Book & Media Reviews
On several occasions through the past few years, I’ve been called on to design several projects that were both extremely small and extremely detailed. I’ve found that working in these intimate spaces is a tremendous challenge, with every single detail taking on tremendous importance and even something as innocuous as
Those of you who've followed this column for any length of time know that it's all about my hunt for resources that will help me become better at what I do. As I see it, my job here is to share what I discover in the hope that my own information-seeking journey
The numbers are eye-popping: Just about one percent of all the water on Planet Earth exists as freshwater suitable for human consumption. And depending on where you live in the United States, anywhere from a quarter to almost half of that precious resource is used for irrigation. This is why it’s so important for those of us who design watershapes and exterior environments to consider options that minimize our use of potable water to maintain the landscape – and why I’m glad I picked up a copy of Rain Gardens by Nigel Gunnett and Andy Clayden (Timber Press, 2007): This 190-page text defines specific steps we can all take to replace municipal or well water with rainwater, capturing a gift from the skies and using it to sustain our landscapes. As the authors point out, we live in a time when drought is
In looking back on my career, I see that the past 20 years have been marked by a number of points at which I altered what I was doing. Sometimes I changed companies; other times I found a way of shifting my approach to my work or how I conducted my life. In looking back, I’m proud of the fact that every time I chose to go in a new direction, the changes I made resulted in dramatic improvements in my career and in my enjoyment of my work and, indeed, of my life in general. In other words, I’ve learned that, when approached the right way, change offers us an opportunity to advance our own causes in business and in life. Yes, it can be scary in that it typically involves
It’s hard to pin down exactly when it happened, but at some point in the past dozen years the concept of the outdoor kitchen took off – so much so that these features have moved from “relatively unusual” to “must-have” status on very nearly every upscale residential project. That’s certainly been the case in my practice, and I hear the same thing from most other watershapers and landscape professionals I’ve talked with in recent times. I’ve already covered some books intended to help us design these spaces and select among the variety of available components and options (“Book Notes,” June 2007). This time, I’ll take a different tack by
As someone who has spent years digging into the history of landscape and watershape design, it comes as something of a surprise to me that, alongside the luminaries who dominate discussions of the origins of familiar design approaches, motifs and styles, stands at least one practitioner who is not nearly as well known as
Whether we think of them this way or not, watershape and landscape designs have the ability to create emotional responses among our clients. In that sense, we’re actually in the business of provoking those feelings. When we do things right, the conjurings are positive and are at their best when we successfully forge links to our clients’ treasured experiences. If we miss the mark by not properly considering our work’s emotional impact, however, the results are discordant and somehow unsettling. I think I’ve always known all of this on an intuitive level, but I’d never
Earlier this year, I attended the Texas Pool & Spa Expo in Fort Worth – and, upon arrival, was treated to an unexpected earful. As soon as I reached the show floor, I walked over to greet my friends at the Genesis 3 booth. Before I could even get in a good round of “hellos,” David Tisherman asked me if I’d ever been to the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth – just down the block from the Convention Center and practically in my own backyard. For those of you who know David, whether as an instructor or as a prolific writer for WaterShapes, I’m sure you can guess how he reacted when I confessed
When times are tough, I sometimes find it useful to think about the things in life that I’m able to control while giving less thought to those I can’t. The plain fact is, no matter how troubling the news is or how tough the economy makes our working lives, nothing can ruin our positive attitude if we don’t let it. In other words and no matter what, we are always in charge of how we greet the world. That’s a point I’ve had confirmed by re-reading The Greatest Salesman in the World by Og Mandino (Frederick Fell Publishing, 1964). To my mind, there are few books that truly warrant the label “classic,” and this is one of those masterpieces. I regard it among the most inspiring and life-altering books I’ve ever read – and I’m apparently not alone: It has
I’ve spent some time in the past couple months looking for a good book about trust. I ran into some stinkers along the way, with many of them impressing me with how boring and preachy they could be. But I never had that kind of reaction to The Little Teal Book of Trust by Jeffrey Gitomer (Pearson Education, 2008): I’m a big fan of his (you may recall that I wrote about his Little Red Book of Selling in March 2008) and have always liked the way he manages to
