ARTICLES Archives - Page 118 of 315

Sustaining Sustainability

An Interview by Lenny Giteck Sustainability may be a hot buzzword in the world of landscaping these days, but Bruce Zaretsky is no Johnny Appleseed-come-lately to the concept. According to Zaretsky — owner of Zaretsky and Associates, a landscape design, installation and consulting firm near Rochester, New York, and a frequent contributor to the pages of WaterShapes — he's been concerned with sustainability throughout his entire landscaping career. "I've always tried to be careful with resources and less invasive to the environment," Zaretsky says. "For instance, whenever I would replace a brick patio for a client, I'd never throw out the old bricks; I'd always leave them at the road, on a wood palette, so other people could take them. The palettes themselves — I'd either

Chatting with ‘The Pond Guy’

An Interview by Lenny Giteck When Greg Wittstock built his first watergarden in his family's backyard at the ripe old age of 12, it was designed to provide a home for his pet turtles. Unfortunately, his treasured pets were not all that appreciative of a residence that leaked and had green water, so they fled the scene. He wound up ripping out and rebuilding the pond

Upper-Crust Ponds

An Interview by Lenny Giteck From a very young age, Steve Sandalis was fascinated by natural waterfeatures — an early interest that years later led him to found his watershaping company, Mystic Water Gardens. The Encino, Calif.-based business has prospered mainly by designing and building high-end waterfeatures for the wealthy elite of Los Angeles, including major figures in the entertainment industry. Many of Mystic's projects, which mostly come through word-of-mouth referrals, have carried six-figure price tags, including one that ran

Shimmering Glass

An Interview by Lenny Giteck David Knox has spent much of his adult life analyzing and manipulating light. In 1983, he founded a company called Directed Light, which invented and produced laser systems for many of the nation's A-list technology outfits — including General Electric, Hewlett-Packard, Motorola and Boston Scientific. In 1998, he sold Directed Light to a larger Japanese firm. "I decided to sell the laser company for two reasons," he recalls. "One, I had reached my highest level of incompetence in terms of being a manager, and I really wasn't having a whole lot of

Building the Playboy Mansion Pool

An Interview by Lenny Giteck Some the most iconic images of the past four decades have been photos of bikini-clad Playmates splashing around in the swimming pool or lounging in the adjoining grotto of the Playboy Mansion West, in the Holmby Hills area of Los Angeles. When Hugh Hefner purchased the 5.2-acre property in 1971, it included a staid, 29-room "Gothic-Tudor" house (as Forbes magazine described it). Through the years, however, the Playboy founder has invested a reported $15 million to transform the place into a

WaterShapers from Outer Space

An Interview by Lenny Giteck Since 1971 when they jointly founded The Dirsmith Group, an architecture, landscaping and engineering firm headquartered in Highland Park, Ill., Ron and Suzanne Dirsmith have established a distinguished track record of designing imaginative structures and environments that often pay homage to the beauty of nature — particularly the element of water. In the late 1950s, just four years after completing his architecture and engineering studies, Ron became a Fellow in Architecture of the American Academy in Rome, a highly prestigious research and study center for

A Remarkable Journey

An Interview by Lenny Giteck Randy Beard, owner of Pure Water Pools in Costa Mesa, Calif., has never been short on ambition. At the ripe old age of 19, he and his then new bride, Martha, started Pure Water as a pool-cleaning company. ("Even after being married and working together all these years," he says, "Martha is still my best friend.") In the nearly three decades since then, Beard and his company have evolved from

Pool-Finish Stains Tarnish the Entire Industry

An Interview by Lenny Giteck When, in the 1980s, Jack Beane began formulating potions designed to prevent pool finishes from becoming stained and to remediate those that were already damaged, it was not with the intention of creating a company to manufacture and market such products. He simply wanted to help friends and relatives who were experiencing difficulties with their backyard pools. "I was taking it one pool at a time in

Size Does Matter

'Surely you've heard this line before and never believed it,' declared Stephanie Rose to open her June 1999 Natural Companions column, 'but I'm here to tell you that size does matter. 'Have you ever, for example, built a pond or fountain with concrete either surrounding it or fanning out from it beneath the soil - and then had your clients say they wanted a very mature tree or shrub planted right up against the edge? There you are with

Rising Tides

As I announced in the last WaterShapes World blog, this edition of the newsletter carries a new/old name: WaterShapes. It's a proud title, and I'm happy to bring it back knowing we have so much more to accomplish. *** Our mission isn't much changed since we started out in