ARTICLES Archives - Page 152 of 317

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

Getting into Aquatic Plants

At the start, a large number of ponds are all about the fish. From the planning stages through to completion, the goal is to create an environment in which koi and other beautiful specimens will thrive in an environment that is both balanced and self-sustaining. There’s a lot that goes into making these miniature ecosystems work, from good circulation and filtration systems to including places where the fish can retreat from the sun and predators. But when all is said and done, the key to achieving ongoing, sustainable balance has less to do with technology than it does with Mother Nature and

Suburban Spaces

You really can find opportunities in unexpected places, insists Mehrnoosh, a Los Angeles architect and designer who enjoys making refined aesthetic statements in previously plain suburban environments. To illustrate her point, she takes us to a project in a modest neighborhood to define how simple architectural and landscape elements – and water – can bring elegance and tranquility to otherwise overlooked and underappreciated spaces.