Tulsa Pools : Make the Best Investment

Cody: Welcome to The Dive Time Show. Tulsa Pools  I’m your host, Cody Albright. With me, as always, is my lovely wife, Rachel.

Rachel: Hello.

Cody: Together we are the owners of the Sierra Pools and Spas of Tulsa. You can find us online at Sierrapoolsandspas.com or give us a phone call at 918-884-8427. Again, that was Sierrapoolsandspas.com or give us a phone call at 918-884-8427. We’re also on FaceBook as well.

Today, we’re going to be talking about a little bit of landscaping for your Tulsa pool. If you don’t know much about landscaping or you’re just getting into some knowledge about landscaping, today will be very beneficial for you listening to this podcast. Today, we’re going to be talking about landscape for your Tulsa pool. Rachel, go ahead and take it away today.

Rachel: At Sierra Pools and Spas, not only do we design your pool, but we can also design the landscaping around your pool. We can install that for you. We can do all that for you. If you don’t want to make that investment with us, you can do it yourself if you want to. We’re going to give you some information about, not only the goals when we do landscaping, but if you’re going to do landscaping, these will be the same types of things you want to think about when you are doing your own landscaping around your Tulsa pools.

The first thing we need to talk about is the goal. The goal …

Cody: What is landscaping?

Rachel: Landscaping is the plant design, the layout of flowerbeds around your property. Specifically, we’re going to be talking about around your pool.

Cody: Who doesn’t like flowers? Everyone likes to make it look pretty. That’s where we’re Tulsa Pools …

Rachel: Yeah, it just adds to the aesthetic feel.

Cody: I’m sorry for cutting you out. What’s the first thing we need to do?

Rachel: We need to think about the goal.

Cody: We need to think about the goal. Okay.

Rachel: There’s a company called Revolutionary Gardens. The owner is David. He says, “The goals for landscaping are going to be different for everyone. I have yet to work with a pool owner who didn’t want an attractive, low maintenance planting design that offers privacy and didn’t drop debris in the Tulsa Pools.” He basically covers the three main goals in that statement of landscaping around your pool.

Number 1: You want your landscaping project to be low maintenance. You don’t want to have to have something that is going to require a lot of work on your part. You want it to be low maintenance.

Number 2: You want it to provide privacy. You want to think about the areas in your yard where you want to be shielded from view. If you have a neighbor or something, you don’t want them seeing into your backyard or if you don’t want to see in to their backyard, you need to think about how you’re going to provide privacy through your landscape.

The third thing is: You want to minimize the amount of debris in your pool. Landscaping is great. It’s really annoying if you are having to deal with a lot of dirt or flowers or leaves or branches in your pool. That’s just an issue that you want to avoid.

Cody: That’s great. Everyone wants low maintenance. Everyone wants privacy. Nobody wants dirt in your Tulsa Pools. Yeah, that good, good stuff. What’s the next thing? What do we got?

Rachel: After you go through those goals and you think about how you’re going to achieve them, you want to think about the design. The best thing to do would to be get out some paper. Graph paper’s probably the best way to go because you can draw according to scale. You’re going to want to get out your paper and draw to the best of your ability. It doesn’t have to be perfect. You want to draw the outline of your pool. Then draw any decking that you have around the pool. Also make sure to draw the perimeter of your yard or your property line. Again, use a ruler or graph paper. This will just make it more accurate and more to scale. It lets you actually get the best results out of your drawing. Use a pencil, not a pen, because if you make a mistake, you want to be able to erase.

Cody: Everyone makes mistakes. It’s unfortunate.

Rachel: You don’t have to scrap your whole design and move to another piece of paper and start all over again. If there’s anything that’s already in your landscape that you want to use, make sure you add that to your drawing. Another thing with the design, you’ll want to pick a theme. The best thing to do is to go on Pinterest or just Google some different pool landscaping photos. That will give you some ideas. Just really think about: What’s going to go with your house? What’s going to go with what you already have there? What’s going to look good with your pool? Just kind of get an idea of the theme. You also want to think about some lighting elements because not only is landscaping the plants, but the lighting can really highlight certain things and add to your landscape as well. Make sure you think about that.

Some things to keep in mind while you’re designing your landscape. If you’re designing it yourself … Tulsa Pools Again, at Sierra Pools and Spas of Tulsa, we can design all of this for you and present a cohesive design with your pool and your house that’s going to look great aesthetically. You might have some ideas of your own. We love it when customers bring those to us or if you’ve had another designer draw something out. We can definitely incorporate it. Some things to keep in mind would be to use more stone and brick as edging to break up the flow of the concrete decking, so it’s not just all flat, one surface. You can break it up with different elements of different stone or brick.

