Picture perfect: a designer uses a simple pond and creative landscaping to produce a picturesque backdrop … in a parking lot

Pool & Spa News, July 26, 2002 by Rebecca Robledo

Everyone wants a picture-perfect aquascape. But for landscape designer Bruce Zaretsky, the pressure was really on.

Photographers at a local studio wanted the option of shooting portraits in a beautiful setting without having to go to the nearest park or botanical garden. Thus, they turned to Zaretsky for help.

"They do a lot of portrait photography for high school students and weddings," says Zaretsky, president of Zaretsky & Associates in Penfield, N.Y. "They wanted an area where they'd have all different types of vantage points, and they wanted water incorporated."

Problem was, all the photographers had on their property was a paved parking lot.

But by the time Zaretsky finished with it, the firm had a scenic oasis in its parking lot that allowed for numerous photographic options. "The whole area is only 30 by 50 feet, and we created about 15 different focal points for photography," he says.

Zaretsky created the multitude of options with a two-level pond that offers both mountain and beach scenes.

"The upper pond has a waterfall that falls into it," he says. "That pond overflows into a creek, which then runs into a lower pond."

The upper pond and creek area feature grasses, perennials and evergreens to give a wilderness feel. A large, well-placed boulder provides a platform where subjects can stand and appear to be surrounded by water.

Of course, Zaretsky wanted the waterfall to look as natural as possible. So he took special care in choosing its apparent water source. He didn't have a natural hill to work with or a lot of room for creating one. Rather than building an elevated water fall, he designed a small cove from which water flows.

"It almost gives you the feeling that there's a spring running in there," Zaretsky says.

The lower pond, meanwhile, provides a coastal environment. "We've got sand going into the water and then a dock, so it has a beach-like feel," he says. "Then we have a lot of different types of grasses to give it a dune-like feel."

This area even features an old wooden snow fence, used at some beaches to control sand piles. Besides bringing the coast to mind, the fence also provides interesting shadowing effects when the light shines through it.

The snow fence also helps shield the oasis from the unphotogenic parking lot just inches away, though Zaretsky achieved this mostly with plants and boulders.

"Plantings were the key. We had a lot of screening plants," he says. "If that parking lot is just a half-inch out of view from the camera frame, you wouldn't know it was there."