Bridge to Everywhere

With renovations becoming a larger piece of the total pool market, it only makes sense that pool builders would team up with landscape professionals to take them on.

Where some would rather work independently, builder Guy Wood and landscape designer Richard Hartman prefer to operate as a team.

“He thinks from a different perspective and he kind of challenged me,” says Wood, president of Westside Watershapes in Fort Worth, Texas. “Sometimes we limit our own thinking.”

These relationships are most productive when both partners know their boundaries. “The thing that’s so nice is he doesn’t come in and tell how to build a pool,” Wood says. “We respect each other’s territories. I don’t go in there and tell Richard how to use plants. But he’ll listen to me if I make a suggestion and say, ‘Hey, I really think it’d look great with a tall tree here.’ But he’ll decide what kind of tree to use.”

The owners of one particular project also found their mindset expanded by Hartman, president of The Plant People Landscaping Inc. in Fort Worth, Texas. Originally, they expected a simple facelift for this oversized and dated kidney. But Hartman showed them the possibilities.

“When I started coming up with different ideas on their pool, they said, ‘Wow. We didn’t know we could do that kind of stuff,’” he says.

On the following pages, the team demonstrates how it transformed an under-designed pool into something more fitting for the higher-end home.