When my phone rang in May 2023, the caller ID showed Yountville, California. When I first saw the number, I laughed to myself, because my wife Janon and I have been to Thomas Keller’s French Laundry restaurant several times. My first thought was, jokingly, they were calling to confirm a reservation! I regularly have obnoxious […]
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After a two-year quarantine period, the turtles finally have their own new habitat! The turtles’ owners sold their house, and over the last two years of construction on the new home, their fish and turtles were living in my quarantine facilities. At the old house, the turtles lived in the koi pond. However, this time […]
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Second time around for formal turtle and koi pond It’s not often that you get a chance to design more than one formal turtle and koi pond for a customer. I’ve been fortunate enough to have that happen a handful of times. The client will move, or in one instance, just jump from one general […]
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This story was originally posted in January 2016. To be efficient, pond filtration equipment is usually installed as close to the pond as possible. Gracefully concealing your filtration equipment takes as much creativity as building the pond itself. Many times the ability to hide equipment in plain sight aesthetically makes or breaks a pond’s appearance. […]
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Publisher’s Note: A previous version of this article was originally published in January 2020 . Kent Wallace has updated the original piece with additional information and photos. Enjoy this “updated flashback!” After over 20 years in this industry, I have found that many products manufactured for pond construction are just new versions of components and […]
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In 2021, I met with architect Michael Gardner, owner of Studio G Architecture, to discuss an upcoming courtyard koi pond build in a development called Ascaya here in Las Vegas. The plans were for a contemporary home with a courtyard pond just inside the front entry gate. The original plans were for a pond of […]
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A few months ago, I was browsing a local pond and water garden site and answered a question asked by a woman named Sheila. She got back to me and asked if I could help with their new pond, which was part of a backyard makeover. Sheila and her husband Kelly wanted a formal raised […]
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About a year and a half ago, I received a call from interior designer Lisa Bozak of Design Therapy here in Las Vegas. Her client was doing a backyard makeover that surrounded the back side of his swimming pool, and the new addition included a pool house with a Japanese-style tea house incorporated into the […]
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Three months ago, I received a call from a previous client who said he needed to quarantine his fish and two turtles off-site for a year. This was unexpected, because he had just built his dream home — and his dream pond — in 2016. He had decided to build a new home and pond, […]
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Just over two years ago, a former client contacted me about a new pond construction and design project. I had designed a 20,000-gallon pond for him and his wife about 10 years prior, and I figured he was calling about a pond issue. To my surprise, he had a new project coming up and asked […]
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