natural
Living Canopies (University Park, MD) has created a line of Living Umbrellas that feature live…
It was a great project: The client called us in to look at a sloping backyard for which his one and only wish was an environment that would be "organic and pre-existing" - that is, a composition that looked as though it had been there forever, long before the adjacent home entered the picture. That sort of look is our stock in trade at Outdoor Republic, a Pleasanton, Calif.-based firm that specializes in the use of artificial rock. As is often the case, we became involved after the homeowner had
Mountain Laurel Handrail (Franklin, NC) offers unique deck-railing systems made from real-wood frames filled with…
Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I can sometimes look like a rock outcropping myself: Whatever it is, I love working with big chunks of stone in my pond projects. More than any single design element I can deploy, there is no other component that's more important when it comes to making my work look as though it's been there
In just a few days, my wife and I will be heading out on a road trip that will take us to Yosemite and then on to the eastern slope of California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains. It’s been a while since we took a trip like this one. Last time, we had a great camping spot reserved in a meadow high above Yosemite Valley. When we arrived in the middle of that June, however, the campsite was still under about 14 feet of snow, so we had to make do in what was, because so many higher-elevation sites were
We recently completed a project that truly thrilled a pair of well-traveled, highly educated clients: It was a large, complex waterfall-and-pond composition in the sloping backyard of an upscale home in an affluent southern California neighborhood. There were a number of reasons why the project worked so well, but if I had to break it down to one thing more than any other, it had to do with the range of edge treatments we used within the available space. On the side nearest the house, we established a clean lawn-meets-water detail – very disciplined in appearance and obviously man-made. Directly across the pond was a set of rugged waterfalls – much wilder and basically untamed. Bracketing those features, we filled shallow areas with emergent plants and hiding places for fish and frogs. It was a well thought out plan, certainly right for the space. But I know for a fact that
I envy landscape architects and designers and your involvement in the design of everything from small, intimate residential spaces to sweeping acreage intended for public use. This creation of "exterior spaces for human occupation," as some have called it, is a
There's a fascinating conceptual relationship between man-made bodies of water and those created by nature. On the one hand, the most accomplished
Building a stream that looks as though it was actually completed by Mother Nature is no small challenge. To make the illusion work, the watershaper quite literally "shapes" the basic elements of the stream - its path, width, depth, outcroppings, falls, transitions and plantings - all with an eye toward mimicking natural designs. To a large degree, the process is different from that of designing and building a pond, pool or fountain. In those cases, the watershape generally goes in the ground almost exactly where and how it's been drawn. With streams, however, the differences between
