Visiting David and Ki’s home in Gainesville was like dropping in on summer camp. Kids everywhere! Their own, some on loan (foster children), their friends’ children… And why not? In keeping with the kid-friendly attitudes, they’d had a swimming pool built to create a fairy tale back yard. The kids were especially delighted to find out there would be a slide.
But ongoing issues with the pool builders led to a parting of ways and a slide that was dead in the water.
Ki told me they talked to 15 other pool companies in search of someone willing to help finish the job properly, to no avail.
Then they heard about Art of Stone Gardening and gave us a call.
They have a lovely home and a great layout for that fairy tale yard they wanted, but the beautiful, long, fiberglass slide—a major feature of the project—had not been installed right. It was “unslidable.” And the yard hadn’t been landscaped.
The pool builders had not properly designed or engineered the slide. There wasn’t enough slope to make the rise steep enough.
What’s more, the slide hadn’t been assembled correctly. There were leaks in the underbelly that would have threatened the integrity of the low rock wall over time.
Jason and our crew took on the challenge. The first order of business was to remove the existing boulders and deconstruct the insufficient rock work.
They designed a new rock wall to cradle the slide from a position two feet higher at the top.
Then they took the project a few steps further.
By backing the structure away from the fence a little bit, they were able to add a second set of steps leading up to the slide. And Ki had a great idea that Jason was happy to implement: a path and a “tunnel” for the littlest of the kids to walk through. Notice the attention to detail. Little pockets of earth were left in the slide structure for planting grasses and flowering plants.
Planting the gardens around the pool area completed the landscape and, finally, the project. David and Ki got the back yard paradise they had dreamed of—for the kids and the grown-ups.