Keep it spacious. You don’t want to overcrowd your pool area with a bunch of plants and lights. You want to make sure that the focal point remains the pool. You don’t really want to take away. You’re just adding to your pool area with the landscaping. Then, also, you can use potted plants close to the pool and keep the bedding, like the mulch and everything further away. This is going to help prevent getting the mulch into the pool. Also, potted plants are a lot easier to move around. If for some reason you have a potted plant in an area and you want to move it to another area, it’s really easy to do that versus if you have a plant bed right next to your pool, you can’t really move that.

After you get the design done, number three is to think about the plants, the soil, and the mulch. Again, David from Revolutionary Gardens says, “I typically look for a screened top soil blend that has some compost mixed in. Screened means it’s passed through a giant sieve, eliminating large clumps, rocks, and undesirable debris from the soil. Good topsoil is a joy to work with.”

For the best and cheapest soil, you want to mix new topsoil with your existing topsoil. Tulsa Pools The quality of your soil is going to determine the quality of your plants. You really want to make sure that that’s right. Next, you want to think about the mulch. The best thing to do is look for an organic mulch that’s a mix of local product, pine needles, and shredded bark. You want to avoid alternatives like tumbled grass or recycled tires. Obviously, tires or glass is not going to break down and it’s not going to add any nutrients to the soil. You want to stay away from any rubber or synthetic material like that.

Then, of course, the plants. The plants are what it’s all about. You want to think about choosing the right plants. It’s best to know what’s going to work best and what to avoid. As far as what to avoid, again quoting David, he says, “I tend to avoid anything with a lot of thorns or sharp spiky foliage. Certain trees, like magnolias, can be very messy and will drop leaves and litter all season long, making it more difficult to keep water clean. I also keep my summer flowering plants a little farther away from the pool to discourage bees from bothering swimmers.” That’s a great point. Bees love the flowering plants. If you have them right up next to your pool or in an area where a lot of your guests are going to be at, that can be really annoying and irritating. You definitely want to think about that.

Just a few examples of some good plants to use around your pool would be: evergreen trees, ivy is great for ground cover, shrubs, any kind of ornamental grass, and long-blooming flowers. Those are all good options when you’re thinking about plants around your pool.

The next thing you want to think about are the tools that you’re going to use. Tulsa Pools A landscape project can be as complicated as you want to make it. It can be as simple as you want to make it. A wheelbarrow, a pick, a shovel, and a steel rake will serve you well for most DIY landscape projects. Then a broom or a leaf blower for clean up. You can save money by borrowing tools from friends or family or whatever. If you hire us as your landscape designers, we’re going to go through professionals, so there will be a lot more tools incorporated into your design and the set up. If, again, you’re just wanting to do it yourself, you can keep it really simple and really cheap by borrowing things or just using things that you already have. Some additional tools that are helpful are buckets for mixing your topsoil with your current soil, hedge sheers and trimmers, a garden hoe for weeding, a garden hose, and gardening gloves.

Step number five would be to prepare the area. You want to clean the area around your pool. Make sure there’s no rocks or whatever. You’re going to want to soak the ground the night before you get started, so it will make it easier to remove any weeds. Then you’re going to want to weed. Then, if you’ve bought any new plants, you’re going to want to prepare those. That varies, but you’ll want to remove them from their pots, massage the root system, and then soak them in a bucket of water for about 30 minutes.

Step number six, if you’re doing this yourself, is it’s time to get to work. You’ll start planting. Tulsa Pools Keep plants spaced out when your planting them because you want to allow the root systems to spread. Don’t plant too close to walls or near your pool because it can affect the PH of the soil. You can add your potted plants at this time, as well. Keep your pots … you can add them in various sizes around your pool to give things different feel.

Then, lastly would be your lighting. If you’re using any type of solar light around your pool, you want to make sure that they’re getting direct sunlight because this is going to power them at night time. Before adding the light to the soil, make sure you loosen up the soil with a small shovel and then just gently insert that light into the soft soil. Most solar lights have plastic stems. You want to make sure you don’t break them by shoving them down into some hard soil.

Those would be the overall general steps of landscaping around your Tulsa pools.

Cody: Yep. That’s some great information, Rachel. Really appreciate that info and tips and tricks for landscaping. Just so, keep those in mind when you go to build your outdoor dream backyard. Think of us when you think about your backyard. We’d love to help you build and ‘smold’, and just from the ground up, your backyard. We love to do all those things for you so you don’t have to worry or stress about what’s going to look good together or if that’s going to go there, that’s going to go there. You know, and landscaping, we’d love to help you with that as well. Thank you for all that you do. Thank you divers. Appreciate you for listening and reading. Again, I’m Cody.

Rachel: I’m Rachel.

Cody: We’ll talk to you next time.