By Linda Fridy With one dry winter behind us and another forecast for this year, local water districts are asking residents to conserve water and looking at ways to increase their supplies, even to the point of building multi-million-dollar desalination plants. Local landscape designer Bobby Markowitz says the solution lies not in water that has [...]
By Kathryn (Kathy) Nichols, published Oct 28, 2007 Capture and Use Your Own Private Water Supply, with Planning and Right Equipment Bobby Markowitz’s clients are often desperate by the time they come to him. Their wells are running dry. Their water is so full of underground muck that it’s damaging their plants. They can’t get [...]
Several miles up the steep, winding roads of the Santa Cruz Mountains is the Bowens’ residence, a tranquil property surrounded by lush Japanese-inspired gardens. However, the Bowens’ peaceful paradise was rudely interrupted when all five of the wells they had drilled on the property went dry and they found themselves spending thousands of dollars having [...]
As they spent thousands of dollars drilling fruitless wells and thousands more trucking in water, Jim and Carolyn Bowen worried about how to keep irrigating the 1 1/2-acre garden paradise that surrounds their Santa Cruz mountains’ home. Bobby Markowitz, the landscape architect who designed the grounds, came up with a plan: Start looking up for [...]
SENTINEL 2006 “How singular, and yet how simple, the philosophy of rain! Who but Nature could have devised such an admirable arrangement for watering the Earth?” – Ure, from ‘A Dictionary of Thought’ With every project, water conservation, maintenance and drainage are prevailing issues for landscape designers and architects on the Central Coast. Water is an issue from [...]
By Monica Woelfel With the potential of a dry year on the horizon, Valley residents and government bodies alike are again considering the best ways to conserve water. And some homeowners have found low-tech, old-time ideas to help irrigate their gardens while avoiding the purchase of expensive municipal water supplies. In fact, one source of [...]