ARTICLES Archives - Page 75 of 325

It’s Always Something!

'In all my years as a landscape designer,' began Stephanie Rose in her Natural Companions column for November 2003, 'I've always told my clients that nobody can know ahead of time how a plant will adapt to or behave in any given situation.''Most plants, of course, really are somewhat predictable when you place them in a client's yard . . . as long as you

An Event to Remember

I returned from the "Designing Water" symposium at Longwood Gardens the other day filled with a complex set of impressions - three of which I'll share with you here. q First, a visit to Kennett Square, Pa., to see

The homeowners had waited decades to revamp their backyard and came to the project with high expectations about how their new spa, fountain and deck would look. Now it was up to Grant Smith to solve a few tricky technical issues while making the most of the distant views.

Expansive Vision

It all started in the years following World War II, when large parcels of undeveloped suburban land were carved into tracts in which, all too often, as many homes as possible were included to accommodate huge population influxes. In a nutshell, this is why so many of the lots in places like southern California are relatively small. We do lots of our work in these "bedroom communities," and I wish I had a nickel for every time I've been asked to shoehorn full-featured pools and spas into tiny backyards with limited access. It can be done - we at Aqua-Link Pools & Spas (Carlsbad, Calif.) frequently tackle small-yard projects - but each of them carries

The New-Pond Blues

It doesn't happen every time. But as Mike Gannon reports here, new ponds will head in this disturbing direction often enough that he prepares all of his clients to deal with a distressing transformation that can occur within weeks after a pond has been filled with water for the very first time.

Designing and building any pool in close proximity to a body of water has its challenges. But if you start by focusing on one primary goal, writes William Drakeley, you'll find that the rest of the tasks involved in these technically demanding projects will become much more manageable.

Working at Water’s Edge

As watershapers, we all have one common goal in mind: We don't ever want our concrete pools, spas, fountains or waterfeatures - whatever it is we've just finished building - to move at any time, in any way at all. This is true no matter the physical or geological circumstances. On a slope, on the flat, elevated above a parking garage or set on rock or in sand or clay, wherever we're working, we follow

Nature’s Way

'Back when WaterShapes was in its infancy, the idea that swimming pools and spas had much in common with other forms of contained water (including ponds, fountains and streams) was a true novelty: All of those worlds seemed light years apart.' That's how Brian Van Bower opened his Aqua Culture column in November 2008 before adding: '[T]hings have changed and there's now widespread recognition that these seemingly

Nature’s Way

'Back when WaterShapes was in its infancy, the idea that swimming pools and spas had much in common with other forms of contained water (including ponds, fountains and streams) was a true novelty: All of those worlds seemed light years apart.' That's how Brian Van Bower opened his Aqua Culture column in November 2008 before adding: '[T]hings have changed and there's now widespread recognition that these seemingly

The Trouble with Liners

'As modern building materials have been developed,' wrote Japanese garden specialist Douglas M. Roth in October 2003, 'we humans have been remarkably proficient at applying them in ways that go well beyond the vision of their inventors. Such is the case with roofing membranes, which now are widely used as liners for backyard streams and ponds. 'It's understandable that landscape designers and contractors have taken to these rubber liners. After all, they make pond and stream construction inexpensive and easy. But from the perspective of the Japanese gardener or quality watershaper, convenience and affordability alone do not

Calming Undulations

One thing I can safely say about the California city where I grew up is that it's a lot different from what it was like when I was a kid. Back in the 1960s, the area across from Santa Monica's City Hall was a mass of parking lots, office buildings and other hard, unattractive surfaces. The famed Civic Auditorium was at one end of the street, and a Moderne-style

The logistics were tough and the technical challenges even tougher, notes Robert Nonemaker. But a systematic approach (and a supportive general contractor) helped him and his staff develop a hydraulically complex fountain system for a corporate client with big ambitions.

Sweeping Beauty

One of the things we value most in our fountain projects is that no two of them are ever the same. I can make that same statement about our custom pool projects, of course, but it's a matter of degree: Where uniqueness from pool to pool is about selecting just the right possibilities among shapes, elevations and materials, for instance, from fountain to fountain it's about inventing and adapting technology and pushing accepted limits to make ideas work. The fountain under discussion in this article is a perfect illustration of that distinction. Making it happen was about