natural

Designing and building a stream is no small task. The usual scale of these projects, along with typically high customer expectations for a convincingly ‘natural’ look, combine to ratchet the difficulty level up several notches. Here, landscape designer Rick Anderson, who specializes in streams, shares his expertise in approaching these challenges as a guide to watershapers who aim to please with wandering waters of their own.

Where Streams Live

As I see it, there are six main types of watershapes: pools, spas, fountains, ponds, waterfalls and streams. Although there is tremendous variety within each category, I think most of us in the business would put pools, spas and fountains in one sub-group and ponds, waterfalls, and streams in another. Obviously, there's room for overlapping here - waterfalls installed with pools, for example, or fountains in the middle of ponds. The key distinction for me, however, is the closeness with which a pond, waterfall or stream must imitate