We received so many great looking water features submittals for consideration in this issue that the publisher suggested we show off more projects than the six or seven we normally present. After close review, 16 projects were selected (18 projects if you count the landscape architect with three home waterscapes), all involving landscape architects and all integrating water in enviable ways into the landscape.

In this Water Features issue, there's something for the kids (two splashpads); something for the traveler (atrium and waterfall at two hotels); something for seniors (pond, fountain, waterfalls at a retirement community); outdoor living areas you'd like to go home to (exquisite pool-stylings for a Tuscon-style home, a desert residence that combines fire and water, and three Southern Calif. abodes, two of which are near the beach); five fabulous fountains that define a townhouse development; a university plaza with fountains on either end and water channeling down the middle beneath colorful quilt-like paving; a large pond and fountains for mostly inaccessible ''leftover land'' following a freeway project; a pool/fountain design gone astray that was turned into a median, then revived as pools and fountains; dramatic tiered fountains for an entry park plaza for a mixed-use development; what was the world's largest and tallest fountain in 1965, now renovated 46 years later; a sanitation district regional agency campus that exemplifies stormwater BMPs, while teaching and entertaining visitors; and a project that started as an addition to a historic house in the Berkeley Hills and led to completion of water elements conceived half a century earlier by landscape architect Lawrence Halprin.

We hope you enjoy the variety of water features, and we thank all the landscape architects for sharing their projects with the profession and us.

Water in the Park
If you've ever been to London's Hyde Park, you've no doubt enjoyed listening to the orators at Speakers' Corner, an area designated for all manner of public speaking that extends from Marble Arch to Victoria Gate, then along the Serpentine to Hyde Park Corner and the Broad Walk. My introduction to Speakers' Corner was at the age of 19, listening to a ragged man atop a crate ranting on about something to a small crowd gathered around him. What caught my attention was the man's pants were a bit short and exposed a bit of lower leg, down which was running a stream of diarrhea.

The aforementioned ''Serpentine'' is a large pond in sight of Speakers' Corner. You probably wouldn't give the pond much though, other than just enjoy the sight of the water in this historic park setting. The Serpentine, however, I've just learned, is significant.

The ''Garden'' chapter in Bill Bryson's fascinating At Home: A Short History of Private Life, explains that in 1730 Queen Caroline of Anspach (wife of King George II) suddenly ordered London's River Westbourne be diverted to form a pond in the middle of Hyde Park. Bryson asserts this was the ''first manmade pond in the world designed not to look manmade.'' He notes that before this, manmade bodies of water were geometrical, like the Round Pond built in 1728 in nearby Kensington Gardens.

The Serpentine was an instant hit. People were intrigued by its ''naturalness.'' The Royals made the waters less idyllic by mooring two of their yachts on the Serpentine. The yachts were so big they could barely turn on the pond without bumping against one another.

The man credited with the engineering feat of diverting the river was a landscape gardener, one Charles Bridgeman. Bridgeman was appointed royal gardener. He managed all their gardens and parks and worked with all the leading architects of the time. Gardening was big business in England in the early 18th century. Gardening was all about order and geometry, but like the Serpentine, suddenly, ''natural'' looking gardens became de rigeur?EUR??,,????'??+no more precise clipped hedges and meticulously-shaped topiary. This naturalistic movement was based on the simple observation that nature provided all the beauty needed; it was just a matter of managing nature. Bridgeman's masterpiece, says Bryson, was Stowe in Buckinghamshire, a naturalistic landscape on a monumental scale in which hills were reshaped and valleys flooded.