COMING ATTRACTION: A NATURAL POOL

Nice, huh?  Not my house, not my pool. But--it's a natural pool!  The house is cute, too.

The article was memorable—it must have been, because I remember it well, even though I read it some time in the mid-2000’s.  It took up most of the front page of the New York Times’ now defunct Home and Garden section (now called Real Estate, sign of our times), and described a radical new idea in swimming pools:  the “natural swimming pool.”  Boy, I thought, if I had a pool, that’s the kind I’d want.  But it was totally out of reach.  Out of the question.

Another example of a natural pool.  Wood edge below the surface defines the swimming area.

Pools, for just about everyone, generally have hard-formed shapes made with concrete, tiles, plastic with clear blue water and, of course, chemicals to keep the water clear and blue.  It’s what most people swim in if they’re not near the ocean or lake.  (Or even if they are.)  Not everyone likes swimming in rivers or ponds.  But I do.  

As natural as you can get:  Audrey and Carly (with Scamper and Sadie) at the New Haven River.

When my daughters Lesley and Leah were children we spent much of each summer at an old farmhouse near Bradford, Vermont, where we had a small pond to ourselves.  All of us there shared it with frogs and even leeches (which rarely stuck to any of us, and we mostly ignored one another).  The bottom was stony, the soil there nothing like the clay we have here in Addison County.

Speaking of which, I already have a pond, so why would I want a pool?  Easy answer.  It's Addison County and the soil is 100% clay.  You only have to put a foot in the pond and you will understand.  Lower your foot into the water.  You will lose sight of it because of the mud you churned up.  If you stand up, you will find the pond floor is so soft your foot will sink.  It will sink more than you would like.  You will want to pull your foot out.  Although the water is plenty deep enough to swim, you probably won’t want to.  The pond teems with tadpoles and grown frogs of several varieties, tiny crawfish, snapping turtles–though rarely, I will admit, as only one was spotted a couple of years ago as she (?) climbed out, possibly to lay eggs–and muskrats (current occupants).  Herons often come to hunt for a meal, and they usually find something.  I don't know what.

Somewhere between natural and made-made:  the old Dorset, VT marble quarry where I used to swim summers
as a teenager. This beautiful pool could be some 90 feet deep in places. It's become very popular.

The natural pool makes use of its environment to stay clean and clear.  A regeneration zone of native plants, plus a filter and pump, keep the water swimmable.  Another article in the Times in 2007, not the one I recalled above, told of the origin of the concept.

“The pools are more popular in Austria, where a company called Biotop has been designing them for residential and public use since 1986 and now installs about 50 a year, according to Peter Petrich, Biotop’s owner and the person credited with inventing the concept.  Mr. Petrich said he and his colleagues have given much consideration to why natural pools haven’t caught on in the United States and have concluded that “perhaps in Europe people have more contact with nature and life is not so clinical.”

(Hah! That last comment sounds so German, and reminds me of a recent New York Times article about the popular German “waldkindergartens” that has children spending all their hours outdoors in totally unstructured settings in the woods or nature park.)

Anyway, this antipathy to naturalness in pools has changed. There are natural swimming pools all over Europe where the concept is no longer new, and they have made major inroads here as well.  Big companies in this business are Biotop (in the U.K.) and BioNova which have been building natural pools in Europe and the U.S.  From the latter’s website, here’s a good description of what they are:

“A Natural Swimming Pool or Natural Swimming Pond (NSP) is a constructed body of water in which the conditions found in naturally occurring ponds or lakes are replicated and optimized for water quality and for bather health and safety. The vessel is contained by an isolating membrane and operates as a closed-loop system. The system is completely chemical-free, with no devices that disinfect or sterilize the water (e.g., UV, ozone, ionizers, etc.). An NSP is cleaned and clarified purely with the controlled and directed flow of water through biological filters and aquatic plants rooted hydroponically in a specially-constructed wetlands regeneration zone.

An NSP has a clearly defined area for swimming and/or bathing that is physically separated from the planted section of the pool. These energy-efficient, sustainable, eco-friendly watershapes are always specifically designed, engineered, and permitted as a swimming pool.”

Natural pools can even be huge, like this public swimming pool in Minnesota:

The Webber public swimming pool in North Minneapolis

This is a bit like the one I plan to have here this summer: 

 

This natural pool in the U.K. is 3 meters by 11.  Mine will be 12 feet by 28.  But it might look a bit like this.

The pool is going to be fairly close to the house.  Part of it will overlap with what was my herb garden (moved to one of my raised beds) and perennial garden.  Since there will be many more plants in the regeneration zone, I have left that part of the garden as-is, assuming individual plants will be moved if not incorporated into the new plant areas.   The bottom will not be muddy, like my pond, because it will be lined and covered with sand and stones.

The rough location (note posts)of the pool from two angles.

However…

All this will have to wait.  The pool work would have begun this week (or maybe even last week) but the ground is wet from recent rains and more rain is predicted in the week to come. On a recent warm sunny day I walked the field with Skyler and found the meadow soft and squishy wherever we walked.  Wherever there are dirt tracks rains have kept the gullies made by tires filled with pools of water for weeks on end.  As it happens, except for a freakish two day heat wave last month, it's been too cold to swim.