain does the pumping. A cup style rain chain replaces a downspout and lets water step down through a line of little pots into a pebble filled basin. This one uses ten small terracotta pots, five smaller and five larger, on a black ring link chain measuring one hundred and thirty two inches, so measure from your gutter to the ground before you buy. To age new pots, brush on a yogurt and buttermilk mixture and let a white moss patina grow on them.
Get the full tutorial at All Things Heart and Home.
13. DIY Backyard Fountain
The full sized version of the buried bucket build, written up by the blogger whose tutorial half the internet copied afterward. A glazed pot sits on aluminum L brackets hacksawed to span a five gallon bucket, with notches cut in the bucket rim for the brackets and one at the back for the pump cord. Two warnings from Hip House Girl are worth having in advance. Caulk every gap where a bracket meets the bucket or it leaks, and assemble the whole thing before you put the bucket in the ground, not after.
Get the full tutorial at Hip House Girl.
14. Blue Planters Waterfall
Three cobalt pots in graduated sizes, bought from a pottery clearance at twenty percent off, with a minipond pump picked up at a garage sale. Two spare terracotta pots turned upside down inside the largest two act as bases, and the water tube runs up through the drain holes alongside a threaded rod for support. The lesson is in the middle of the build: unsealed drain holes mean every drop simply seeps back down to the bottom pot, so the whole thing came apart and got expanding foam squirted into each hole on the way back up.
Get the full tutorial at J. Paris Designs.
15. DIY Infinite Garden Fountain
Two spouts arcing back into a bowl of rocks, with no visible source. Inside the large decorative pot, a cheap plastic pot is drilled full of holes and set upside down so water can reach the pump underneath it. Two plastic drip pans stack right side up on that base, screwed through with quarter inch screws and washers. A half inch tee in the tubing splits the flow so both spouts run at once, set opposite each other, and a hole drilled about two inches below the pot’s lip lets the pump cord out.
Get the full tutorial at That's What Che Said.
16. DIY Concrete Garden Fountain
A concrete sphere resting in a concrete bowl, which looks like it was bought from a very expensive garden shop and was not. One bag of mortar mix, a solar fountain kit, cardboard tube molds cut with a jigsaw and a hollow globe from a thrift store for four dollars as the sphere mold. Buy the parts in the right order or nothing fits: the pump first, then tubing that fits the pump, then PVC just wide enough for the tubing. Cooking spray works as a mold release. The finish is deliberately rough, which is most of the charm.
Get the full tutorial at At Charlotte's House.
17. Simple Tabletop Fountain
Running water on a table with no plumbing at all, and the most personal project here. A shallow bowl, a small pump and then whatever you want to look at: sea urchin shells, a big flat stone, pebbles, small shells. The contents are meant to be changed whenever the mood moves, which is the whole idea. The fountain building teacher this piece follows, Frank Rose of Boulder, Colorado, runs workshops on exactly this, and the point he makes is that arranging your own objects around moving water does something that buying a finished fountain never does.
Get the full tutorial at Mother Earth News.
18. Tsukubai Water Fountains
A tsukubai is the low stone basin set in a traditional Japanese tea garden, and the name comes from the fact that you have to stoop to reach it. Guests used it to wash their hands and rinse their mouths before the tea ceremony, with a bamboo dipper and either a stone bowl or a small wooden barrel. The form is simple enough to copy: a stone bowl, a bamboo spout, pebbles and bamboo sticks. Related basins go by other names, including the chozubachi hand basin and the coin shaped zenigata tsukubai.
Get the full tutorial at Lushome.
19. Two-Tier Patio Water Fountain
The most specified project on this list, because it comes with a parts list down to the inch: a fifteen point two inch ceramic planter, a nine point eight inch one, a bubbler kit with pump, a seven to eight inch plastic flowerpot as the riser, a fifteen point three one inch black plastic saucer, egg rock, four drain stoppers and clear silicone. Caulk each drain hole and stopper from inside, then again from underneath, and let it dry overnight before going further. Drill the saucer on a scrap board so the plastic does not crack. Lowe’s rates it beginner, one weekend.
Get the full tutorial at Lowe's.
20. DIY Solar Fountain Hummingbird Bath
Built for hummingbirds, and it works because moving water is what brings them in. A deep vintage galvanized tub, around twenty four and three quarter inches across and twelve to eighteen inches deep, holds everything. An ordinary black pot goes in upside down and is left to fill so it stays submerged, then a terracotta dish of stones sits on top of it, tilted so it drains back into the tub. The solar fountain came with several spray heads, and the finest spray was chosen on purpose for hummingbirds. No outlet, no extension cord.
Get the full tutorial at Flower Patch Farmhouse.
