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Fire and Water Fountains
Fire and water fountains place two opposing forces together to create startling and dramatic artistic statements in a landscape design. If you were to rate the various hardscapes used by professional landscapers along a horizontal scale, fire and water fountains would be situated on the far rightwhere the big wow-factors live.
In nearly every civilization since time began, humans have been fascinated by the interplay between fire and water. Many elaborate myths from different societies use...
How a Contemporary Garden Was Designed Around a Central Koi Pond and Lite Fountain
A River Oaks couple contracted Exterior Worlds to design a contemporary garden behind the gym in their two-story home. The original garden was very traditional in both style and function, and was used exclusively as an area to plant foliage and various species of flowers. Its only ornamentation was a three-tiered fountain, which looked outdated and made noise throughout the night due to failing pumps. Our clients asked us to convert a portion of this space into something more functional, and to...
French Morning Garden Landscaping Project
Ten years ago, a Memorial-area couple by the names of John and Jennifer Randall contacted us. They had just bought a beautiful lot located off of Piney Point drive. Because Jennifer loved the French, and because John was Acadian from Louisiana, they had already decided to have their home built in the style of a modern French country house. The Randalls wanted to landscape the property in accordance with a European theme, with a paver driveway and partier garden in the front, and a very large...
Italian Garden Design
A client in the Heights contracted Exterior Worlds to create an Italian garden with a number of complimentary, classical elements to the front and rear of their home. Their house had a classic Old World appearance to it. It was a two-story structure with a porch and an upstairs balcony. Steps led up to the porch, and shuttered windows with arched tops lined both the porch and the balcony. A stately, old, and very large oak tree grew just next to the house, reaching up and over the top of the...
River Oaks Corner Fountain
One of our more reputable achievements in recent years was a project in River Oaks that involved replacing a fountain that stood in the corner of the large brick wall. While only one of many elements that we added, this new corner fountain played a significant role in transforming the entire landscape. It introduced a new, more symmetrical geometry to the yard, and it helped provide a more noticeable, complimentary color contrast to that of the brick wall behind it.
The existing corner...
Pool Water Fountains
If you are considering adding a custom swimming pool to your landscaping design, you might want to think about the addition of a pool water fountain. We have seen pool water fountains turn an everyday swimming pool into a memorable work of art because they add movement, sound, shape and color to the landscape design. We get a great deal of pleasure from custom-designing these vehicles of enchanting, vibrant form.
Pool water fountains are fountains that are in or connected to a larger body of...
Garden Arbors
A garden arbor is a type of garden structure that invites and entices people into your home landscape design by giving vertical depth to your garden landscape. As a classic element within landscape architecture, arbors provide a cozy feeling of enclosure without boxing you in. When used as a functional structure, arbors support climbing roses, vines and other plants. You can also use them simply in a decorative way, to make an opening that pulls your guests out into your landscape.
A Garden...
Garden Arch
A type of garden structure, a garden arch helps turn a mundane garden into a masterpiece. It is one of the ways a homeowner-gardener expresses a belief that their living environment includes the sum total of their propertynot just the four walls of the house. It says that beauty and form are important to the people who live here. By adding shape, texture and variety to your home landscape design, a garden arch provides practicality, an acknowledgement of times passage, a visual metaphor, mood...
River Oaks Stepping Stone Patio
We were contacted by a family in River Oaks who requested that we completely remodel their pool and the yard that surrounded it. They wanted to get rid of the pools L-Shape construction and have it redesigned with a curved, linear structure and rounded ends. They also wanted to surround the pool with something very different than the traditional wooden deck or concrete surface. Instead, they wanted a stepping stone patio that would look like a part of Nature itself and cause the pool to look...
Formal Landscape Design Residential Landscaping and Installation in Houston Texas
Formal landscape design invokes order and balance. Think of the gardens of Monticello, the landscaping of Versailles, and, closer to home, the gardens of Bayou Bend, which is part of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
The hand of the gardener is clearly in evidence in formal landscape designs as the pathways and plantings are controlled along crisp lines. It is this discipline that gives a sense of peace and order. Formal landscape design is our attempt to exert our control over nature, to...
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