Ponds, Streams & Waterfalls
Watershaping advanced by leaps and bounds from 1999 through 2004 – a journey of artistry…
Watershaping advanced by leaps and bounds from 1999 through 2004 – a journey of artistry…
So often, design comes down to an ability to see patterns. I first learned this from my mother, a dressmaker who had an uncanny ability to look at garments for which there were no sewing patterns and then sit down and make them from scratch. I seem to have inherited this talent, taking in a barren landscape and quickly visualizing how it will look with plants, rocks and water. For this, I am happily in her debt. Not everyone comes across such a gift by birth, but I believe that the ability to visualize is something most any watershaper can develop through experience and by taking the time to learn the "language" of any
When people talk about how much they love living in the desert, I've come to believe that what they really mean is that they love living in an oasis looking out onto the desert. That's profoundly ironic, but my clients in St. George, Utah, have all chosen for one reason or another to move to an extraordinarily arid place and seem universally to crave the presence of water in their immediate surroundings. This is indeed one of the most important things they're looking for in homes in our developments. It's one of the reasons why
When I first walked the four acres of wooded ravines of what would later be christened "The Garden of Wind and Pine" at the heart of the Garvan Woodland Gardens in Hot Springs, Ark., I was both delighted and daunted by the experience. The delight came in the site's sublime natural beauty, which reminded me of tromping through the woods as a child - an activity I enjoy to this day. As for my sense of unease, I don't know which was more significant: the expansiveness of the dry drainage ravines that were to be converted to ever-varying cascades and streams, or the omnipresence of ticks and poison ivy. When I made my first visit in the fall of 1999, the site was part of an undeveloped 210-acre woodland parcel on the shore of Lake Hamilton given to the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville by Verna Garvan. She had long seen the peninsula as the ideal setting for a botanical garden and had spent two decades developing her vision, planting camellias and azaleas and a rose garden and commissioning a pavilion by the architect Fay Jones and his partner, Maurice Jennings. I had worked in Fayetteville before, crafting a
Even compared to other spectacular facilities established by Silicon Valley's high-flying software industry, Oracle's corporate campus is truly impressive. The mirrored-glass architecture and warm, meticulously maintained grounds are only the start of the story. As you dig deeper, you find a range of employee-oriented amenities both inside and outside the buildings that make it tough to do anything but admire the audacity involved in creating such a workplace - and envy the people who work there. The management at Oracle makes no bones about it: All of the opulence is designed to attract and retain employees capable of developing cutting-edge software systems. That's why you'll see designer furniture in the offices, international cuisine in the restaurants and beautiful artwork throughout the compound. It's an amazing place, and one that has been scrupulously maintained since construction was completed in the early 1990s. The watershapes reflect the management's lofty sensibility and are an integral part of an overall scheme of plazas, rolling lawns, pathways and places to relax, meet or socialize with fellow workers. Our role since 1998 has been to
Finding ways to blend the angular rhythms of modern architecture with the sweeping splendors of nature constitutes one of the more difficult challenges faced by today's watershapers. In the case of the project pictured on these pages, we were contacted in 2002 about an enormous, modern-style home on Mercer Island overlooking the shore of Lake Washington, right near Seattle. The property was being remodeled, and the owners wanted a set of watershapes that would enhance the beauty of the two-acre estate while more convincingly integrating the geometry of the structure with its woodsy lakefront setting. The solution: a set of watershapes that start near the house with perfect geometric forms that stick to the architect's original design, then moves down the hillside through various transitional stages to a pond feature that looks like part of
Clear, polished water in well-designed, well-built lakes, ponds and streams: What better way to communicate a powerful message about the value of the properties that surround them? In a commercial setting, for example, clear water in a meandering string of ponds will readily translate into office space filled with happy tenants, while the murky-water alternative could be just the eyesore that holds down the image and limits the facility's financial success. The same principle works for watershapes at apartment complexes, where unseemly streams will almost certainly draw complaints from unhappy residents while cool, translucent water will become a point of pride and source of relaxation for tenants who otherwise might reflexively hold their noses as they pass by. Or consider the private estate where ponds are meant for swimming: Without question, these waters must have a crystalline clarity that attests to the water's safety and potential for recreation. Delivering this level of water quality is more and more a part of
As modern building materials have been developed, 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 qualify a material for use. Instead, standards of durability and enduring
Graced by an abundance of beautiful, natural streams, cascades, rivers and lakes spread across spectacular native landscapes, Utah is a dream location for watershapers. Not only is there a rising demand for crafted streams, ponds and cascades that look like they really belong, but the state itself is also a genuine design laboratory. Indeed, I send our crews out into the "wild" periodically to do nothing more than hike up and down local watercourses to see how Mother Nature does things. These waterways are
