ARTICLES Archives - Page 95 of 326

#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

The Currency of Beauty

By David Tisherman ‘Watershaping isn’t a job to me,’ wrote David Tisherman in the March 2002 edition of WaterShapes. ‘It’s my passion, which explains why I’m so obsessed with steel and concrete and water and what I can

Some clients want all the benefits of a manufactured spa to go along with their inground pools. As Dave Hoffman explains here, there's a ready-made option for these folks, one that's easy to design into a poolscape so long as you keep a few basic practicalities in mind.

A Fuller Experience

I'd hazard the guess that most experienced pool designers and builders have run into this scenario: The clients want a pool, and they also want a spa - but not just any spa will do. Through the years, these clients have been in the attached spas of friends' inground concrete pools, but this is not what they want. That's because they've also experienced portable spas and prefer their performance: superior jet action, diverse seating arrays and options, more features and

Pee’s in the Air

All of a sudden three weeks ago, the Internet caught fire with what seems to be its annual round of stories about urine in swimming pools. As best I can tell, the story's current incarnation began with a March 1 report on the Web site of National Public Radio about research conducted by a group of Canadian chemists: These folks figured out that they could

To win this backyard project in competition with three big Atlanta architecture firms, Shane LeBlanc had to call on his eye for grand-scale details in creating a delightfully asymmetrical poolscape -- one that looks polished, inviting and fun from every conceivable angle.

Riverside Recreation

Sometimes, things come together in just the right way. I'd been called in to a multimillion-dollar property with a large, three-year-old house on it, right next to the Chattahoochee River on the northwestern fringe of Atlanta. There was an existing pool, but the homeowners wanted something new - a composition that befitted the home's elegance and said more about