training
'Touch the Wall': Missy Franklin, Kara Lynn Joyce Swim on Film
Compiled and Written by Lenny Giteck ‘Swimming Pool’ Is One Delightful Animated Short with a Surprise Twist
In 2001, as part of his ‘Aqua Culture’ column in WaterShapes, Brian Van Bower penned a thought-provoking piece entitled “Quality Don’t Come Easy.” In it, he decried what he saw as a dearth of quality craftspeople in the watershaping trades — and in the broader construction industry as well. “Time and again,” he noted, “I commiserate with colleagues who just can’t find good people who are dedicated to
It's a plain fact: Few designers weigh maintenance as heavily as other elements of a design when creating gardens for their clients. Most will routinely ask whether the client wants a low-maintenance environment or one that requires a little more work and may yield a greater abundance of flowers or other desirable features, but the consideration typically ends there. And this is so despite the fact that by leaving maintenance out at the design level, landshapers often doom themselves to
Most people move easily through the world, enjoying the scenery without really thinking about what makes those surroundings visually appealing (or not). Science tells us that the human eye can see about seven million colors and that our minds instinctively perceive depth and dimension. This visual capacity enables most of us to move around without bumping into things, some of us to swing at and somehow hit a golf ball and, in the case of a beautiful garden (we can hope), all of us sense pleasure and maybe a bit of
Elevating the way we do things in this industry means addressing our gaps in knowledge on several levels. First, excellence means understanding the aesthetic side of watershaping - design traditions, art history and the nature of visual appeal. Second (and right in step) is the need to know how to build various types of systems properly. As an industry, in other words, we need to know how to avoid mistakes. In February, Genesis 3 staged a construction school in Orlando - and what follows isn't a commercial; rather it's a point of departure for a discussion long overdue in our industry. What struck me is that
There are those in this business who are extremely adept at selling, and I'm definitely not one of them. I get by, but it's never been my long suit by any means. I've always admired the good salespeople I've met, and I fully accept the hard reality that to build a watershape at any level, one must sell it first. But I came up on the design/construction side of the watershaping business, and I've never found a clear way past the fact that, for me, sales has always been an area where I consistently have plenty of room for personal growth and improvement. I know that selling is important not only because it brings business through the door, but also because it sets the stage for everything that follows as a project progresses. As practiced by real professionals, I've observed that it's much more about
During the five years I've been writing this column for WaterShapes, I've been asked by a number of people how I manage to find the time to write this column, make presentations at trade shows, teach at Genesis 3 schools and conduct my own design/consulting business. I get the distinct impression that these questions have much less to do with curiosity about the power of time management than with questions about why I'd even bother to extend my focus beyond my primary business of
Elevating Your Game