Landscape

This is the view out of the dining room
(through the lanai) of our old house.
Here you can see the upper waterfall,
the white sand beach in the background,
the deckwork, and the larger pond and
waterfalls. A 33' long and 3' wide creek
wound around the "V" shaped tree and
connected the two water-features. The
creek coincidentally, also served as a
spawning area for the fish.

The landscape was nearly entirely done in edible materials. A
stand of Bananas backdropped the larger pond, while Guavas,
Carambola, Orange, Grapefruit, and Papaya trees stood as silent
providers of shade and substance. The ground cover was done in
mints and various other herbs, and the remaining plant material
was selected to serve as a food source for the animals,
butterflys and other native visitiors to this wondrous garden.

The ponds were stocked with fish normally found in a household
aquarium (some of them reaching proportions I never dreamed
possible), massive schools of Neons, and Tetras flitted about,
their population checked by the predatory fish and turtles that
shared the waters, as well as serving to feed the visiting birds,
racoons and other wildlife that frequented our home.

Finally, a trio of harmonically matched chimes sang in each
breeze, offering an echo of melodies to the soft sounds of the
cascading waterfalls, the babbling brook and the singing birds.

It took 5 of us, 3 weeks to build the water-features and install all of the landscape material.

(The ponds and creek were all hand dug and molded from a 38ml Butelene liner),

and two weekends of work by both my father and my (at the time) father-in-law and I to build the deck.

In the slideshow, you will notice two pictures from the first year, and two pictures from the second year.

By the second year, the garden had grown and evolved into a mystical and wondrous place.

A place where people would come to sit, or lie and think, relax, dream and just enjoy,

for a few moments, a small piece of paradise captured.