The owners of this swimming pool in South Miami, Philip Stoddard and Gray Read, began construction in their backyard in 2004. From this first photo, the pool looks no different from millions of swimming pools in Florida. This pool's owners have a leg up on the general public in thinking through an amazing design that recreates a natural habitat with minimal engineering inputs. Stoddard is a professor of biology at Florida International University. Think how different Miami would be-- how much energy would be saved and natural habitat recreated-- if people and government worked together to make pools like this proliferate throughout South Florida! (Click 'read more' to see how the final project turned out.)
The Stoddard / Read swimming pool is built on 1/3 acre in an urbanized neighborhood. According to the owners, the cost of the pool was no more than a conventional one. This one requires no chemicals, no mechanical/electric filtration, and only a small pump to flow water through the pool into a small cleansing marsh. Although you can hear the highway traffic in the background, myriad forms of wildlife have discovered the pool and make it a joyful place to be throughout the year. Imagine the possibilities. This photo was taken only four years later in 2008. When I saw the pool the other day, its water ran crystal clear thanks to attention to the balance of small critters who feed there. It just goes to show that living lighter on the land does not necessarily require abandoning what we love. We might even learn something we had forgotten.
Contact me at gimleteyemiami@yahoo.com for more information.
14 comments:
The pool is spectacular!
This is what I want for Christmas!!!!!!!
You will find lots of these out in the Redland. Because of the limestone, you can create steps and other features, naturally. The pools use the aquifer to fill and the pump helps circulate the water and pump water from the ground into the pool.
That is AMAZING. Stunning. I want IN
That is pretty darn cool.
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It IS pretty darn cool. Swimming ponds like this have been built all over South Miami, Coral Gables, Pinecrest, the Redlands... Some large, some small, each one is different and wonderful. Some of the most beautiful ponds are converted swimming pools. For the pond shown here, we recreated the landscape of the Big Cypress Preserve. Having a pond so close, we gets daily lessons in freshwater ecology. Most days bring something new, especially if I take a few moments to lie on my stomach and watch the little things – courting sail-finned mollies, fishing spiders hunting water striders, carnivorous plants eating tadpoles, mosquitofish taunting a baby watersnake, a hummingbird zipping down to take a drink, and the surprise of a bass leaping clear of the water to grab a passing dragonfly. In the five years since we broke ground for the pond we have spotted 124 bird species and 19 herps. Highly recommended if you like plants and wildlife, and you can deal with a bit of algae.
stoddard,
Very cool. I've also seen salt water pools created and stocked with lobster etc.
Keep up the good word.
Did I hear the Farm Bureau offered to tear for pesticides in those Redland pools?
This is incredible.
I have dreampt of doing something liek this but didnt know how to start
Does a set of specs/ instructions exist that can be shared?
I assume that some precisisn in side slopes and configuation is necessary to avoid it becoming a sump with really nasty water quality?
i assume its more like swimming in a lake than a pool, no?
Do friends and family who are not as comfortable swimming in nature enjoy it also?
It's just like swimming in a lake. People who find lakes creepy often adjust to swimming the pond, much to their surprise. Non-swimmers like to sit and watch, often hanging their feet in the water. I am aware of no instructions for making ponds like this but the principles are not complicated (devil is in the details). A few people make a living constructing ponds in South Florida - Mark Ingmire helped us with ours, but he does other things now. We do pump out the flock, algae, and sediments several times each summer to prevent the pond from turning into a marsh through the all-too-natural processes of succession. I recommend a flow-through system to keep the temperatures moderated between 82°F in summer and 71°F in winter. Very warm summer water found in natural lakes in Florida favors growth of brain-eating amoebas and we surely don't want those. You can contact us if you like - google the names in the blog.
perfectly swampy pool. All i can manage is to breed frogs in the backyard pond... low maintenance and the toady serenades are swampyholic.
Eye, thanks for posting this. What a thing of beauty!
Stoddard, how deep is it? What is the water temperature like?
Stoddard, you rock! This is incredible. My degrees are in biology and environmental science, and I have a small garden pond stocked with native fishes (sunfish, red shiners, mosquitofish) here in humid subtropical Houston that brings me great joy, but it's nothing as incredible as what you have done. I'm especially impressed because my mother grew up in Coral Gables, and her father, Mark Grossman, owned and developed what later became Chekika State Park, which is now park of Everglades NP. I remember swimming in the clear lake my grandfather built there, chasing fish, etc. So do you have a list of what kinds of fish you've stocked this pool with? I'd love to see it.
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