runoff
In most watershapes, we circulate and treat water through use of pumps and filters – and although we still don’t think about it much these days, we do so because fresh water is in precariously short supply and we can’t simply fill and dump it as we please. Yet even a perfect watershape – that is, one devoid of leaks, never subject to splash-out and never in need of backwashing – occasionally requires the addition of new water if only because evaporation will carry it away, bit by bit. In fact, there’s no way to cut Mother Nature out of her share, or to keep her from
Like it or not, we’re all on the front lines of the environmental sustainability movement. In fact, as shapers of water and land, few are in better positions than we are to make a difference, with many of us frequently working alongside architects, municipal officials and developers and being asked to design and implement green approaches that minimize a given project’s effects on its surrounding environs. As I see it, this offers us not only a golden opportunity to shape the future of land development and architecture, but also to rise from
In recent centuries, watershapers have done a tremendous job of figuring out how water behaves in visual and aural terms and learned how to use those characteristics to make strong aesthetic impressions. Now that we’re entering an era in which environmental concerns are of increasing importance, however, we’re being challenged to think differently about water, how it affects us physically and the essential role it plays in maintaining a healthy world. That challenge is not insubstantial: As a species, we’ve done a great deal to squander water as an asset, whether by contaminating and otherwise polluting natural bodies of water or by treating pools and other watershapes with harsh chemicals. Isn’t it ironic that spas, which exist primarily so we can
Conserving water in a serious way is something many of us have had to do at one time or another. Whether it has resulted from drought or some other condition affecting local supplies, we know that any sort of shortage has significant implications not just for us, but for our communities, clients and landscapes as well. In those landscapes, water conservation is about finding ways to reduce water use and coming up with more efficient ways to use it. This is essential to ensuring the survival of plants (and our livelihoods) and has to do with giving gardens the amount of water they need to thrive: Too little, and plants will shrivel up and die; too much, and many will drown just as surely. For the most part, what landshapers encounter is the need to cope with shortfalls and pronounced dry spells rather than floods, which is why most professionals install irrigation systems that make it easier for
A rainstorm is a good thing: It gives us water, fills our lakes and streams, feeds our crops and landscapes and arguably makes our way of life possible. But if there's too much of that good thing, it can also irreparably damage homes, roadways, curb and gutter, crops, landscapes and other elements of the environment, particularly when we've altered the topography to suit our own purposes. The importance of erosion control and the need for including it in any land-altering project has been underscored through the years by numerous disasters, including landslides that have resulted in property destruction and even
Think about what happens when rainwater falls on an impervious surface in a big outdoor parking lot studded by the occasional tree: The water dampens the surface, which instantly becomes saturated. Only a minute percentage of water that penetrates the trees' canopies to reach their curb-bound planters becomes available to the trees' roots. The rest almost immediately starts flowing to drain grates or perimeter drainage details and is lost to a stormwater-collection system. The trees are helped only marginally by the life-giving rain, and the water
Throughout recorded history, people have tried to control the elements in every which way they can. We plant trees to block the wind, build levees to hold back rising river water and dikes to hold back the seas. We build skyscrapers that defy gravity, winds and earthquakes. For all of this ingenuity, however, we sometimes don't do a very good job. When our efforts to control the elements fail on a large scale, we witness catastrophes that
Everyone knows that hanging a pool, pond, or spa off a slope can make quite a dramatic statement, which is probably why so many great watershapers love working on hillsides. But the project doesn't begin and end with the vessel: In fact, placing a watershape on an incline also presents a range of landscape-related issues that must be addressed, whether it's a matter of aesthetics, code or safety requirements or simple
