Steve Snedeker’s Landscaping and Gardening Blog

Inasmuch as we specailize in water features of all types, I will make some general comments here, then break them down into categories in future posts. But first, let’s take a stroll and see what it is about waterfalls that so catches our fancy:

(these are made to view enlarged – left click to do so, maybe even twice, for more detail)

Nature gives us these incredible sights which focus the senses, get us wet and still just fill us up with wonder.

We see Chaos and Order at once in the most raw natural waterfalls, as if Nature Herself made a miscalculation and She wants to remind us of the sheer destructive and awesome power of water itself. The sheer volume of noise alone makes you need to shout to be heard and silences even the busiest mouth (Quite a handy Nature Trip for some who will remain nameless ):

We look over the top of these – at our most curious – and we see why they exist and how unassuming they seem, wandering their way to such a ‘falling’ pass – then becoming something else entirely besides “just some swollen creek”.

Getting closer quiets the mind and reveals more – and we love it, wanting that at “our place!”

This one could be rough to imitate, in the end. This one you can walk under – (It’s Silver Falls in Oregon.)

There is truly nothing like the sound and motion of water in a landscape. Absolutely nothing outside of earthquakes and volcanos. Nature makes a scene with all those rushing and deafening roars or even its smaller lush and strangely full-throated gurgling sounds. Those of brooks or even the larger cascading monsters are all possible to reenact in a landscape, right out one’s own door. Well – that is, to a degree. In terms of sizes, we can manually construct some wild stuff, especially these days with the advent of all the tricky machinery at hand not only used for the construction itself but also for the amazingly efficient and long-lasting pumps we can produce to motor that water over an edge.  Here is a diesel-powered waterfall I once worked on:

And here is a City Scape – (same theme, water, water, water and lots of it, running fast!) – this is Ira Keller Falls in Portland, Oregon, with a skinny-dipping bloke, waiting for his opportunity. I can’t take this guy anywhere, I swear:

But, frankly, the chances are great we will end up settling for less at home. This, of course, is just a guess

More manageable, not quite so deafening, we opt for the same wonder, just on a different scale. Yes, we do Formal as well as Natural:

More natural:

The process is actually rather simple, in a way, with some decided conundrums, but many folks have done their own water features and of course landscapes quite admirably and successfully. Indeed, for those who are inclined, some of the very best water features I have ever seen are those of “puttering” homeowners.
Like all landscaping projects, constructing a waterfall system, no matter of what ilk, whether formal or natural, requires intensive labor. Excavations are required, rocks and liners placed, cement work, electrical puzzles need fixing as well as the many and varied engineering problems which have to be borne in mind, including settling of soils after excavation and the new weight of water itself.
Professionals who specialize in such constructions know most of these various items to watchful of.  Splash loss, for example, the subsequent water replacement, their times and duration. Indeed, even the replacement system iself, are huge issues unless one wants to consider manually filling his water with a garden hose daily in Summer when evaporation is such an issue.
In short, don’t let me misstate things – water features are fairly complex. They possess many puzzles, some which only appear later for the unwary. It must be said too – Add that they are costly. An installation of a water feature is a “marriage”, of sorts with the constructor. One wants to know those who constructed it and who are now most familiar with its installation will be around in later seasons to help guide the homeowner in the proper direction for maintenance issues. Having said this, a curious client and student can teach himself darn near all he needs to know. It isn’t rocket surgery, after all.

(click images to enlarge – they get bigger if you click again – most of them)

This is the front yard of the project in question. Those exceptionally healthy-looking Ponderosa Pines tell us we are quite a bit above Reno, Nevada. In fact, it is well on the route to Lake Tahoe via the highway which tops the hill about 15 miles later at 9,900 feet above sea level.

This clients were an older couple who were based both in San Diego and Reno. The man of the house had an extremely active interest in the landscape. He also had his “wish list” of items – he wanted a nice, roaring water feature off his back deck, a walkway bisecting the back yard with turnabouts/patios at each end and – he was adamant – a vineyard. He also wanted a gas-fed fire pit in one of the patios. The goal was to “complete” the total yard. Our interest therefore was pretty much completely out back where he often entertained and sat and considered ponderous thoughts like “Will Steve drink another wine?”   Great guy, generous but really involved. Anyway, so we went to work. We paved our way to the back yard with an access road and carried all you see 100′ to the “back 20″.

