Ponds, Streams & Waterfalls
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
Tucked into a small cove in the mountains behind La Quinta in California's lower Coachella Valley, The Quarry Golf Club is hidden, ultra-private and basically unknown to all but members of the golfing elite and the wealthy few who play the course. First conceived by entrepreneur Bill Morrow and designed by renowned golf course architect Tom Fazio, the course is a prime example of just how beautiful golf courses can be - and of how critical a role landscaping and watershapes can play in defining their character and aesthetics. Our challenge was to embroider the course's 18 PGA-sanctioned, championship-caliber holes with
The process of designing a watershape or garden usually requires the designer to answer a number of questions - the vast majority of them having to do with seeing the water and the landscape. Indeed, from considerations of color and scale to managing views and ensuring visual interest within the space, much of the designer's skill is ultimately experienced by clients and visitors with their eyes. But what if your client is blind or wheelchair-bound or both? How do you design for them? What colors do you use in your planting design? Would you even care about color? How will they move through the space and what experiences will await them? What would be the most important sensory evocation - sound, fragrance or texture? These are the sorts of special questions we asked ourselves after being approached by clients who had the desire to create a sensory garden for visually impaired and physically handicapped people. The experience shed a whole new light on the power of non-visual aesthetics and prompted me to
To make a pond or stream successfully "natural," the designer and installer must know what it takes to produce a convincing illusion that the end product is actually a naturally occurring body of water. It's no secret in the trade that this illusion is made or broken at the edges, where the physical boundaries between waterway and the hardscape and plantings must be both precisely controlled and completely concealed. Necklaces of stone won't cut it, nor will waterlines sharply defined by lines of terrestrial plants. In fact, the challenge here is to make visually linear boundaries disappear, and that's a tall order for even the best pond/stream designers and builders. In my own projects, I work almost every day in tweaking and refining my approaches to these margins and edge treatments, and I've come up with many ways to enhance the natural appearance of my ponds and streams. In recent years, I've been honing a technique for landscaping in and around the water that's given my work an entirely new dimension: It's a type of planting container I call a "dirt pocket" - a simple structure that lets me plant a broad range of non-aquatic plants directly in contact with
Take the world's most prolific consumer technology company on one hand and, on the other, its desire to augment its corporate headquarters with a natural exterior environment intended to capture geological processes that span millions of years: It's a collision of present and past, of technology and nature, that is filled with meaning as well as exciting potential. Those sorts of thoughts and paradoxes were somewhere on everyone's minds as we approached the design and installation of a grand-scale watershape at Microsoft's Redmond, Wash., corporate campus. Our aim: to create a spectacular and entirely
Sometimes it's the small things that give a project its character and value. In the case of landscape design and installation at the Cross Valley Water District facility, we were able to take a relatively modest property and transform it into a demonstration campus that illustrates how man-made environments can be used to enhance the natural surroundings and meet the needs of human beings - and do it all with grace and harmony. I became involved in this project in June 1998, when I was approached by Brandt McCorkle, Lee Beard and Galen Page of Page & Beard Architects. That firm had been chosen to design the water district's new headquarters building and had developed a craftsman-style structure that blended perfectly with its rural, wooded surroundings. Set on five acres in Clearview, Wash., the district office serves
The Pacific Northwest is full of spectacular scenery. From where I live near the Puget Sound, for example, you can see the Olympic range running along a peninsula to the west and the Cascade range off to the east. Looking southeast, Mt. Rainier is a silent, majestic sentinel silhouetted against an ever-changing sky. It's a beautiful place to live and perfect when it comes to design inspiration - especially when your work is creating naturalistic gardens and watershapes. One of the most spectacular waterfalls in the entire northwest is just a short drive up Interstate 90 from me, a place called Snoqualmie Falls. Local hiking trails are dotted by scores of perennial waterfalls that cascade down mountainsides. For me, there is nothing more refreshing than clambering up a steep grade and rounding the corner to find a misty, shady waterfall. It invigorates the soul and encourages one and all to keep climbing in the hope of seeing even more spectacular scenery. The attractions of nature and its inherent beauty are much enjoyed by people who live around here. In recent years, I've seen a trend toward bringing slices of that grandeur down to a residential scale in gardens that use water in motion as a key feature. It's the water that
