Houston Pool and Lanscape Project

A Houston family by the name of Friedman was adding an outdoor summer kitchen and screened-in dining room to the rear of their home. Their home was a traditionally style home residing on an enormous lot. They hired us to develop a master plan that featured a pool and Houston landscape concept that would connect to the new addition and extend the semi-outdoor space of the screened room into fully open space.

Our assignment was to create movement, interest, intimacy, and a controlled sense of drama that would ultimately help this enormous property appear inviting and intimate through carefully constructed, special points of interest.

The design we created, in many ways, introduced the theme of the entire Houston landscape. Since the view of the backyard was by nature panoramic, and because we were dealing with an enormous yard to begin with, we wanted to create a controlled sense of drama that you were coming into a yard whose plane dropped down. Grade change was the key here. By varying elevation and step width, we could make even the largest of forms on the Houston landscape feel intimate and inviting.

One of the two most prominent elements on this vast expanse of Houston landscape was the ornate custom swimming pool that we designed for the Friedman’s. It consisted of a two-level structure, with a fountain on one end. In the fountain there were three bubblers that shot water up into the air. The bottom of the fountain was completely covered in blue glass tile and lighted from within. Although small in comparison to the rest of the pool, the uniqueness of the fountain’s design made it one of the most prominent areas of interests, ideal for pulling chairs around its perimeter.

The fountain also adds something of a spa element to the pool. The lower end is 18 inches deep-deep enough to sit in, and the water is both heated and lighted. People can actually recline here much like they do in the spa, and dangle their feet over the edge of the waterfall.

This waterfall was one of the most unique features we added to this traditional Houston landscape. We had a quarry cut a slab of stone in a radius design and cut runnels in it with a diamond saw. We then thermal finished the slab and covered the front end with a custom blend of glass tile. The various colors and hues in the glass are intentionally reflective of surrounding vegetation and water patterns. There is also a deliberate copper hue to the design to help reflect pool lighting.

This further develops the sense of controlled drama that creates interest and intimacy on such a large tract of Houston landscape. The variation of colors, especially when catching either sunlight or pool lights, especially mirrors the elegance of the adjacent parterre garden and various flower species planted to the side of the arbor entrance.

Both the upper and lower portions of the patio were made of Pennsylvania full color sandstone. The coping of the pool is a lighter colored material known as Leuders Limestone. It has a rich hue that provides a superb compliment to both the architecture of the home and the surrounding foliage. Water rises up from jets covered by custom stone covers for water jets. This adds scale and sound to the patio, and provides special effects when illuminated at night.

It is very relaxing to pull up a chair by the water jets and watch the kids run in and out of spurting water as it arches into nighttime sky above the Houston landscape and lands in the lighted water of the pool.