ARTICLES Archives - Page 147 of 312

Blast from the Past

Ever since people started adding swimming pools to their backyards, the companies that make the equipment, tools, systems and accessories that drive or ease their use have tried to reach and influence consumers. Real successes in those efforts can probably be counted on the fingers of a hand or two; I’ve always thought that, as an industry, we do a much better job of talking among ourselves at trade shows and in trade magazines than we do at getting to consumers where they live. You’ll be glad to know that this is not a discussion I want to pursue here; rather, I want to focus

A Walk in the Park

By Jim McCloskey A few weeks back, I came across a story on a celebration that ran off the rails in San Diego’s Balboa Park. In the wee hours of August 12, a party instantly organized on social media lured an estimated 1,500 people to participate in a gigantic water fight. Unfortunately, the park’s largest open and available source of water to

Navigating WaterShapes.com

Here’s a quick tour of the new WaterShapes.com, starting with the pulldown menus at the top of the home page: q Articles. This section already includes about a year’s worth of the information that’s been published in our twice-monthly newsletters. Right away, all new newsletter features and articles will be uploaded to the site immediately; within a few months, everything we’ve ever published in newsletter form will be ready and available to all readers

When Ponds Leak

It’s a simple fact: When it comes to ponds and watergardens, leaks happen – and they can be devilishly hard to find and repair. To do right by the plants and fish that inhabit these watershapes, you need to understand a few basic principles of leak detection and be well versed in the sorts of fixes that may be required. Before we get there, however, it’s important to recognize that leaks

Integrated View

From my first visit, I knew I’d be spending a lot of time here developing the watershapes and landscapes on this amazing site. Set on a bluff in Del Mar, Calif., the whole property slopes down from the street level to the back edge of the property. Beyond was an open space offering uninterrupted views of a river estuary, native coastal scrub studded with rare, indigenous, protected

A Full Plate

Earlier this year, I devoted a good bit of energy to covering two educational groups and their pursuit of excellence in the classroom. I am happy to report that both Artistic Resources & Training (ART) and Genesis have been far from idle since I last wrote about them. For its part, ART has organized a second program that builds on the first and expands it gloriously. They’re bringing back

Test Your Knowledge #40

Swimmer Ruled Eligible to Compete in Paralympics

Ripples #51

Compiled and Written by Lenny Giteck Belated Apology for Booze-Fueled Skinny-Dipping in Sea of Galilee As you may have heard by now, a year ago a group of Republican lawmakers on a visit to the Holy Land were dining at a restaurant next to the Sea of Galilee when about half of the 30 members of Congress went for an impromptu dip. According to a report on politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com, there was a fair amount of drinking

A Distinctive Hybrid

In lining up this string of videos on dealing with and overcoming access and/or excavation issues, I thought after the last one that I’d run through most of the possibilities and could put down my video camera for a while. But then I ran into a site that offered super-slim access (no more than a smallish wheelbarrow could get through) and awful, heavy soil that left me with a need for yet another get-it-done solution. My initial supposition had been that we’d need to

Rough-Hewn Elegance

Back in a time before I had anything to do with watershaping, I lived for a few years in Eugene, Ore. – a smallish college town that always left me craving more-urban spaces. Portland was up the road by a couple hours, and in the days before our first child appeared, my wife and I would make fairly frequent trips to visit the closest real city we had available. We loved