Geyserville couple tap spring for homemade fountains

The steep 30 acres where Jeff and Jackie Kennedy have lived for nearly 35 years has never been particularly hospitable for growing things.

Jackie - no relation to the late first lady - inherited the property from her grandparents, who bought it in the early 1920s shortly after emigrating from Italy.

The poor young couple had to settle for the cheapest land they could find, in this case a steep hillside deep in the Dry Creek Valley off what is now Dutcher Creek Road. It was covered in trees and brush, but it had one good thing - an abundant supply of water.

“In making his way across country, my grandfather worked in mines in Colorado where he learned about dynamiting,” said Jackie, who is Italian on both sides. Her mother still lives on her family land near the Laguna de Santa Rosa.

Attilio Amaroli applied his skills to blasting open a spring that has unfailingly fed the farm and four generations for more than 90 years. The story goes that his wife Teresa threatened to return to Italy if she had to endure another summer living off whatever water percolated up from a hole he had dug in the ground as a makeshift well.

“My grandmother said, “Basta! (Enough!) This is too much!”

So Attilio hiked all over the surrounding hillsides, found a spring about 1/3 of a mile up a steep hill from the old woodcutter’s cabin that the family moved into and added onto after their first farmhouse burned to the ground more than 80 years ago.

It wasn’t until about 15 years ago, however, that Jeff had a bright idea. Then a construction and project manager for Burbank Housing, he figured, why not harness the overflow that just drained downhill after the water tank was full and turn it into a decorative fountain?

Working all by hand, he painstakingly built his first water feature using found materials and tiles. It cascades down the hillside from the clearing where the old house still stands and where the Kennedys raised their two children.

That first fountain unleashed a creative drive that over the years has resulted in a collection of 10 fountains and counting. Each is unique and hand-built, some modest little ponds and others grand edifices of a size you might find in a park or on an estate in Italy. All are made from salvaged materials and objects. Jeff designs and builds, and Jackie does the finish decoration with metal and tile mosaics made of broken crockery, plates and tiles.

The Kennedys don’t work together, but they collaborate on what has become a shared obsession.

“We have an unspoken agreement where he has total control over the design of the fountain, and I just don’t say anything. And I can do whatever I want with the metal work and the tile. That’s how we cooperate,” said Jackie, who taught herself the art of Picassiette, or using broken ceramics to make mosaics.

It’s in keeping with the philosophy that drives these sixtysomethings to create quirky, artistic water features that are enjoyed by few beyond the immediate family and friends who gather once a year for a picnic in a grassy meadow ringed on all sides by flowing fountains.

“We both think you should do what you want to do without someone telling you want to do,” she said. “You have this think in your head and you want to keep it yours.”

Jeff starts with galvanized steel farm tubs, then plasters them to become the fountain pools. He also makes forms out of wood and rebar for poured concrete fountains. For the tilework, the Kennedys forage the seconds sales at McIntyre Tile in Healdsburg, which has been making hand-crafted decorative tile for 45 years. They fancy bright colors, and McIntyre is one of the few tilemakers they’ve found that makes them in vibrant hues. They also troll the Salvation Army’s superstore at Lytton Springs, which has a constant array of stuff spread out in the yard that can be re-imagined into decorative pieces.

Oddities become objects for their folk art fountains, which have a vaguely Art Deco or Italian look.

“We never buy anything new, even our clothes,” Jackie said.

Looking closely at a fountain is like studying one of those pictures hidden within a picture puzzle. You may not notice at first. But eventually you’ll see a glass light shade, an upside down candelabra, an ashtray, the lid to an aluminum casserole dish, a fire hose nozzle, all worked into the fountains.

“Everything you see, whether good or bad, we’ve done ourselves,” said Jeff, a compact man who has dropped 20 pounds in the three years since his retirement, doing hard physical labor outdoors for at least four hours a day. “If something doesn’t look finished, well, it will be, someday.”

There is no hurry. The Kennedys work at their own pace, completing about one fountain a year.

Down in the meadow where Jeff does his biggest pieces stand three monumental fountains fitting for a park. One is 11 feet high and 13 feet wide and features a series of stylized elephants with windmill fans for ears and downspouts for trunks that pour water into a fish-filled pool below.

Most of the fountains are stocked with dime store gold fish, which keep the mosquitoes down and have thrived for years without additional food.

In some of the pieces, Jeff has planted water lilies. But plant-wise, the Kennedy’s garden passion is roses. Jackie started the collection with heritage roses collected over the years. Jeff got the bug as well. Between the two of them, he figures they have more than 350 rose bushes, most single bloomers that burst into a big show in May. Their gardens have a wild look, in land where Mother Nature battles to take over. But Jeff always has a pair of pruners in his hands to stay on top of the maintenance.

The fountainhead of their gardens is the spring, which provides drinking water for the house, along with a well. While the spring has never stopped flowing, even during the worst of the drought, Jeff has to keep it maintained. That means periodic treks up a steep and narrow goat path when a tree falls or some other obstruction needs to be cleared out.

Jeff attributes his love of fountains to the sound of the water.

“Sometimes the fountain below our deck is the only thing you can hear in the afternoon. It’s just like the perfect pitch.”

Jackie figures it’s good to remain occupied. ”You can’t sit around watching ‘Matlock” and ‘Judge Judy’ all day. One lesson I learned from both of my grandmothers. They just kept moving and doing stuff until the end.”