St. Jacobs Country Gardens and Landscape Nursery has built a reputation as an industry leader in water features by winning a prestigious Landscape Ontario Award of Excellence. Owners Keith and Sandy Snider last month accepted the award for “best construction of a water feature” for a project they built with their crew over the summer of 2010. They took a totally functional swimming pool and turned it into a reflecting pond.
The water feature is located at the house of Keith Gummow and Loys Ligate in Conestogo. The couple had searched extensively for a landscaper willing to take on the project and could not find anyone until they met with the Sniders.
“I had other landscapers tell me they thought I was nuts for tackling the project because of all the things that could go wrong with it but I just did it one step at a time making sure everything worked and was properly set before I moved onto the next one,” said Keith Snider.
The landscapers had to reconfigure everything, adding extra walls, building piers, stepping stones and platforms so chairs could be placed in the middle of the feature, allowing the owners to lounge outdoors surrounded by water. Like a swimming pool, one end is shallow and the other deep, but the deep end is fed by three small waterfalls.
“We wanted it to be formal and symmetrical we did a lot of work hiding all the pumps with angled corners. The pond uses recycled water and no chemicals are needed,” said Keith, who worked with Ligate on the final design that originally was planned to be a Japanese-style pond with a bridge and walkway but that quickly turned into the more modern and sleek design.
This was the first time the company had attempted a water feature of this scale and magnitude, but the Sniders are not surprised it was an award winner.
“It was so different and creative, we thought it would win an award,” said Sandy.
The Sniders got the nod at the Jan. 10 Landscape Ontario award ceremony, which is like the Oscars for landscape designers.
“It is a pretty big deal for us,” said Keith. “It is a feather in our hat being awarded the best of the best, and any award is good promotion for the company.”
The company is now leaning towards doing more water features in the future and hope to expand that side of the company in the coming years. They had just finished their latest project in St. Jacobs before the winter and they hope to enter it into next year’s competition as a natural swimming pond that has no chemicals with a regeneration system and water plants growing across the pond.
“We want water features to be more of what we are known for and what we specialize in,” said Sandy.
