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Jessica Schwartz
Project Profile: A Streamside Farmhouse
Evoking a rural countryside in a Denver neighborhood. It seemingly appears off the pages of a fairy tale book. A charming stone farmhouse sits surrounded by carpets of lush, green grass and highlighted by a meandering, cascading brook flanked by large rustic boulders and colorful wildflowers. As the sun sets, the stone of the farmhouse glows in the dusk, the windows peek in on warm amber interiors, and the quietly babbling stream reflects the pale lavender of the evening twilight. It’s nearly impossible to believe this idyllic country setting was once a vacant, double lot. Yet this past September, at the ELEVATE conference of the National Association of Landscape Architects (NALP), this Belgian-modern farmhouse property located outside Denver earned a Gold Award in Residential Design/Build for Designs By Sundown. The Design Goals The client wanted the landscape to be a fitting complement to the architecture of the home, blending the interior, covered spaces and outdoor spaces into one cohesive composition. From the East coast, the client also prioritized taking elements they loved—and knew they would miss from their previous home—and add them as enhancements in their new landscape. Lush and formal spaces to entertain friends and family should be filled with character and personality, yet without an overwhelming amount of amenities or hardscapes. The clients were drawn to the lot for its feeling of an expansive, natural country setting and wanted to retain that atmosphere. As a result, adding the sounds, sights, and tranquility of a naturalistic water feature, running ...
Get Equipped: Water Features
Take a look at this assortment of water features that can add value and beauty to your professional lawn care and landscaping services. Outdoor Fire & Water™ Spillways From Trex® Trex Outdoor Fire & Water spillways are both purposeful and decorative and will add a whole new level of elegant design to a backyard environment. Constructed from premium grade copper or stainless steel, Trex Outdoor Fire & Water spillways are fully welded and polished for optimal performance and aesthetics. They won’t warp, cave, or bend and feature expertly engineered baffles to ensure water flows smoothly without clogging, corroding, or leaving calcium build-up on surrounding surfaces. Contractors can integrate the spillways into walls and garden structures or use them for spillover applications. Trex Outdoor Fire & Water spillways are available in Smooth Flow, Radius, U-Shape, Wall Mounted Bowl, and Cannon options to create different looks and water patterns. The spillways also can be made in custom sizes or to fit concave or convex radius walls. Nanobubble Generators From Moleaer Is your client’s pond or lake plagued with blue-green and filamentous algae? An alternative to traditional chemical (algaecides and alum) and aeration methods, Moleaer’s clear nanobubble generators work by injecting trillions of oxygen-rich nanobubbles into water. These nanobubbles, 2500 times smaller than a grain of salt, dissolve nearly all their oxygen evenly throughout a body of water irrespective of depth, and penetrate the muck layer. They provide a chemical-free oxidant capable of destroying algae cells and toxins, reducing biofilm growth, and suppressing ...
Finding Your Niche In The Market
How do you stand out from your competitors? Why should a homeowner call you before they call the other lawn and landscape maintenance company down the street? In many cities, there’s increased competition among landscaping and lawn care service companies. So, you need to stand out. Many green industry companies successfully diversify their business models to stay competitive. Majestic Lawn Care & Landscape In New City, NY, Majestic Lawn Care & Landscape, Inc. has been in business for over 26 years. The company’s President, Joe Holland, wears many hats in the company, including one as a certified arborist. Holland describes his business as a lawn and landscape business that provides tree care and removal services. He started a company back in the late 1980s that focused solely on trees. When he left that business, he opened Majestic Lawn Care & Landscape. Later, he included tree care services with the landscape and lawn maintenance services, which was a natural fit. “I started taking classes in tree care, and the next thing you know, I’m taking the arborist test. I learned a lot by going through the educational side ,” explains Holland. And he keeps up his certification by taking continuing education courses in tree care. “I knew the mechanics of trees, not the biology,” he says. Holland found that the tree care education opened his eyes and helped him appreciate trees more. “I’m not as quick to suggest removal anymore,” he states. Plus, Holland doesn’t have to subcontract out tree care ...