Pictures of this project pick up from the point of construction of the waterfall set at the back of his thin but 150 feet wide back yard. The falls sets up the running water in the creek and it is a rambunctious one, running a good rate of water with some serious sound qualities. From the raised deck above, I rate the sound factor as a home run. It is throaty and deep, but not overwhelming so no one has to raise a voice to be heard. I sort of regret not taking earlier pictures, but it should be fairly obvious that we did our typical build. Liner underneath and rocks placed to give as naturalistic a picture as possible. I also wanted the river course itself to be deep, so I excavated more than usual. I was interested in hiding underwater lighting under the water at various points and the raised level of observation would compromise that. It made for an interesting depth which somehow seemed more real than many others, as if formed from a true chasm.

Work also proceeded at other locations while we constructed the falls and creek.

As is obvious, it began getting cold. We were on the verge of Winter when we got underway and it did not disappoint. Just the same, planting in these conditions is still fine. At the very end is our “vineyard”. It also shows an antique wagon tucked in behind that we picked up at some second hand dealer and carted back to the job site on a trailer. It was pricey but it was effective. It gave an Old West sort of ambiance to the overall project which we later exploited with a wagon wheel or two in the landscape. The grape plants, by the way, grew from the day we put them in. Grapes really do have a remarkable growth rate when happy and – the fact is – they get happy in some pretty bad soils. Grapes are a landscaper’s friend, in my opinion. That is a reliable plant. These were green grapes, climatically suited for the Reno alkaline soils as well as the hard-freezing climate conditions. They simply thrived here. There was a monster crop at the end of the first year.

Here’s a late season look at the vineyard and the wagon on a dark November day as we hustle to try and get the stamped concrete walk in place. The flags and paint represent the excavations to come.

We begin excavating and calling for cement. It takes a couple of days to get everything set up just right. The excavated material, by the way, will be used to set a bearm to the creekward side of the walkway-to-be.

We got blessed by great and surprising amounts of sunshine for the period of the project and there were smiles all around. I remember worrying about some weather front which missed us. The set up took an extra day. There’s more work here than it appears!

Finally, we got it poured and our walkway was now completed.

We re-graded and smoothed out the bearms and planted some more plants, but we basically took off for the Winter after most of this. The next time we came back was about 3 months later.

Here’s a shot of one of the wagon wheels along with a wide angle look at the creek and the final basin (where the pump is) itself:

However, we did get a marvelously sunny day to get some pics before leaving.

When Spring rolled around, we were suddenly able to finish things. We had grass to lay, mulch to put in, more lighting to tweak, fertilizing on the mind, salvaging a couple of Winter-damaged plants – the usual Springtime stuff. We put in the grass in short order:

Things were very much taking shape now. We were on a definite finishing roll.

My buddy and work mate Raoul and I stand somewhat triumphantly over our “slain dragon”. This is the finished look at the source of the creek and the noise.

Another shot and one I feature in this blog a few other places. It’s a particular favorite because I think it reflects my sensibility about the “depth issue” of the creek as a slow moving but still-substantial artifice, as natural as we could make it. Yup, that is another wagon wheel!

A look at the Main Patio, at the opposite end of the property from the vineyard and wagon. This one has that gas-fed fire pit in the center, yet still has room for tables and chairs. Yes, I had some fun with the boulders, as usual. The “cut” between the boulders in the distance essentially drains the property in the event of overdoes of precipitation. It has a small rock creek dry bed of some real gorgeous river rocks. Plus, it works!

This was a design and build home run, one of my favorite ever projects. Not only were the people great but they allowed some license and were proud of the overall accomplishment. They also had a stash of incredibly good wine. Oh wait – I said that.

Anyway, here’s what it looked like in Autumn – and, yes, we did plant for it. Thise spectacular maples are by design. Down at the end are the grapes after one year. What’d I tell you?

Landscaping at the lunatic fringe of wealth, like carpeting at the lunatic fringe of wealth, or any other contracting trade, is its own class. Whereas it is a most heavenly possibility to help relieve these people from their overburdened wallets and bank accounts, the results can be disappointing, sad to say. Let’s just leave it at the point that not every encounter with the Uber-Wealthy is a positive experience. In fact, it’s about 50-50, the truth is.

I will absolutely not name names in my blog, other than referring to conversations of a casual or humorous nature. But I can tell of stories where people were strikingly miserable who were wealthy into the hundreds of millions and even billions. They’re people too! They need landscaping and all that stuff. Let’s just say – on a personal level – in many cases people get predictably suspicious of others when they have a lot. There is something to the adage that plenty yields some paranoia. Sometimes, a whole dam lot of it. In some cases, it becomes a threat to your own security. The rich play by their own sets of rules. In fact, many is the time that they make them up!

