“We want a WOW! when people look out of the house. We also want to show off the view.” A major low trough fountain and pond coming off an extended patio and walkway did the trick.
Mix garden and patios
Two patios for outdoor living: one off the dining room, another off the master bedroom. Concrete stepping pads with creeping thyme link the two, passing by a pond and two waterfalls.
Instead of a shade structure, there’s an extendable awning that has a roll-up shade to block direct western sun.
Lighting under the fountain creates a “dancing” effect, working with path lights to create usable spaces day and night.
The original concrete received an overlay, making it look like tile. This let us seamlessly extend the patio by adding new concrete and running the overlay over both slabs.
Instant decision
This remains a record for turnaround time. We presented the concept, they looked at it and said, “Go!”. We finished the drawings and the landscape was on its way to installation in about a month from when we started.
Lessons
- Contractors don’t always read details. There were three return pipes from the upper trough on the detail, but he only installed one – three pipes were shown on the note, but since they overlapped he missed that part. In the future, we made sure that we showed multiple views in case nobody read the notes.
- Green macaws can be ferocious! The husband got a bird that chased his wife around, acting like Tyrannosaurus Parrot. Yes, you really could see that birds evolved from dinosaurs!
- Frogs, especially Pacific chorus frogs, sing quite well and loudly. These people loved this sound of the country (I do, too!). But if frog serenades aren’t your thing, use a water feature that isn’t frog accessible. Of course, if you’re someplace with a decent frog population, they’ll sing anyway – just farther from the house.
- Creeping thyme, while quite attractive, requires a lot of weeding. These people were willing to have it done. Others are not: they use artificial turf in the joints to keep things simple.
- Morning glories – the perennial kind – are quite invasive if their planting area is not carefully considered. In this case, they sprawl along the downslope fence where they don’t bother anything. They also attract wonderful large, black carpenter bees.
- We don’t have a lesson for the concrete overlay. It lasted at least five years, but it would be interesting to see how it looks now. The stuff did not have a lifetime guarantee – but it did at least look better after five years than stamped/colored/dust on concrete.
- Lighting has come a long way since then. We now have LED lights that come in all kinds of sizes and shapes, allowing us to find the optimum effect. Back then, there was no practical linear lighting, either (nor was linear lighting affordable!).
- Digital cameras have come a LONG way since then! There is very little detail in these images. Today, you’d see every leaf and grain of sand – and the colors would be much more saturated.