Design/Build Project Expands To Grow With Client’s Needs
What began as one residential landscape project expanded to two distinct areas when the homeowner purchased an adjacent lot. Lindgren Landscape in Fort Collins, CO took this impressive project from start to finish. Imagine designing and building one project, and then having the clients offer you a second, totally different one. The big question: how do you meld a small, intimate space to an entire city lot? Not only did Tim Lindgren, owner of Fort Collins, CO-based Lindgren Landscape, come up with an answer, but his solution was good enough to be recognized by Hardscape North America (HNA) for its use of concrete pavers in a residential space of less than 3,000 square feet. Lindgren explains that his company was initially contacted by the buyers of a residential lot in what’s known as Old Town Fort Collins, an area of older homes in this university town in north central Colorado. “They were going to scrape the house and start new,” he says. “And, they had some pretty lofty goals for the site. They interviewed us and we won the design-build portion of the landscape.” He says work on the new home was about halfway completed before Lindgren Landscape got involved with the project on what had become a bare lot. “They entertain a lot, so having a place to host large parties was a big piece of what they wanted,” Lindgren explains. “They also wanted a sense of unity between the indoor and the outdoor. They wanted to be able ...
A Technological Break-Through In Sustainable Lake & Pond Management
By Bo Burns Algae: it comes in many forms and colors. It’s slimy, stinky and can ruin the beauty and function of your golf course lakes and irrigation systems. It’s also one of the oldest known organisms on this planet, which might explain its knack for survival, even under the toughest conditions. Over time, golf courses and property management companies have learned to pick sides when it comes to the safe eradication of stubborn and harmful algal blooms—some in favor of natural management techniques; others in support of applying EPA-registered algaecides to ensure the job gets done. But this year, a new game changing technology will make the management of stubborn algae blooms a no-brainer with more long-lasting results that are beneficial for the environment. Nanobubble aeration is a premium innovative technology designed to exceed the capabilities of traditional lake and pond aeration systems by providing up to 79,000x more oxygen! Put simply, nanobubbles are like traditional aeration systems on steroids. Produced by compact on-shore generators, these ultra-fine bubbles are completely invisible to the eye and about 1 million times smaller than ordinary bubbles. As a result of their tiny size, nanobubbles have no natural buoyancy and do not rise to the surface of the water and burst like you might expect. Amazingly, they remain within the water column for up to 2-3 months, providing unparalleled oxygenation to struggling lakes and ponds at your property. The benefits of a continuously oxygenated lake or pond are enormous. First, oxygen is a ...
Story Of A Landscape: Custom Buffet/Water Feature Combo Fits The Bill
A backyard redesign delivers on what the client was looking for, including a custom buffet and water feature combo. Sometimes, getting a job is simply a matter of giving the customer what he wants. Just ask Nathan Filip. The owner of Elmhurst, Ill.-based Premier Outdoor Environments, Inc. (POE), says his firm got the job that earned it recognition from Hardscape North America (HNA) in the category of concrete paver — residential — less than 3,000 square feet for 2017 because it did just that. “This job was a referral from another client that we previously did work with,” Filip explains. “They were already in the design process with a few other contractors. They chose our design because we incorporated everything that they were asking for as well as a few of our own touches.” And, POE was not, he stresses, the lowest bid. The property certainly needed help. Filip says the owners had been in the home — in a large-lot subdivision — for several years and after doing interior renovations finally decided to take on the exterior. “They wanted to remove an old and rotting deck and gain a functional outdoor living space,” he says. “Their wish list included an outdoor kitchen, dining space, lounging spaces, a buffet and serving island, and both water and fire features.” Perhaps not surprisingly, the ability of designer Kevin Barnes to fit all that into a 1,200-square-foot space is what makes Filip most proud of this project. And, with good reason. While POE ...
Story Of A Landscape: Pool, Outdoor Kitchen Replace Muddy Backyard
For many people, having a 3,400-square-foot home backing on a golf course would be a dream come true. However, for one couple on Scott Hinson’s lawn maintenance list, it wasn’t enough. Fortunately, Hinson, the owner of Low Country Landscaping Inc., in Wilmington, North Carolina, was able to come to their rescue in a big way. “They were trying to figure out whether they should go ahead and move and build a bigger house with everything they wanted, or stay right where they are, which is a fantastic spot,” he explains. The problem: the couple has two young children, and nice half-acre site that it is, the backyard soil made the space a muddy and unusable mess whenever it rained. Hinson describes it as a “gumbo clay” and says from time to time he’d been suggesting they consider a pool in the backyard. Ultimately, the clients made the decision to stay put. At the same time, they told Hinson to go ahead and come up with something for the backyard that would make the kids want to bring their friends over. Not surprisingly, a pool led the list of amenities Hinson designed. The 38-foot by 18-foot pool, which was built by subcontractor Shoreline Pool Builders of Wilmington, has an 8-foot circular hot tub at one end with what Hinson describes as “one of the neatest spillovers we’ve ever done.” “It’s not quite 180 degrees,” Hinson says. “But, there’s a lot of spillover and it takes a lot of hydrology to make ...