Anyway, rather than continue this line, knowing nothing we can say will change things that much, just know that merely working for impressive people with “beyond-impressive” homes is not some automatic entree to becoming rich one’s self. You can also go broke working for them – and almost just as easy. Sometimes – through no real fault of your own.

Here’s the third most expensive home in the US: (weighing in at a mere $100 million)

Here’s the pool! That’s marble, by the way.

Now, I admit, that was something of a freak show. In one case, it may well have been the most nervous time I ever spent landscaping. We literally had to transport ourselves in a huge excavator, complete with about an 8 ton boulder in our grasp, for placing in a water feature I regret to say I have no pictures of. The slightest rock or article in the way as we crept inside could have tipped the machine enough to scar the walls – or worse, of course – of the granite facing, there was that little tolerance. In fact, we graded and raked towards a perfect finish underneath, just so we could get that monster machine between the walls without incident. It was a white knuckle experience, right off the get go. In fact, as interesting as this project might seem to an outsider, it was a small version of Hell in many ways, there were so many eyes, including the owners – on us at all times. Nor did we last – lol, there were a total of 5 different companies who worked on the project, jettisoned one after another like players on a chessboard. Some projects are not worth the trouble, frankly. And that’s a tough lesson.

Now here’s a mere 17 million dollar home. Now we’re slumming!! Actually, this homeowner was in the dumps at various times for reasons which were his own, lol. I confess, I never really cared for the dude. He once referred to it as a “dump”. Go figure. Fortunately, we were contracted by the builder, rather than the owner, so we almost got paid completely! Oh – I almost forgot – it’s rare to get all your money with many of the more miserable of these types. What really makes that odd is the generation of higher prices to begin with for the proactive contractor, familiar with their ways. I once literally gave a rebate to a client in this category of wealth because he paid his bill in full. I’m not kidding, either. It may well have been the best few bucks I ever spent too. He sent more people my way than I had time to do.

So here’s what $450,000 worth of landscaping will get you: (bear in mind the more open areas were filled with perennial and annual plants and some very gorgeous lamps and lighting which were articles of beauty on their own at about $250 a piece, copper tulips, in fact, with blooms for lights, all multicolored. It is typical of this site that my pictures are made either during construction or soon – like real soon – after completion. We then move on.)

That waterfall there is a two part deal, branching out at the top and going in both directions. Here is the other side of it:

From the street, here is a longer range view:

Nor were these the only water features! We installed this one up by the front door.

It’s rather hard to make out owing to the fact that our drip irrigation  sprayers were on at the time. Those Aspens, by the way, were our additions. 30′ feet high, it was a mighty tight fit putting them in so close to the house. They each weighed a couple of tons and were placed by a monstrous hydraulic tree spade, along with some Noble and White Firs we placed at other locations nearby.

Anyway, here is what the little water feature looked like in process. From this:

To this, then the finished product above. What was funny was that we decided to toss this in as a “toss-in”:

It had one humongous rear patio of stamped concrete:

The stone work was a triumph, however. These walls really add to the overall ambiance terrifically:

The driveway was an interesting mix of brick pavers and stamped concrete.

I really enjoyed the brick work on this project. It worked out outstandingly. Note the Firs in the picture above. Those we also planted, same with the Aspens. Here is a look at the large trees we inserted before we worked on the pavers. One is before we finished the project and the other is after. Of perhaps even more interest is a look at the wild numbers of electrical wiring, pipes and the general traffic in underground services, shown only slightly in the picture just below. Wiring for lights was inserted at the same time as the irrigation piping, irrigation wiring, electrical for the pumps running the water feature (220V) and even power for the heat tape and security gate which goes under the brick driveway:

Stressful at times, yet often resulting in sublime satisfaction for purely selfish reasons as an artisan and tradesman, projects such as these are what we literally die for.

I have a few of these cataloged and I await some pictures from my brother which include other outrageous projects, all of which mixed pleasure and pain in ample amounts – and in every conceivable way.

(click any image to enlarge)

As a devoted fan of water in gardens and cities, I find very few things to match its otherwise totally absorbing effect on the mind and soul, set as they are in such urban concentrations. There are few more jarring effects on one while patrolling city streets to match running across a small park devoted solely to some water feature – as if someone insisted on reminding us of natural laws.

