When COVID hit, pool builds went through the roof for us.  Now that we are on the other side, a slight easing has been felt but pools remain a significant chunk of our backyard planning.  In our professional journey, we have put in gunite pools and spas, above-ground swim spas, fiberglass pools, and vinyl liner pools.  This year we are shooting to complete a container swimming pool before Christmas.  We’ve planned lap pools for swimmers, plunge pools for weekend drinkers, and playful pools for those with kids.  We even planned a pool specifically around one client’s dogs, placing two sun ledges on either end of the pool for the four-legged friends.  So, we figured it would be interesting to summarize some of our experiences with various pool types; their use cases, positives and negatives, and with short comments on how they fit into a landscape, and budget. 

The unique beauty of being a coastal community with inland lakes at every turn comes with immense benefits.  Natural elements, environmental diversity, and exotic sunsets. Of course, we each celebrate taking advantage of that when we can and in a myriad of ways. Some of us are even blessed to own land in and around these natural elements. Without surprise, RootBound often gets hired to help folk navigate these settings. People want to swim, boat, sit, and rest with as deeply immersed experiences as possible. We get those questions regularly (my sea wall is failing, I want a deck over the bluff for views, wouldn’t a vanishing line pool be cool if it looked like it dropped into the lake?).

One of my personal favorite garden design styles is English Classic. Gertrude Jekyll, one of the first women talents in our field to become famous, is given credit for creating this design theory. She took the formality of Italian and French renaissance, that was not uncommon in England at the time, and mixed it with the playfulness and horticultural explorations from the peasant cottage gardens of the population.

I have a friend who, a number of years ago, was moving into a new house.  We were talking about the layout of furniture and for some odd reason it came up that he didn’t have a ‘side of the bed’.  This concept froze me in place.  At the end of the day when he and his wife got into bed, sometimes he would be on the one side and maybe the next night on the other.  Whoever got into bed first randomly decided on a side and the other followed suit.  It’s been 15 years and the idea still has me in a deep state of shock.  Conversely another friend, after splitting in a relationship, slept on the same side of a king bed all alone for years before she realized she didn’t’ have to, which is way more my speed.  Really, I ask, what kind of demented couple randomly gets into bed on different sides on different nights? 

At the end of the day, no matter how we assess the customer, frame the history or approach the economics of sustainability, if you are attempting sustainable design you have to look at the natural environment too.  And, like we study spaces through pencil and sketch we can be studying the environment the same. 

I remember my first native-meets commercial experience.  It was easily in the early 90’s.  I was designing at night and leading a crew during the day.  Like many site crews I was replacing all my calories, and maybe extras now looking back at pictures, by eating lunch at McDonalds.  I’m sure like many of you as you drive, meet new friends at their homes or move around your areas you snarkily critique the landscapes in which you move. 

Natives vs Nativar was an original ask when the APLD team discussed this theme of sustainability conscious pieces.  For many obvious and maybe less obvious reasons, which we will unpack later, I think this remains a very powerful dialogue within our planting design community.  However, understanding what a native is continues to be the stumbling block in this conversation. 

The United Nations defines sustainability as: “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” I begin this way because the term sustainability has felt a bit like a moving target in our society over the last 10-20 years. Many folks have their definition or application and most don’t align.

According to Google, lawns are the number one irrigate crop in America. Now I don’t typically use Google as a primary source, but when I drive from my house into the office every day, I pass mostly farmland, and to be honest grass still prevails. Most of it is non-irrigated grass, which makes me think it has to be the number one non-irrigated crop too. Granted this is a mid-west, rain abundant perspective. So, for the sake of conversation let’s just collectively agree we have a lot of grass here in the US. So what?

even though we didn’t have a word for our responsibility to create this equilibrium, we had centuries of observing the results of not being responsible.  It was many thousand years BC in Persia, when working the fertile crescent through newly developed irrigation methods, that they discovered soil salinization.  It was then that crop rotation became popular in order to rest the earth so that it could regenerate.

The first two months in this series laid a solid groundwork connecting our clients to sustainable designs.  Our clients have strong senses of regionalism and environmental identity.  This frames who they are.  And when spaces are planned within that context we see that those same clients are more encouraged to sustain our sites and therefor enhance sustainability overall. 

One of the things I find odd in academia and landscape architecture/design is the imbalance of types of spaces addressed through research.  Not even just research but I think it extends to awards, exposure and more.  Why is it that the park bordering the riverfront of “hometown USA” is seemingly more valuable than my own back yard?  Not that if we asked that question to a mixed group of academics, planners, designers and architects, we would hear conscious suggesting there is a hierarchy (parks over homes), but that’s how it feels.

For years I’ve looked at sustainability through the tint of a Landscape Designer’s view.  And, like many of you, read or dialogue with other professionals on best ways I can contribute to the cause as a professional.  I’ve also been asked to speak on sustainability and been involved in numerous groups who seek to add to the conversation outside of the green industry.

It was a warm August afternoon in 1995.  Not warm like many late summer days on the Bay, maybe 88?  However, in a full black suit, tie, vest, etc. and standing in the sun, it was hot.  The night before, Annapolis proper was flooded nearly to the doorsills of Middleton’s Tavern from a hurricane spinning east off the coast.  But, Sunday was clear.  We stood, South River at our back, along the edge of London Town’s bluff.

‘Permanent’ is so comfortable, reassuring and fixed.  We love permanent.  ‘Change’ however, is full of unknowns, counterintuitive to permanent and desperately uncomfortable.  Unfortunately, change is also ubiquitous, change is constant and the sooner we embrace the enigmatic nature of change that saturates our life the better.