ARTICLES Archives - Page 295 of 312

Echoes of Laughter

When I was kid in the '60s, my mom would take my sisters and me to a place called Penn Park near our home in Whittier, Calif. It was a beautiful old hillside city park with towering trees, winding paths and

Beauty and tranquility are words on the lips of more and more consumers these days, and they’re discovering with greater and greater frequency that ponds are just what they’re after. Critical to meeting this rising demand, says zoologist and horticulturalist Jeff Rugg, is knowing what goes into creating healthy, clean water in the presence of plants and animals – and into setting these mini-ecosystems up for the long haul.

Nature’s Balance

It's a tale of two professions: Pool and spa people are taught to keep things dead; pond people are taught to keep things alive. Pool people sell chlorine; pond people sell de-chlorinator. Pool people sterilize; pond people fertilize. This contrast in approaches to basic water maintenance is perhaps the most significant difference between two trades that are coming into closer and closer contact with one another every day. At issue between the two groups is whether to work against nature in a sterile system, or work with it to create an ecosystem. Each discipline has a foundation in the science of water chemistry and both have a place in the world - but beyond that (and as the table below demonstrates), things really couldn't be much different. As more and more pool/spa professionals move into water gardening and more and more landscape designers and architects get into pools and spas, there's an increasing need for all of us to understand these water-treatment distinctions and the basics of each approach. I come from the pond side, so I'll cover things from that perspective in a pair of articles - a science-oriented overview this time before we

They’re big, bold and colorful – a natural magnet for kids seeking thrills and fun. And they’re downright beautiful to operators of commercial and public pools, who have turned to closed-flume slides as a way to offer a safe and affordable alternative to the high-cost entertainment found at the big waterparks. The outcome, says slide manufacturer John Stupfel, is the revival of community pools and a whole new reason why slides are back on track.

Splash Factors

When today's kids show up at a municipal swimming pool for a day of fun and excitement, they're not looking to swim laps. To be sure, the standard for what can be called "aquatic fun" has been set pretty high in recent years by huge water theme parks, with their wave pools and whitewater rides and huge, twisting, open-flume slides. Nowadays, older "flat-water pools" just can't compete for summertime attention among active, thrill-seeking children - except in one arena. Indeed, the availability these days of

Today’s consumers are keen on a number of watershape ‘looks’ that call for unusually high degrees of precision in design and execution – with full-perimeter overflows riding high on many lists. The construction challenge in these projects will always be substantial, but the hydraulic puzzle may find its solution in a prefabricated flow-over system that promises to bring the wet-edge look to more and more mainstream builders, projects and clients.

Precision on Deck

The consumer's appetite for beautiful water and creative watershape design has grown by leaps and bounds in recent years - and expectations, it seems, are rising right along with the hunger for exceptional details and impressions. Perimeter-overflow pools and basins are what an increasing number of consumers are after these days, and there's special interest in what are called "wet-edge applications," where the water rises to deck level and flows into a channel slot at the back edge of the coping. It's an amazing look - and harder to

Studying the works of past masters, says designer Bobbie Schwartz, has always helped her expand her own repertoire of creative garden, landscaping and watershaping approaches. Here, in the second of three articles examining classic stonework in European and North American gardens, she again explores this rich resource for ideas about walls, pathways and stairways – features that can be used to work magic in a variety of settings.

Refinements in Stone

It's the little things that often make the biggest difference in creating beautiful spaces within gardens or near watershapes. A well-articulated retaining wall here, a clever treatment of a stone footpath there or the perfect placement of a stone stairway can, at various points, lend variety, balance and even a sense of antiquity to the work. In the first installment of this series of articles on classic uses of stone in gardens and watershapes, we began with an overview of stones set among plantings and used as simple structures in some of the world's most beautiful

A Glittering Treasure

Looking for inspiration can be like mining for gold. You sift and pan through mountains of muck before unearthing a nugget of real value. And when you do come upon a resource that teaches and inspires you to reach for greater heights of creativity in your designs, the payback is a hundred-fold. Knowing where to look helps, and that's what this new column is all about. The first book I'll discuss is an unexpected treasure of incalculable value. Before I read The Architecture of John Lautner (text by Alan Hess, photographs by Alan Weintraub, published by Rizzoli, New York), I couldn't

Thermal Potential

Some details seem simpler than they really are. A case in point is the one I'll describe this time - a detail I call a thermal ledge. In one sense, it's really just a large a big bench located a few inches below the water's surface, but in terms of what it is structurally and what it does to increase enjoyment of a pool, it's something truly special. The ledge pictured here is visually interesting in the way its stone surface picks up the rockwork used throughout the deck and the barbecue area and within the pool itself. As important, it provides the homeowners and their guests

Edible Landscapes

More and more of my clients are interested in including edible plants in their gardens. They're into cooking, great food, fine wine and entertaining, and they appreciate the special flavors that come when they grow and harvest their own edibles. It's incredibly satisfying to walk out into one's own garden and pick fruits or vegetables or herbs. Not only do these edibles taste better than store-bought produce, but any gardener can be reasonably sure that the foods they grow are free of pesticides and other undesirable contaminants. No matter what

In Search of Community

Through the past 50 years, the watershaping industry has evolved from a small, elite group of contractors serving the needs of a small, elite group of consumers to become a vast industry whose services are in demand across a wide range of socio-economic levels. In fact, it's probably fair to say that in these most recent years of prosperity, watershapes are being sold to more people across broader economic bandwidths than ever before. Yet for all this demand and the innovation that's been happening, I don't see unity. Instead, I see a massive, diverse "industry" (definitely in quotation marks) with scores of niche organizations, geographic enclaves and specific interests, each moving forward without the

Powerful Influences

There's a new wrinkle in this issue of WaterShapes. Just inside the back cover, you'll find "Book Notes," a brand-new column by landscape architect and watershape