Here is a meek little look at the top of one such construction from downtown Portland, Oregon. (It would figure that Lawrence Halprin would have been integral in its making – I have seen few landscape architects since the days of Frederick Olmstead (link in this blog) who have done more electrifying work in changing the ambiance of busy downtown areas into something more compelling and interesting for plain old people just like us.) Anyway, here are my best friends, Steve and Jody Bare, enjoying the sounds and sensations from the top of this fascinating place.

I love the insertion of those Japanese Black Pines in their solo positions smack in the midst of all this water activity. They add yet more Nature, but with their own severe and gorgeous style. Here is another perspective of this small city park, set in the middle of town. The utter placidity mixes with the severity of concrete to provide a sort of soulful splendor no one would ever have imagined could be constructed from such simple and seemingly incongruous products like cement and water. For my money, this is true art.

It’s difficult to get a true perspective on the sheer scope and size of this great water feature. One camera won’t do it justice. But here is an interesting perspective on the sheer power of it all as an extremely handsome – if aging – hillbilly checks it out and I snap his picture from above:

From the top, up some stairs and over on the top side, the noise lessens some and a different and still-interesting perspective emrges as we get to know it better. It literally cries to be explored. So – hey – we sure did!

Climbing:

Climbing:

At the top:  (The top courtyard is continually bisected by feeder streams originating back up the way and fed in the geometric planes and rectangluar streams onto the falls themselves. Severe cuts into the courtyard, studded with these gorgeous individual Pines, make it simply breath-taking to be around. Now and then you get to a place you think is perfect. This is one of those.)

This is your people-friendly park. Note those kids and even my grown-up friends taking advantage of the water like mana from Heaven on this hot Summer morning.

Here’s a few random shots from this falls:

That’s about it.

Here’s a bonus I picked up from Youtube and the Portland people:

Yes, it IS that loud down below.

Just because we are heading towards a general water shortage – local exceptional climates notwithstanding – throughout so much of the world, the possible impact of a water garden does not need to be ignored. In fact, once a water feature is up and running, the recirculating nature of them all means that the same water is used over and over again. Yes, depending on the location and the size and nature of the water feature, water can be lost to evaporation and need topping off. But I have lived in some beastly temperatures where I installed many of these and I can readily say the loss from evaporation is not substantial whatsoever.

Believe it or not, I often term these as alternatives to lawns.

Here is a look at a larger water feature we installed in the woods. Most of the pictures taken here were taken the day we finally finished the project. There was no hole to begin with – in fact, we felled large trees to make room for this pond and trucked off the roots. It was the same sort of forest it is now surrounded by when we began – we just claimed the territory for ourselves and the client’s pond. Note the creek of running water spilling inside from the small hill behind. This recirculated water and cleaned and oxygenated it by running over a long series of pebbles and stones in the creek.

(click all images to enlarge)

Here are a couple of different looks at the creek in the above picture. The intense shade of this project made many things possible – a larger body of water which would evaporate far less than one in the Sun allowed us to forget about the potentially nasty effects of algae as well. After all, the Sun is the primary grower of algae. It did imply some extra maintenance dealing with leaves and droppings from the local trees, but that was actually fairly easy. The main thing was how the water cleaned itself in our creek, receiving oxygen in quantities which disallowed too much algae. Honestly, in spire of the size – which was huge – this was a very straightforward project.

A bit closer up, about midway down the 50 foot creek:

Here is the look from back on the deck, looking out from the house towards our creek. The slate-like surface is actually what is called “Bluestone”, a gorgeous and richly-textured stone of more like a granite appearance. The wooden deck is visible from this perspective, and it leads out into the water at the end of this portion of the deck.

This view is from across the pond. Note the deck – it is suspended an inch above the almost always-placid water surface, made to look as close as it actually is. Later, lighting was added below the deck for an unreal but rich lighting experience at night for party-goers and just the enjoyment of the clients. It was hugely effective.

Yes, that is an island in the middle of our lake. That was easily the toughest part of the entire construction and on which caused me a sleepless night or two. Don’t do this at home!

The bridge is the link between the home and the woods across the pond. The water on this side of the bridge was very shallow and represented an effort at creating a sort of swampland/wetlands area. We planted a few wetlands plants – sedges, a bamboo – inside later which grew at a fairly astronomical rate. Little did we know we had created the perfect wetlands. We had to return and thins it by about 80%!

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Below may be my favorite perspective of all at this project. It takes advantage of the water’s placidity to offer some really fine reflections. I absolutely adored the mirror-like quality of the water.

Once again, we got very lucky in the finishing touches. The woods around us were rife with all sort of great things to put at the water’s edge, making this place look as if it had been there forever.