Welcome to the July Water Feature issue! Hopefully you will notice that LC/DBM has upgraded to brighter paper stock making the water glisten even more, but for now . . . On with the story . . .

You know . . . Living in Southern California, in the midst of a severe drought, it is as m(i)stifying to see pictures of water leaping into the air and rolling down falls as it is frustrating to know that these projects would never be acceptable in our dry part of the world. Most cities are built on or around rivers or great bodies of fresh water, but LA, the second largest city in America, is built on the edge of a desert, fed by rivers more than 200 miles away. So when we lined up the article submissions for the water features issue, all we could do was shake our heads and wonder what it would be like to live in a water-rich part of the country.

In Southern California, when we talk about water in the landscape, the conversations center around using less, wasting none and wishing we had more. (That conversation is carried a bit in the article about sustainable irrigation on page 38 and will be the main focus in the upcoming November "Green' Issue . . .) But besides worrying more about water in the Southwest, we found an interesting difference between landscape contractors in SoCal and those in wetter areas across the country.

Backing up a bit . . . In addition to my day job of writing these columns and putting magazines together, I am also the lucky soul chosen as president of my homeowners association. On top of that, since my email has landscapearchitect.com in it, I am also the head of the landscape committee. Yeehaa!

Anyways . . . As such, we recently went to bid on our landscape maintenance, looking for a company that also did installation. This was taking place while we were putting the editorial for this issue together. Ironically, all three of the main contenders said the exact same unsolicited quote, "We do everything but pools." The timing couldn't have been better . . .

While I know it's not a universal truth, it seems that landscape contractors in Orange County do everything but the pool, while the LCs featured in this issue did everything including the pool . . .

Now whether that is actually true across the country, or just in an area where there happens to be hundreds of dedicated pool contractors, one thing is certain, the projects featured in this issue are great examples of what a landscape contractor can do with water . . . When there is water to do it with.

So stretch out by the pool, lake, or stream, grab a cold one and revel in the wondrous world of flowing and glowing water . . . And who knows, maybe the upcoming El Ni????(R)????o will bring all the water we need to the Southwest and we can start to build projects like these everywhere . . . Ok . . . Maybe not. But a guy can dream . . . Right?

- God bless

George Schmok, Publisher