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From April 2001 through August 2008 I was employed to design, manage and build numerous projects within a private, and what I believe will someday be labeled one of the most important, botanical gardens in history.

The Cliff Falls project was my first water feature/rock setting project. I had started on the falls a year earlier ( summer 2004) basically doing all the faux work solo as I could not find an assistant able to do the techniques, not that they were difficult, but they required skills difficult to find amongst the labor pool I had at my disposal. I spent an entire winter alone in the plastic bubble and found myself talking to the ravens and the turkeys for company - at least I had heat, it was tropical inside the plastic even on the coldest days.

In 2005 I was asked to take over managing all the large rock and waterfall work to be done on the project. It was exciting to be given the task, but I had no experience in doing this, or any type of large scale landscaping work. I had to learn everything quickly, the equipment, methods, safety procedures, and logistics. I was fortunate to have a great team to lead, a couple experienced hands and a couple inexperienced ones (essentially a five man team), all worked diligently and we made it happen.

The falls are over 60 ft. high from the upper pond surface and pump approximately 5000 gallons of water a minute which comes from a small source pool a few hundred yards down stream. Hundreds of rocks were used with the largest around 26 tons. The area surrounding the falls is intended to resemble the environment and plant zones of the northern reaches of the Appalachian Trail.

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The Garden Project in Pawling, NY

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