ARTICLES Archives - Page 180 of 316

In an effort to broaden interest in use of sensible water-management systems, Aquascape’s Ed Beaulieu set out early in 2009 to persuade his hometown to submit to a thorough ‘green makeover.’ Working with homeowners and city officials, he brought in a flock of pond/stream professionals to install – in just one day – a host of rainwater-capturing systems, ponds and streams. In the process, they created what suddenly became a more sustainable community.

A Green Harvest

Oddly enough, this story takes place in a down economy and shows how, despite perceived financial limitations, something surprising and wonderful can happen when people put their minds to it. For years now, my work at Aquascape (St. Charles, Ill.) has largely focused on developing, designing and installing systems that in one or more ways are environmentally sound and beneficial. In early 2009, I began working on a plan for a prototype community designed around optimal use of its resources, especially water. I imagined a town filled with rainwater-capturing systems, permeable surfaces and efficient irrigation. It included nothing but indigenous plants, was organized with minimal turf areas and set aside space for composting and cooperative organic farming. As for the homes, all of them boasted various resource- and energy-efficient features. The overall concept was so

Seeking Perfection

Through the past two years, a handful of voices in this magazine and elsewhere have called for building pools without drains as a means of virtually eliminating suction-entrapment incidents. The response to this suggestion has been strong, both for and against. In sifting through some of these discussions – including a key interview with Dr. William N. Rowley that appeared online last fall on the WaterShapes Web site – one item caught my eye: It came from a watershaper who clearly didn’t have

Ripples #10

The Best of Ripples 2010 Watershaping, as everyone knows, is serious business - but as Ripples has conclusively proved since its debut earlier this year, the world of watershaping can also be wild and wacky. It wasn't easy for Ripples to pick

New Year’s Greetings from Eric Herman

By Eric Herman Dear WaterShapes EXTRA! Reader: As we all know, it’s been another tough year for the watershaping industry. Although we continue to anticipate a break in the clouds, we’re still waiting for the occasional rays of hope to gather into a full-blown economic recovery. So we soldier on seeking better days, all the while making the most of what we have in the meantime. As the editor of WaterShapes, I’m privileged to know many of you — and if grit and determination in the face of adversity are the measure of our industry’s character, then what I’ve seen these past difficult years is nothing less than inspiring. Yes, it’s been tough, but the pride and determination so many of you exhibit give me confidence that

Santa’s Ten Blessings for Watershapers Everywhere

TO: You FROM: Santa 1. May your clients be patient and understanding whenever

Santa Claus Talks About the Ho-Ho-Ho of Watershapes

Interview by WaterShapes' Elves He is known by many names in many places — including Father Christmas, Kriss Kringle and Saint Nicholas — but in America, wide-eyed children of all ages mainly know him as Santa Claus. Imagine our surprise at WaterShapes when we received an e-mail from

The Artisan Touch

How do you define artistry? That’s a highly subjective question, of course, but I’ve always thought of it as a completed work that radiates impressions of insight, effort, skill and mastery – even in seemingly ordinary applications. Breaking it down further, materials are my personal passion – how they are selected and, far more important, how they are used. Indeed, while the presence of wonderful materials alone can make their impression no matter how banal a design, when the person wielding those wonderful materials has the

Light-Emitting Deficiencies

No matter the field, keeping up with the latest product developments is critical to supplying clients with state-of-the-art results. It’s also important to track current design and application trends and to distinguish innovations of true value from those that don’t add up or aren’t far enough along the developmental curve to warrant broad acceptance. Using my field of landscape lighting as an example, the past quarter century has seen a small clutch of products and technologies that have made the grade – the chief among them being

Choosing Wisely

One of the most common themes repeated in this magazine is that selecting materials for projects can make the difference between truly artistic designs and those that are either inappropriate or just plain boring. It’s a point worth pressing: Materials truly matter, and the importance of knowing your options and keeping pace with changes in the marketplace can never be overestimated. Through the past few months, for example, I’ve been working with a couple who live in a home that’s an architectural

On the Supplier Side

We know that the equipment and materials they offer us stand at the core of everything we design and/or build as watershapers. Nonetheless, it’s easy to overlook the significant role played by those who manufacture, distribute and support the products we use. As I see it, however, discounting the role of suppliers in the watershaping process is a serious mistake. Not only do these companies