Swimming Pool Placement - Destination Pool
This swimming pool is offset to the side to take advantage of full sun exposure
A video transcript featuring Joseph Huettl, Huettl Landscape Architecture
Frequently, a pool company will want to install the pool front and center. You know, the pool is their pride. Or even the homeowners will want the pool to be in the center. But you know there's a substantial off-season with swimming pools, and it's nice to have them as a destination and not just dominating the middle of the yard.
So that was the case here. We had the best sun and we had plenty of room for destination and we had plenty of length for a lap pool. Other areas that might normally work did not work in this situation because of the existing redwoods and birch trees. The pool would have been shaded, so we made the pool the destination yard, and it's kind of nice that we have the active-use patio on one side, this pattern of pavers, and then a separate pool yard that you can really go to and stay at. It's really a nice way to use the entire space.
Parallel wallsOne of the design problems in this yard was they had this strong diagonal fence line that really cut into the space of the yard, and we explored two ways to address that. One was with a sort of a loose, squiggly line to sort of take away from that strong diagonal and distract and lead your eye over to the pool destination. And the other way that we ended up going with was a series of walls that were perpendicular to that diagonal, or not really perpendicular to, but a series of parallel walls that were paralleled with the house, so it would bring your eye over to the pool. Those walls, we varied, we played with different options, and we decided to vary them between the steel-troweled moss-green stucco and Corten steel panels.
Ornamental grassesSo you have these alternating walls that stagger and lead your eye over to the pool destination. We have these Corten steel walls, but as a backdrop with the golden hills you have in the background the dry grass. We wanted to bring in some of that to this landscape, and this Calamagrostis grass with the tall, golden plumes was the perfect sort of visual backdrop to this pool. In other areas of the yard we use the Miscanthus Morning Light as sort of bold, silvery statements and then as well, the dark-red bronze New Zealand flax, which works well as a textural contrast to the finer-textured grasses.
