New Pond / Waterfall Photos

[KrayzKajun]

very nice work!

[OUTLANDER]

great job man, you do very nice work.......only thing with me is, i like a very natural look, and the pond to me looks kinda manufactured.....although the whole job looks great together

[JimLewis]

Thanks. I kinda agree. We're working on getting better at that. But we don't get too much experience doing them with ponds. 80-90% of the water features we build are pondless. So we only do one with an actual pond once in a while. I would have like to been on site more on this job too but it was a crazy busy week. So I can only maintain so much control over the project. But I agree with you. I think there were ways we could have made the pond more natural and will try to work on that with my guys more next time.

[gogreenmaureen]

What is gator dust. No one around here has heard of it. We use sand or crushed gravel.

[Twitchy]

Why would you plant the cedar (or perhaps blue atlas can't tell by the photo) and red japanese maple against the fence??? There is no grow room at all.

[JimLewis]

Two reasons;

1) When you are building a water feature where there is no natural decline (in this case it was all a flat area before we began (but it was where the customer wanted the water feature) and then you are basically 'building' a hill to facilitate the falls, then you need to add a natural backdrop. Otherwise you end up with the Mt. Vesuvius effect - which is where you just have a mountain coming out of the ground for no reason. It doesn't look natural. But if you hide that by planting trees and shrubs and grasses, etc. around it, then it doesn't look like a fake hill. It begins to look a little closer to being natural.

With no trees behind, you'd just be looking at a fence and a mound sticking up in front of it. It would look really bad.

2) That's not a cedar. It's a dwarf Mountain Hemlock. They grow about 1" a year. That tree is over 30 years old already. It was purposely chosen BECAUSE it won't outgrow the area. Same with the variety of Japanese maple there. It will grow to about 15' tall at the most here. And it has a growth rate of maybe 3-6" per year, which can be contained with about 15 minutes of pruning each year to whatever size you want to keep it at. They are both very small trees and will stay that way.

It's difficult to install natural looking water features in small 7,000 sq. ft. sub-division homes and make them look natural. Fences as backdrops are about the worst possible scenario for trying to build something natural. So it's tricky work trying to make it realistic. I've seen TONS of water features in yards like this that look horrible simple because the installer didn't consider how to make it look more natural.

[gogreenmaureen]

Some pictures of my first pond.

[Twitchy]

This is the smallest pond and waterfall that I've built to date. Not much bigger than the space you dealt with. Pretty natural i must say...

[Marine0311]

Was this a bid job or t and m. What was the final cost of the project
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[pararest]

Looks very nice Jim,

Its also nice to hear you had such a good season. Keep up the good work.... and I hope that success continues into the Winter months for you and your company.

Micah Owner
Paradise Restored Landscaping
http://www.paradiserestored.com