A natural combination: to design truly integrated backyards, builders must think about the softscape at the same time as the hardscape. It's a philosophy of form—and function

Pool & Spa News, April 19, 2002 by Rebecca Robledo

OK, let's be honest. Pool builders are not plant experts, and they don't want to be.

Sure, a backyard without plants makes about as much sense as the BL without the T. Think of a beautiful aquascape and you're sure to think of lush foliage. But softscapes are a completely different animal than hardscapes--they're softer and fuzzier, many don't hold up well to pool water and they require the right environmental factors to keep them alive.

Aquascapers who want to continually fine-tune their craft and broaden their perspective need to think in terms of the totally integrated backyard. For those designers, thinking about plants from the outset is a must. Such forward thinking enables you to lock hardscape and softscape together like pieces of a puzzle, thereby composing a more cohesive environment.

But don't worry. Working with greenery in mind doesn't mean you have to become a plant expert. At the least, it means you should consult a softscape professional from the project's beginnings; at the most, you should designate planting areas and trees while designing the hardscape.

Putting plants first

This approach goes beyond just logistics--it goes to design philosophy. For instance, it may seem perfectly logical that a hardscape be designed first. After all, it's built first. That's why builders design the pool and then let the backyard evolve from it. But some professionals work at the other extreme, designing the environment first, then letting the pool take whatever form is appropriate to it. So placement of trees and other softscape elements may take precedence over the water elements.

"Should I design the pathway first or the scene first?" says Mark Holden, a landscape architect and owner of Earth Patterns in Fullerton, Calif. "When you think about the shell first, that's almost like designing the foundation of your house first, which makes no sense whatsoever.

"So [a builder] should just take two steps back and say, `Why am I designing the shell? Why don't I design the spaces around the shell, design the environment in which the shell is sitting and then whatever shapes develop, allow the shell of the pool to be that,' as opposed to designing the coping outline [first]."

The `pretty' factor

Of course, different designers have different approaches. But whether you give precedence to the plants or the pool, the two should have close to equal weight in the design process.

That's because, like them or not, plants add a certain quality that hardscape just can't offer. Their color and texture can soften a wall or tie everything together by covering the ground. The unique form of a tree, such as Japanese maple can make a perfect focal point and reflect beautifully in the water. And with the right choices, it can change the backyard from season to season.

"To sound infantile, [softscape is] pretty," Holden says. "Softscape is entertaining, it's fun, it's changing, it's colorful. In a sense, it makes you feel holistic because you're dealing with natural elements. Most masonry materials aren't that pretty.

"Looking out my office window right now, I'm staring at a row of golden bamboo. It's about 9 feet high and it serves as a property-line fence between my office and the office next to me," Holden says. "I can't see in their windows and they can't see in mine. It could have been a block wall. What would I rather look at?"

Plants take us back to nature, even attracting animals such as birds and butterflies, says Mindy Humphrey, a designer with Wildwood Aquatech Pools in Fresno, Calif.

And don't forget the human animal. Plants just have that indefinable something that makes us want to be near them. "The psychological gravitation that we have toward plant material is, on some level, instinctual," Holden says. "We feel trapped in a cage if we're in a masonry box."

The grand scheme

It's difficult, if not impossible, to create that kind of softscape unless it's given thought early on, says Mike Farley, a landscape architect and construction superintendent at Leisure Living Pools in Frisco, Texas.

"Some people put the pool in, and what's left is the softscape area. That's not how I work," says Farley, who used to work as an independent landscape architect before joining Leisure Living Pools. "When I sit down with a client, I ask them as many questions about what they want with their yard as I do with their swimming pool. I'm trying to create an environment, not a pool. So in doing that, [the softscape's] equal."

This is especially the case with naturalistic-styled pools, which rely heavily on plants for realism. "[Plants] are critical features that have to be incorporated before I can even come in with my paving," Farley says.

That doesn't mean you have to make specific plant choices from the start. Those decisions are better left to the experts or, at least, done in consultation with them. In fact, for some landscape architects and designers, exact plant choice and placement don't come until they're working on the site.

But to seamlessly work plants into a design, the backyard designer should develop a plan for where trees and plants will go at the same time as they're deciding where spa benches and coping will go.