A pre-holiday visit with our grandchildren and their parents earlier this month gave me the opportunity to return to one of my favorite Seattle-area attractions: The Bellevue Botanical Garden. Covering 53 acres with long, easy trails and generous, well-tended plant displays, the facility also includes expressive watershapes in a variety of forms. I took an immediate
'It's been a long time coming,' wrote Jim McCloskey in his WaterShapes World blog in December 2013: 'Just ten days ago, after nearly six months of grinding care and effort, the entirety of the WaterShapes magazine archive is now available online as it originally appeared
There's a lot to be said for working with the same homeowners through extended periods on various projects on single sites. From easier communications and familiarity with personalities to full awareness of site dynamics and the capabilities of local talent, the advantages of these long-term relationship quickly collect in long lists. In this particular case, we at Hess Landscape Architects (Lansdale, Pa.) have worked on one particular property for a pair of clients for ten years now. This has included a variety of projects on an estate that covers
As the year has rambled toward its conclusion, I've been reminded over and over that it's been an amazing 2018 for watershapers, watershaping and WaterShapes. q For watershapers, my sense is that 2018 has been a breakout year
It was the perfect confluence of needs and ideas: Mattamy Homes, a Canadian developer based in Toronto, was working on a project in Edmonton, Alberta - a new community called Stillwater that they wanted to elevate with an "amenity center." This key space, we learned, was meant to promote healthy, active lifestyles by offering residents a play area that would include both a skating rink and a unique splash pad. As planned, the community was set up with wilderness areas, hiking trails and other opportunities meant to encourage enjoyment of the great outdoors. To capture that spirit in the splash pad and playground, Mattamy Homes enlisted the services of Calgary, Alberta-based Park N Play Design, a designer and installer of custom indoor and outdoor recreation spaces throughout Canada. The resulting splash-pad design includes a large, custom-fabricated set of spray rings that provides fun for children of all ages while at the same time creating an eye-catching, artistic visual at the heart of
India's stepwells are truly amazing, but relatively few people know anything about them. Victoria Lautman wants to change all that, reporting on their long history in a book -- and in a series for WaterShapes on three of the country's most wondrous architectural and cultural treasures.
This edition of the WaterShapes newsletter carries two unusual articles. One is Victoria Lautman's piece on the stepwells of India; the other is Lauren Stack's look at water-related trends and the importance of helping more people learn to
In recent years, I've witnessed or participated in enjoyable conversations about the fact that pools, spas, fountains and other waterfeatures are now more complex than they've ever been. What I've heard and seen less often, however, is equivalent bantering about the fact that engineering plans for such projects must keep pace if these elaborate watershapes are to perform - as they should - well into the future. In this context of progress and success, it should trouble watershapers that large numbers of builders persist in relying on generic structural plans when it's time to break ground on their projects - even on those that
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