plant selection
'I do not understand how anyone can live without one small place of enchantment to turn to.' - Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings As watershapers, we draw upon the sound and presence of water to soothe souls, using nature to guide and inform us. In the small pond project featured here, for example, the watershape component of the composition is meant to
'As fall looms before us,' noted Stephanie Rose in kicking off her Natural Companions column in the September 2000 issue of WaterShapes, 'it's timely to consider a question that should be a factor in every design we prepare: To drop or not to drop?' 'This question is a good one to ask before you start planning and has to do with how much natural debris your clients will be willing to fish out of their watershapes once you're gone. In other words, while it's always important to decide
As mentioned previously in this video series, one of the key points distinguishing frog ponds from most other modern backyard ponds is the fact that there's no circulation system of any kind - no pump to keep the water moving, no skimmer or filter to help keep it clean. That fact puts quite a burden on the frog-pond designer to make certain the water will be safe for tadpoles and attractive to the
When I first became involved with this project, the property was little more than a muddy slope - a dramatic piece of Panamanian topography that nobody had ever considered developing before my clients came along and decided to build a large, custom home. There was a reason it was available to them when they arrived: The building site was a logistical nightmare not only because of the topography but also because of the configuration of the lot. But they
Established as a wealthy man's weekend playground, this scenic, seven-acre slice of paradise on the Atlantic side of Islamorada in the Florida Keys is routinely used as the setting for fashion photography, commercials and films because of the archetypal way it expresses the "Keys Lifestyle." I was brought on board by Steve Siskind, the architect who designed the house. (He's done some spectacular residences through the years, but interestingly, he's never lived in a house and instead
At the start, a large number of ponds are all about the fish. From the planning stages through to completion, the goal is to create an environment in which koi and other beautiful specimens will thrive in an environment that is both balanced and self-sustaining. There’s a lot that goes into making these miniature ecosystems work, from good circulation and filtration systems to including places where the fish can retreat from the sun and predators. But when all is said and done, the key to achieving ongoing, sustainable balance has less to do with technology than it does with Mother Nature and
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 suspend disbelief and pretend that they were swimming in a pond. Before we came on the scene, the clients had
Growing as a designer is often a matter of seeing things from fresh perspectives. As one with roots in the pool industry, for example, I once thought first about water and about plants and softscape later (if at all). That bias isn't uncommon, of course: I know plenty of landscape architects and designers who think about plants first and only later consider water. It all has to do with our
