plants
The project is complete. You've put the last touches on the landscaping, the swimming pool and spa are up and running, the pond and its water lilies are ready to be joined by some colorful fish, and the expanse of stone decking has been tailor-made for your clients' entertaining pleasure. You've managed to achieve exactly the look they originally imagined, and now they can sit back and enjoy it - or can they? The answer will be a resounding "yes" only if you took the time to consider the longer-term effects their beautiful new plants might have on the watershapes and decks. Partly, the concern over longer-term effects is about what certain types of plants can do as far as dropping leaves and what that can mean with respect to maintenance. Partly, too, it is about
Montecito is home some of the grandest estates on the West Coast, but relatively few people know about it or where it is. A sleepy little town, it lies several miles east of Santa Barbara and some 80 miles or so northwest of Los Angeles. From the beautiful hilltop estates that dot the landscape, you can see Santa Barbara's wharf and downtown in the foreground, with sweeping vistas of the Pacific Ocean dominating the horizon. The big ranches of Montecito are dotted with hundreds of watershapes inspired by the Spanish-Colonial and Moorish architecture that surround them. Most were installed as part of the Spanish Revival movement that took hold among architects and landscape designers all over California through the first half of the 20th Century. The revivalists' octagonal and quatrefoil fountains and courtyards provide a visual link to the state's Spanish heritage. Fueled by the explosion of Hollywood's movie industry during this time, the combination of money, lots of open land and a popular architectural style resulted in creation of some of the most beautiful estates anywhere in the world - none more so than a property named Cima del Mundo, Spanish for
So you read my last article and were so excited about Amazonian Water Lilies that you'd decided to talk some clients into going for it. But alas, after measuring their yard, you recognize that you won't have enough room to accommodate the gargantuan watershape you'll need to host such an immense plant. But your clients are still hot to trot with something unusual, even after you've accepted the fact that
Now comes the fun part. The final stage of building a stream is where all of the planning and close attention to the stream's earthen substructure, transitions in elevation, liner alignment and hydraulics come into play as you move to build in details that effectively mimic nature. In the first two installments of this series (click here for part 1, here for part 2), I discussed in detail how you excavate and grade the site, place the major transition stones, lay in the liner and install
This really wasn't a job for the timid. The ground was unstable, access was limited, and the customer could afford to make massive changes along the way. Other than that, of course, the project was a piece of cake. The truth is, I enjoy a good challenge. People who know me well are aware that I revel in tackling jobs that test my mettle - and this was definitely one of those cases. Ultimately, it turned out to be one of the most satisfying and beautiful projects I've been involved with in a long while. The site is located on
What is good lake construction? What makes some pristine and beautiful while others seem fetid and slimy? To discover the answer to these and other questions, we need to start by defining what we mean by "lake." It may seem arbitrary, but the distinction can be an important one, especially to people who own them. You don't want to insult anyone by calling their lake a pond or lagoon, for example. By the same token, you don't want to seem ill-informed or unprofessional in referring to their waterfeature as a lake. Given the different
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
To my way of thinking, one of the most fundamental considerations in any landscape design has to do with understanding how the major elements blend visually with each other and their immediate surroundings. When that design includes water - be it a pond, stream, fountain, pool or spa - the key to effective visual blending depends to an overwhelming degree on how you define the internal boundaries within the design. This is so because of a couple of crucial visual concepts: First, we all know that
