Swimming Pool Design

A swimming pool is the ultimate backyard amenity. It's the center of family life with children spending much of their summers in the water. Other homeowners see a pool as a strong aesthetic element, the focus of the entire landscape. When pools include water features, unique lighting, specialty materials and design features, they have powerful influence on adjacent outdoor living spaces, particularly when well illuminated by night lighting.

It's vital to remember that a pool is just one part of the larger landscape. Therefore, it's best to use a landscape architect to design the pool as well as the rest of the site at the same time. All too often a pool contractor is employed first to design the pool without an overall site plan. The result is that your pool and landscape do not compliment one another, and you lose the opportunity to integrate options that provide more value for the same price.

Because pools are such an expensive proposition, it's important to give a lot of time to design. You'll only build it once, and therefore your choices of materials and detailing should be high quality and timeless so your pool design won't go out of style in the near future. Beware of fads. Question new materials before you invest. The rigors of weather and chemically treated water may have far reaching consequences for newer materials that have not stood the test of time and use.

Many homes with older pools are being upgraded, and that means the pool itself must be remodeled. Do not underestimate the cost and difficulty of such a proposition. Remodeling can cost almost as much as building a whole new pool. Problems with the old pool such as corroded rebar, leaking shell, or aged electrical and piping can be costly to repair because there is so much demolition involved. Designers and contractors should be experienced with remodeling pools before you decide who will take on your project and for how much.

Above all, stick with well known companies that have been in business a long time and will remain so into the future. With recent unpredictability in the economy, the risk of contractors going out of business is greater than ever before. Do your homework and research customer satisfaction because pools take time to build, and if you are left with an incomplete project by a shaky contractor, the cost of finishing it up with someone else is sure to exceed your budget.

Landscape Lighting Ideas - How to enhance your yard with professional outdoor lighting design

While many of us are working hard and putting in long hours on the job, we often don't get a chance to see our homes until after dark. Soft lighting in a dark outdoor environment is nothing short of magic. It provides a warm, inviting ambiance that beckons us outdoors. It creates mood, romance, and drama. It adds interest and intrigue to any setting. A growing number of homeowners are capturing this magic in their gardens through "nightscaping," one of the hottest trends in outdoor home improvement today.

Lighting can be one of the most important aspects of landscape and hardscape design, yet it is often overlooked or underdone. Proper outdoor lighting design allows you to highlight focal points and hide eyesores. It can also be used to enhance safety and security, to accent special trees or plantings, and to create a festive atmosphere for outdoor entertaining.

Landscape lights also serve a number of needs, from letting you walk safely down a flagstone path at night, to giving you a place to spend time with your family after school and work. Outdoor lights even deter burglars and reduce crime. Yet for homeowners, choosing which areas to light can be a challenge. Here, landscape professionals share their expert tips for lighting different areas of the landscape. If you’re planning for lighting in your landscape, this section will give you a better understanding of what to expect when landscape lights are installed, where the best places are to put lights, how to create effects with lights, and much more.

Landscape lighting is more than just shining some direct light at a walkway or up a tree. Not only are there techniques and methods for creating ambiance with lights, but some contractors even prefer to accent the architecture of the home rather than the trees or walkways or patio areas. Home lighting gives you the chance to highlight architectural features like pillars or columns, or enjoy the shadow play of lights on the craggy surface of stone veneer. “When you have a beautiful home, sometimes it’s more effective to light the architecture than the trees,” says TJ Wilcoxson of Alexon Design Group in Gilbert, Ariz. You can also pull features off the architecture and bring them into the landscape so the home and landscape feel integrated. “We’ll sometimes create a pillar using the same stone veneer as the home, and match the fixture on the pillar to the ones on the home,” says Barton. It’s professional tips like this that will help you learn about landscape lighting and make informed decisions when you’re working on your own projec.

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Garden Designers Roundtable: Ditching the Lawn

Of all the picture-perfect lawns I've seen, some of the most puzzling are located in ditches.

Yes, some folks are spending time, energy, and resources to keep their ditch bottoms covered with short green carpets of turfgrass. Are they doing it for the rest of us?

I don't know about you, but when

I see a person riding their lawnmower into their ditch, rather than thinking,

"What a good citizen and neighbor,"

I generally imagine the fabulous garden that could be growing in that ditch.

Or sometimes I just think, "Ooh, I hope they won't tip over."

If you get no pleasure from maintaining the lawn in your ditch, here's a suggestion: convert it to a beautiful low-maintenance garden that will benefit you and your local environment too.








The Benefits, In a Nutshell

Swale Gardens (also called Bioswales) are added to landscapes to help channel stormwater runoff.

Like their popular Rain Garden cousins, they collect rainwater from nearby roofs, pavement, and/or lawns and absorb that water into plants and soil. Unlike Rain Gardens, they also direct the flow of the excess water.

A well-planted ditch makes an ideal Swale Garden, which will benefit you and your local environment by:

• absorbing runoff,
• preventing erosion,
• improving water quality,
• capturing atmospheric carbon,
• helping to control populations of pest insects,
• adding biodiversity,
• beautifying your landscape, and perhaps even
• making it more comfortable and healthy for you, while
• reducing your weekly yardwork.