I’ve been showing you dozens of photos tagged for different features (like benches or garden art) from 25 years of visiting and photographing gardens. This next batch of images from 30 gardens resonates with me the most, so far – for the pools themselves and for the groups I got to see them with in so many cases. Good memories!

For example, the pool above is in a private garden in Austin, TX that I got to see during the first Gardenblogger Fling in 2008. The pool is so magical! Readers may recognize garden writer Carol Michel descending the stairs, wearing green.

The top shots are more typical of those in large public gardens. On the left is a garden I can’t identify in Toronto (seen during the Toronto Gardenblogger Fling) and on the right is Nemours Estate in Wilmington, seen with a garden writer group. Below, the private-now-open Hillwood Estate in Washington, DC.  And a private DC garden using formal design.  

Probably none of us like these styles anymore. Amirite?

I’m happy to show off  a very different vibe at the wonderful Brookside Gardens in Wheaton, MD., above and right. This lovely pool is lined on both sides with very wide and packed shrub and perennial borders that are a serious gardener’s dream to check in on throughout the year.  Couples posing for wedding photos are often seen there. 

Above left is my pic of the central pool at the amazing Glenstone Museum/Garden in Potomac, MD. (Everyone I know that’s visited has reported being blown away.) I couldn’t get a good shot but that’s what google image is for.

Clockwise from upper left: Old Westbury on Long Island, NY; private garden in Minneapolis; Nemours in Delaware; and a garden in Durham, NC.

I got to try a new tool when I couldn’t remember where on Long Island I’d taken the photo on the upper left. So I wondered if there’s a way to ID a photo and of course there is and it worked! So I can tell you it was the Old Westbury garden, which the late garden writer Suzy Bales showed me in 2010.

Upper right is in a private garden in Minneapolis. It won’t surprise you that they have a thriving gardening scene in Minneapolis!

Lower right is at the Nemours Estate in Wilmington.  So lovely.

And lower left is a public garden in Durham, NC – which is all my photo-ID trick could tell me.  I was there during the 2009 Garden Writers conference. Anybody know the garden?

At the top is the very dramatic design of the then-new native garden in the NY Botanical Garden in 2014. Performing lots of functions while looking stunning.

Lower left is at the Baltimore Museum of Art and on the right, the National Arboretum. Sadly, the Arboretum had to stop letting people feed the koi in the pool because overfeeding was causing ever-excreting and its attendant problems. I’m as disappointed as any 6-year-old because I loved feeding them.

Both upper photos are of a private garden near Philadelphia seen on a GardenComm tour.  A wonderful, funky place!

Below left is a private garden somewhere on Long Island, NY, with Suzy Bales, who knew the owner.

Below right is a photo I took from the 2-story office of writer Christopher Buckley, looking across his pool to his house. I got to see it on a Garden Conservancy Open Day in Washington, D.C. Nice, huh? I could see myself living there.

Clockwise from upper left: in Tudor Place in Georgetown, DC, originally a private home; a private garden in Washington, DC, and two outside Baltimore.

I got to see these private gardens through Garden Conservancy Days and MD Hort Society tours.

xx

These four pools are in Georgetown in Washington DC.  At the top they’re private, and I got to see them on Georgetown Garden Club tours.

Photos at the bottom are in Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C. The pool on the right has a fascinating Sound Installation that these people are experiencing.

For me, pools are for swimming

All these residential pools are so lovely, and make me want to dive in. Upper left is the pool of my friends Joe and Kevin in Palm Springs, CA., with a mountain view! On the right, a private garden in Bethesda, MD.

Below left, a private garden near San Francisco that I got to see during a Blogger Fling in 2013. The urge to jump in on that hot was mighty hard to resist.

On the right, a private garden in No. Virginia that I might have seen on a Garden Conservancy Open Day. The pool looks lovely but wouldn’t it suck for doing laps?

This is, to my eyes, the perfect pool functionally and aesthetically, what with the materials and that snake railing! Not to mention the unusual prominence of plants, both alongside and reflected in the water. With a view overlooking a small marsh backing up to the Chesapeake Bay.

It’s the home of the famous landscape architect James van Sweden, where I interviewed him in 2009. There are more of my photos of the garden here.

Now here’s a screen shot I took this week because pools have been on my mind. It’s of writer-actor Buck Henry  as he was interviewed for the 2011 documentary series “The Story of Film.” He’s clearly at his home in the Los Angeles area and my immediate thought was “I love that for him – living there, with a perfect pool and a glorious view.” And in his climate he can enjoy that spot all year, whether in the pool or not. He lived another decade after this interview, when he was 79.

My Real-Life Pools

 

Scrolling through these photos was starting to make me feel sorry for myself, as it’s been so much colder and for so much longer than we Zone 7B gardeners are used to. But the shot above is where I could be today and every day if I got my butt out the door with my pool bag, braved the frigid air and the 5-minute drive, and that first dip in the water. Notice on the far left the hot tub, which is awesome! My body gives it five stars. Sure, there are no plants and no world-class view, but I’m lucky to have use of these pools.

(The pools and fitness center cost me $10/month, thanks to city ownership and subsidies. So nice to see government doing positive things.)

And here’s what I have to look forward to come Memorial Day Friday – the opening of the outdoor pool.  Looks nice, right?

But at the wrong times of the week during the summer it gets crowded and noisy or lap lanes are full, so honestly I’m jealous of people with private pools. It’s the one thing I’d use money for if I had that kind of money. And a pool maintenance service, of course.

Otherwise, I guess I have everything I want. 

One last pool image from ancient times, like 1956 or so, shows my mother and me in our backyard pool in Bon Air, Virginia where I grew up. We’re riding on folded inner tubes, like they’re horses. I think it’s the most fun she and I ever had.

Our pool was quite cheap – small, shaded, with no shallow end and no drain, so our spring ritual was bailing out and then cleaning the pool.  Some of my best memories are about that little pool that stayed cold all summer.  The pool that my dad dove into as soon as he got home from work for as much of the year as he could. I didn’t know anyone else with a pool in their back yard, so I knew we were lucky.

But I have a sad ending to report. Remember the Cuban Missile Crisis that started a short-lasting craze for bomb shelters?  Well, my dad, a wonderful man with a touch of paranoia, turned our beloved pool into one of those damn things. I didn’t realize it wouldn’t be reversible for the summer until I saw the concrete being poured. 

Sure, we could use the community pool and I even joined its team, but only because there wasn’t anything else for kids to do in the summer.  I hated it, so no great memories from that pool.

MORE Garden Features 

These photo collections started when I learned (from GardenRanter Ben) that I could search for tags just using Windows Explorer – no extra software! So began a fun winter project – scrolling through thousands of photos taken over at least 20 years, and tagging the hell out of them. For my enjoyment and yours. The others are: