• Rock fountains lend tranquility and beauty to an outdoor space.Water Fountain in stone image by Gramper from Fotolia.com
  
  The combination of natural rock and moving water is one that occurs regularly in nature and is thus a recognizable and soothingly beautiful sight. When landscaping a backyard, park or garden, a man-made fountain crafted from drilled stone will suggest this sight in a controlled, miniaturized version that you can customize to the stylistic and practical requirements of your outdoor space. Choose a design that's small or large, carved or natural, rough or smooth and made from your preferred kind of rock.
  
  

Drilled Zen Garden

• For this fountain design, use large, smooth and rounded stones as the foundation for a design suggestive of a Japanese Zen garden. (You may be aware of this aesthetic in the form of miniature, tabletop gardens.) Get two or three large granite stones that are slightly flat, like river rocks, and stack them, joining them together with a high-grade epoxy cement after drilling them. Use this foundational piece on its own, or as part of a real full-size Zen garden design including other large, round rocks in fine sand.
  
  

Rock Orb

• For this design, use a large, perfectly round orb of stone drilled all the way through from top to bottom, like a giant bead. Attach either a high-pressure fountain for a tall jet effect, or use a low-pressure jet to enjoy the effect of having the water bubble gently and flow over the round orb. This design works well when rendered in types of stone that look most stunning when wet, like coarse granite, shale or marble. Use a free-standing orb or place the sphere on a stone pedestal.
  
  

Giant Hole

• Use a rectangular slab of stone to make a drilled fountain that also serves as a piece of simple abstract art. Cut one very large cylindrical hole through the stone (at least six inches in diameter), then drill the fountain bore from the bottom of the stone slab up through to where the bottom of the large hole starts. When water pours through this hole, it will spout inside the large circle, then cascade down the sides of the slab.
  
  

Chunk Rock

• For a simple fountain design that combines the simplicity of natural rock formations with modern fountain technology, make a fountain that consists of nothing more than a large chunk of rock with a hole drilled through its middle. The joy of this design comes from how unexpected it is, especially if you place it in a garden with similar, non-fountain-type rocks.
  
  

Waterfall

• Use a large, tall chunk of stone as the foundation for a small waterfall by carving a wide, shallow channel in the side of the stone, reaching up to the top center of the stone where the drilled waterfall spout emerges. The shape in the rock will channel the water through it, creating a waterfall that will resemble large river falls in nature.