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| The great outdoors (March 2007) |
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Outdoor living has a brand new look
By Dale McDonald
After a life centered around California’s beaches and boats, Holly Beck was understandably unsettled about a move to semiarid Colorado. So when the Becks built their new house, she filled the backyard with streams, waterfalls, pathways, and ponds. Then she added a kitchen, a bar, a fire pit, a hot tub, a miniature meadow, and several patios. Welcome to the great outdoors.
“I was used to outdoor living,” Holly says, “and we knew we wanted to see and hear water. The design includes a waterfall near the top of the property which is the first thing we see each morning from the upstairs master bedroom. And from the living room below, the view is centered on the lower waterfall and pond. When you open the door the sound of falling water is absolutely beautiful.”
And it’s more than a history lesson. The film, using techniques that place the viewer in the middle of the action, captures the feeling of freedom that comes from riding at breakneck speeds through unspoiled open spaces. Theaters should display a warning before they show this film, because if you don’t already own a horse, by the time you finish your popcorn, you are likely going to wish for the chance to saddle up and ride.
Not even those who worked on the film are immune. “I’ve fallen in love with horses,” says Harry Lynch, who wrote and directed the picture for Texas-based Trinity Films, the production company that made the movie. Some of the world’s most exciting cowboy cultures, along with exotic scenery, star in this movie. “What we do in the film is tie these cowboy cultures together in a cohesive story and bring it to the IMAX screen,” Lynch says. Projected on a screen eight stories high, the images are stunning.
The story may be a bit surprising to most viewers, as well. As it turns out, Texas is not the birthplace of the cowboy, but instead is the last stop on a long evolutionary trail. The world’s horse-and-cattle cultures actually began 1,500 years ago. Moorish horsemen conquered Spain on endurance-bred desert horses while using new types of saddles, stirrups, and bits that brought a revolutionary new level of control over a horse.
Local color
What Steve and Holly envisioned was a natural look that complemented the area’s famous Lyons redstone. The first step toward getting that look was a trip to one of Boulder county’s flagship open space parks - with the landscape architect in tow.
“That was the best way to explain what I wanted,” Holly says. “I wanted him to imitate nature in my yard. I didn’t want paving stones and I didn’t want Disneyland. I wanted to create a natural look using the stone from local quarries. He took pictures at the park and the design evolved from there.”
The natural look began when the builder used dynamite to site the house. Seven large boulders formed during blasting were creatively placed around the property. Serving as anchors, the rest of the plan formed around those original seven stones. Next, the Becks had to decide where to place each feature, so they walked the property for several days, thinking “upper patio here, hot tub there, waterfall over there.”
“It sounds easy,” Holly says, “but it wasn’t. They’d spray paint an outline of the upper patio and I’d want it bigger. Then I’d have a revelation and change something else. It was a constantly evolving process.” The next big challenge came when the stone workers arrived. Skilled craftsmen, all, they just couldn’t grasp Holly’s approach at first.
“It seems that stone workers are very orderly, very organized,” she says. “They like perfect lines, and straight edges, but I wanted rustic. They would start a staircase, for example, and each step would be a perfect fit for the step above and the step below. So I’d try to explain that I want them tapered, with the bottom step wider than the one above, and so on. The hardest thing was that they didn’t speak English and I didn’t speak Spanish. So I had to become an artist. Believe me, I drew a lot of pictures.” Another example concerns the moss rock wall that hides the upper “secret patio.” Looking across the valley to the east, the ridge top is crowned with a row of cliffs that resemble loosely stacked boulders. Holly would point to the ridge and say, “I want the wall to look like that,” and the stone workers would begin building a perfectly symmetrical wall.
“That was a tough one,” Holly says. “Finally, I just joined the crew and pointed where I wanted each rock. They just were not used to people who wanted a sort of random look. Even if you know exactly what you want it can be difficult to explain to someone else.”
Once the bulk of the stonework was done, Holly decided they needed a soft area, a play area for kids. So they added a small grassy area about halfway up the hill.
Flowers and shrubs
Then it was time for plants to enter the landscape. “Winters in California are lush,” Holly says, “so I wanted trees and shrubs that stayed green as long as possible. I also wanted flowers to bloom from early spring to late fall. I told our consultant how I liked vibrant colors, plums, pinks, purples, and blues. She helped place everything, and every month there’s a surprise.” Once the 100-day project was complete, the Becks got a surprise: kids loved it. “Kids play here like you would not believe,” Holly says. “They get in the ponds, they scramble around on the rocks, they occupy themselves for hours at a time. They make a game out of everything.”
Now that the work is over, Holly can laugh at how hard the project was. Still, she says, being there every day for an entire summer was trying. “There were days I’d call Steve five or six times and tell him I simply didn’t know what to do. You just have to persevere.”
As for Steve, who relied on Holly to supervise the project, there’s one piece of advice. “Patience,” he says. “Have patience.”
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