placement

Designing with Water Plants
I feel like I'm working backward:  First, I told you about a gargantuan water lily and its very specific requirements, then I offered a more general look at water lilies that will thrive in almost any pond.  Now I'm going to give you some ideas and tips for designing with all types of water plants. It might have been more logical to approach things the other way around, but the important thing is that we're ready to complete the package and talk about ways of incorporating lilies and water plants of other sorts into beautiful, overall planting designs. As always, I will avoid getting too specific with recommendations.  Instead, I'll stick to basic
Bold Outcroppings
Let's talk about really big boulders - the five- to eight-foot kind that weigh in at two to five tons apiece - and how they should be integrated into watershapes.   The whole process of placing these big boulders begins with the design of the pool and relates to the kind of scale you're trying to achieve.  Big boulders make other features seem small by comparison and can often overwhelm (rather than accent) a design if
Night Visions
It's a simple fact:  No matter where you are on the globe, ultimately it's dark exactly half the time.  So no matter how beautiful your watershapes may be, if you don't fully consider lighting as a key component of your projects, you may be robbing your work of half its potential for pleasing your clients.   That makes it a bottom-line issue, because lighting adds real value to most any watershape installation with a long list of benefits.  For starters, it extends the time a watershape can be used beyond daylight hours.  It also adds