ARTICLES Archives - Page 83 of 314

Lined with shimmering Travertine, the formal courtyard needed some softening. What could be better, thought Colleen Holmes, than adding a sonorous waterfall along with a crisp, rectilinear pond -- and then livening it all up with the flashing colors of mood-altering fish?

Koi Courtyard

When we think about Koi ponds, the images that most often come to mind are of spaces entirely naturalistic: irregular shapes, edges offering limited direct access, lots of aquatic and terrestrial plants interacting at the margins and, as a rule, little suggestion of formality in the design. That was certainly the case in a project I recently shared through

Just the Opposite

'Is it honest to say that too few of the swimming pools you find in America's backyards are what one could call well built - and that even fewer of them are well designed? I think so,' wrote Brian Van Bower in opening his Aqua Culture column for April 2002, 'because so many of the pools I see run like junk and look like junk.' 'The environment out there is so unfortunate that

Spring Is Here!

Although fall in southern California is my favorite time of year for its raw beauty, spring is a close runner-up because it is so busy. In fact, some of the heavy lifting is already done by the time March 20 rolls around: Early in that month, for instance, I'll typically take advantage of a warm day to vacuum away our pool's winter accumulation of

It was a Mid-Century Modern home that needed the right poolscape: That task was well within Kurt Kraisinger's design sweet spot, and he responded with a dramatic, low-slung vision complete with a fire feature, broad decks and a pizza oven -- not to mention a big, blue duck.

Managed Elevations

It definitely helps to have a good reputation within the local design community. In this case, an architect I've known for years and have worked with on numerous occasions - someone with whom I've gotten so familiar with on the job site that we've become good friends - called me in to meet clients who needed help beyond the work he was doing on their house. He thought we'd be a good fit, and he was right: From our first meeting, the clients and I

#26: Water Bowls

Water bowls emerged not long ago as a key element in the Watershaping Industry's ongoing campaign to bring dimension, sound and vitality to residential backyards and commercial settings. They go a long way toward masking traffic noise, which is cool, but even in a space that's perfectly quiet, they offer up soothing sounds while bringing a sense of variety and visual stimulation to projects of just about any size or extent. As with the many

Micro-Management

'As much as I love cold weather,' wrote Stephanie Rose in opening her Natural Companions column in April 2007, 'I have to concede that we experienced way too much of a good thing this past winter. Long periods of extremely cold weather are the norm in many other parts of the country, and plants survive. Here, however, our local plants may be accustomed to surviving the isolated sub-freezing night, but sustained, frosty temperatures

Adding Up

It was entirely coincidental, but the last edition of the WaterShapes digital newsletter included two of the most popular of all articles ever to appear on our Web site: Tommy T. Cook's "Casting Nature," which originally appeared in the printed magazine in November 2010; and Scott Cohen's "Beware of Exploding Lava Rocks," which was published exclusively through the newsletter on March 16, 2011. It's easy to recall how popular

The revitalization of Longwood Gardens' Main Fountain Garden is nearly complete -- an ideal time, notes Robert Nonemaker, to step up with a progress report as well as a preview of some of the awesome, breathtaking upgrades being applied to this 80-year-old treasure.

Digging Deep

Three words come to mind when I consider what's been happening with the Main Fountain Garden at Longwood Gardens for the last two-and-a-half years: ambitious, audacious and amazing. The people behind the project, from Longwood's management team to all of the outside players who signed on to get the work done, were supremely ambitious in deciding to reconstruct a historic national treasure - first commissioned in 1931 - and bring it abruptly up to 21st-century standards for performance, automation and serviceability. They were audacious to the extent that they decided that all of this should happen in plain view, with no visual obstructions to hide what was going on from the public at large - no construction pen, no yellow tape, no barriers of any kind to keep the observers who crowd the fountain's famed Conservatory Terrace from seeing exactly what was happening with their beloved water display. But so amazing! Although it had been in decline

Worst Expressions

Through all my years of writing these Travelogues, I have discussed less than a handful of traveler-accessible watershapes that didn't make the grade. It wasn't that they were horrible, but rather that they were a little bit "off" in my estimation. Just recently, however, I saw a fountain that should never have been built - it just wasn't worth the bother - and it's the first time in writing more than 100 of these essays that I'm actually advising

Needing to testify to the sustainability of a fountain project is now common. The good news, writes Robert Mikula, is that it's becoming easier to defend the inclusion of any type of watershape if you make resource conservation a clear, distinct, reachable goal from the get-go.

Beyond the Tap

As purveyors of fountains and other forms of decorative or recreational water, watershapers are faced these days by an immediate challenge: What we do is generally classified as "unsustainable" by an environmentally conscious public because they erroneously assume poor performance when it comes to the way we approach water consumption, use of space and energy efficiency. On the surface, these are serious knocks on