modest budgets

There’s a place in the world, says veteran watershaper Pete Cattano, for relatively modest swimming pools. Using a recently completed ‘garden pool’ to illustrate that point, he describes how great clients, an integrated landscape design, professional cooperation and careful construction can come together to deliver the best of everything swimming pools have to offer, even in a situation where the project’s scope and scale are quite down to earth.

Simple Green

Swimming pools don’t always need to be complex or innovative to be beautiful. In fact, I’d like to suggest that even the simplest of design programs, when handled well by the watershaper, can lead to outstanding results. The reasons are obvious and well known: With water, we manage the world’s most beautiful and alluring design material. If we do a good job, put that water in the right place and build our structures well, the potential for achieving gorgeous results is almost always within reach and we organize reflections, flows, sounds, hardscape and plants. If all of those elements are in control and integrated into the same thoughtful program, in other words, even the most basic of projects can be so aesthetically on target that it will elicit strong emotional responses. All of these factors were in play with the small pool discussed here: With just 800 square feet of surface area, it sits in the front yard of a modest but attractive home in the Five Towns area of New York’s Long Island and is distinguished by