landscape

Lightcraft Expands Its Bistro String Lighting Line
Lightcraft Outdoor Environments (Chatsworth, CA) has introduced the Bistro line of string lighting for outdoor…
2014/1.2, January 22 — Celebrating Roberto Burle Marx, Tropical Dreams, Making Waterfalls and more
January 22, 2014 www.watershapes.com ESSENTIAL A Master at Work When it comes to identifying those…
Designing for Access
This video is a great example of the phenomenon known as "mission creep":  We started out with a discussion of what's involved in making a residential swimming pool and spa accessible to someone who uses a wheelchair - a good and worthy subject on its own - but the project so perfectly illustrates a couple of additional points that we kept the camera rolling. The video covers one specific ramp in fine detail, but I want to stress two more general points about planning for wheelchair access:  First, a properly sloped ramp
Designing for Access
This video is a great example of the phenomenon known as "mission creep":  We started out with a discussion of what's involved in making a residential swimming pool and spa accessible to someone who uses a wheelchair - a good and worthy subject on its own - but the project so perfectly illustrates a couple of additional points that we kept the camera rolling. The video covers one specific ramp in fine detail, but I want to stress two more general points about planning for wheelchair access:  First, a properly sloped ramp
A Pool-Lighting Primer
In far too many cases, lighting in and around backyard swimming pools is an afterthought – and sometimes I get the impression that there’s not much thought involved at all. As I see it, our clients deserve better than an easy, one-size-fits-all approach, and that’s the main reason I developed the brief video presentation linked below:  I wanted to give homeowners a bit of information that would help them understand both the importance of good lighting and get them ready to discuss a variety of available design solutions. As I suggest in the video, the old-style, under-the-diving-board placement of a 500-watt incandescent bulb should never
World’s Fountain
When the weather cooperates, Seattle is a breathtaking place.  I particularly enjoy approaching the city from the water:  The skyline is backed by tall mountains and offers lessons in scale, proportion and visual integrity you just don’t get from a typical cityscape. My very first visit to Seattle, however, took place long before I had
Planting a Pool
When these clients decided that they wanted to have a swimming pool, they knew above all else that they did not want another box of blue water.   By contrast, as avid patrons of Disney World, the Princeton, N.J., homeowners had decided that their pool should be what they called “Disney natural” – not as completely naturalistic as a real pond, but natural enough so that they and their children could
Up on Rocky Top
When you work on projects in which stone is commonly measured in the thousands of tons and streams are frequently described in fractions of miles, you’re not easily impressed by size.  This job, however, was remarkably vast – a project driven by creative passion and a client’s desire to
A Fountain Revised
When I drove to downtown Los Angeles a few months ago to take photographs of Ricardo Legorreta’s glorious purple aqueduct in Pershing Square, I parked a few blocks away in a lot near the civic center. It was a gorgeous day, so I decided to linger a while and take in Grand Park – a large, new green space stretching between
Building Walls, Stone by Stone
It usually catches people off guard when I say so, but when it comes to building dry-stacked stone walls, the installer’s awareness of local climate and soil conditions is paramount to a project’s success. It’s about more than materials, in other words, or more than