"Water is a terrible force," was a simple statement uttered to me by Don Roberts PLA, FASLA many years ago, that has grown in meaning almost every time I think of it. At the time, we were talking about the life-giving properties of water, a little about ourselves, but mostly we were talking about the landscape. His meaning centered on water's unrelenting path to the lowest point, only hindered by solid barriers, where it either collects until it can flow over or around the barrier or it escapes through evaporation. Either way, water is in a perpetual quest to move.

Another friend of mine, Frank Manwarren, was a pioneer in the rock & waterscape natural business. He and guys like Lance Friez and Bob Morris where the first to get out in nature, cast rock and water formations they found, and bring them to life in projects around the world. If you ever get to Kaanapali Beach on Maui, you should check out the Westin. The entire rock and waterfall centerpiece was absolutely the state-of-the-art at the time, and it is still timeless today.

 

So, when I saw the picture (on the cover) of the spiraling fountain wrapped around steppingstones, with the water flowing evenly around the spiral, it caught my attention. That evenly splashing spiral is no easy task to accomplish, and the setting makes it inspiring and inviting, yet at the same time a bit intimidating. And that's exactly what water is . . . inspiring, inviting, and intimidating. That's why it is so welcome as art in landscape development, so needed for life throughout the project, yet so feared for its raw power and devastating potential.

That's the Yin of this issue . . . The Yang of this issue is all the hardscapes that block and channel water in its quest, all the while allowing access and observation. Even with all the concrete, clay, and natural stone specified into projects, almost all of it is for channeling purposes. They channel pedestrians to storefronts and intersections, they channel hillsides into drop-offs, and they channel water on its journey to the sea. Increasingly, we see paving materials that allow water to infiltrate and permeate, to diffuse the flow, and to channel the excess to natural or manmade pathways, maybe slowing but always enabling this terrible force to find its course home.

With that, we hope you enjoy this Hardscape and Water Feature Issue and hopefully the upcoming El Nino will be kind to us all . . .

God Bless!

George Schmok, Publisher
gschmok@landscapearchitect.com

As seen in LASN magazine, October 2026.