Original subtitles

- Americans love their lawns.

Every weekend, we mow,

blow,

and trim to perfection.

Turning the yard into a $100 billion a year industry.

- We've got tillers, lawn tractors, chainsaws, trimmers,

blowers, every gadget you can possibly imagine.

- But the ultimate backyard Oasis,

isn't just about grass anymore.

- We're gonna have 10,000 gallons flowing through here.

It's gonna be very, very beautiful.

- You'll never look at your yard the same way again,

on Modern Marvels.

(upbeat music)

(upbeat music)

(water-sprinkler squirting)

(chainsaw cutting)

In yards across America,

the lawn is a labor of love.

The basis of this national grassroots obsession,

turf grass.

Turf grass is a dense cover of grass and roots

in the top layer of the soil.

Today, it's estimated there are

about 50 million acres of it planted

in the United States.

(upbeat music)

And that 81% of Americans have a lawn.

Grass is typically a permanent fixture,

but one unusual lawn was built for travel.

The university of Phoenix stadium is a dome,

home to the NFL's Arizona Cardinals.

But there's a problem.

Beyond hosting football, (car engine revving)

it's also booked as a site for events

that would pulverize a grass surface.

- They can bring in Tractor Pulls, Big Boy Toys,

I mean, you name it, and we've had every kind of show

in the world in here.

But you can't do it, if you have a field in here.

- The solution is a new twist on indoor-outdoor carpet.

But this carpet is made of real grass.

As the turf flourishes outside in the Arizona sun,

spot watering and computer controlled irrigation

keeps it green.

The field is in one piece, not segmented.

So to move it inside, the turf can't be rolled in sections.

Instead, when game time looms,

it rolls into the dome in one hulking mass of grass.

The two acre field sits in a massive tray in layers,

much like a birthday cake.

A steel support structure and metal decking,

support the tray.

The plastic tray sits one inch above the support structure,

to will allow for water drainage below.

The turf grows on top of one foot thick root zone.

This layer is a mixture of sand and reinforcing fibers,

that provides optimum stability for the athletes.

Moving this 19 million pound chunk of sod,

takes surprisingly little power.

An extension cord and a 13 track rail system,

are all that's needed.

A utility trench allows workers

to monitor the move from below.

(siren blaring)

- There's our warning signal for the field moving.

(siren blaring)

Now we get to listen to that for 70 minutes.

Here, we're looking at the gear box to drive the wheel.

Here's a one horsepower motor.

There are 76 one horsepower motors driving this field

at this time.

We connect it with two electrical cords.

(siren blaring)

When we come halfway in, we stop, unplug the cords,

take 'em to the other end.

We plug 'em in back down the other end,

and then we'll come in the second half of the way.

(high energy rock music)

- For all you homeowners saddled with a that can't move.

The real action lies in what you move on top of it.

(lawnmower engine revving)

From zero to seven miles per hour in seconds flat.

With engines as powerful as 30 horsepower.

The riding lawn mower has been

the big dog of the yard for decades.

- In the 1950s, the riding mower was the new status symbol.

It was advertised as a little car.

Some of them had martini glass holders, all kinds of things,

and everybody wanted a riding mower.

They were fun.

- Say hello to the new big dog.

It's called ZTR, or Zero Turn Radiance.

And it's taking a big bite out of the time,

it takes to mow the lawn.

- They are more productive. They get the job done faster.

From a homeowner standpoint, they're more fun to operate.

- Part of the fun of a zero turn mower,

is trading the steering wheel for a pair of levers.

The levers control two independent motor drives,

that power the rear wheels.

(high energy rock music)

(lawnmower engine revving)

- This is a zero turn lawnmower.

The basic principle behind it,

if you make a right handed turn,

your right hand transmission is not gonna work at all.

The a left hand transmission does all the work.

(lawnmower engine revving)

If you notice it turns in place,

the right hand wheel is not moving,

but the left hand wheel is working completely.

- You can go into much tighter places

and then get back out,

without lots of extra maneuvering.

Or when you come up to a small tree,

you can go around it

one time and be done.

If a homeowner can go out and do the job in half the time,

that's worth a lot.

(lawnmower engine revving)

(upbeat music)

- In the centuries before the ZTR and its brethren,

turning a pasture into a lawn was a tedious

and uneven proposition.

As 17th century English gardens gained popularity,

the owners began to employ small armies of workers,

wielding scythes.

- It was a long stick with a large blade on the end of it,

that an individual would swing back and forth,

and that's how the lawn or grass area would then be cut.

Very labor intensive.

Took a good deal of skill to be able to use that over time.

Especially, if you're trying to get a low and level cut.

- In 1830, English inventor, Edwin Budding envisioned

a better way to get a low and level cut.

He built a large cast iron machine,

with a revolving cutting cylinder at the front.

He called it "A Real Lawnmower,"

and it's a design that lives on today.

A real mower shearers grass like a pair of scissors.

A central shaft rotates a series of cutting blades.

The turning blades come into contact with a bed-knife.

The scissor action cuts the blades of grass.

For decades, few people saw the need for a lawnmower,

but in the United States, that changed.

When the urban lawn first came into vogue.

Over 38 patents for real type mowers were issued

between 1868 and 1873.

At the turn of the century,

several mower inventions added small steam,

and even gasoline fueled engines.

Many inventors lay claimed to the rotary lawn mower.

But in 1931, the Louisville electric manufacturing company

built and marketed one of the world's first.

The rotary design ultimately,

became a standard by the 1960s.

The rotary mower employs a single blade,

revolving at around 2,800 revolutions per minute,

to cut the grass, and then discharge it through a shoot.

A mulching mower uses a higher deck without a shoot,

to suspend the grass.

A blade with a longer cutting edge

repeatedly chops it to pieces,

and returns it as mulch back into the lawn.

- That puts the nutrients from the grass blades,

the decomposition of the grass blades back into the turf.

If you're bagging,

you don't have to dispose of the clipping.

So there's the landfill issues

and containment issues of grass clippings.

- So how much do we love our lawns?

Landscaping is more than a $100 billion a year industry.

For decades, there's been one goal almost all homeowners

across America have been striving towards.

(lawnmower engine revving)

The perfect lawn.

Today's technology makes the backbreaking chores

of working around the yard, a little easier.

(lawnmower engine revving)

Since 1907, The Toro Company, has been one

of the leading lawnmower makers in the United States.

The Toro testing and design center in Bloomington, Minnesota

designs and builds mower prototypes.

The pieces are laser cut and assembled.

They're then subjected to a battery of tests

that can last for years.

The engineers test for safety, performance, and durability.

The standard durability drill is called, the bump test.

- Here, we try to simulate the entire life of the machine,

which may be 3000 hours,

but we try to accelerate the life

by having the biggest possible bumps

on what we call a role dyno,

which shocks the machine at a very regular basis.

And we try to get the end result

of a life out of the machine

in a reasonable period of time,

which might be a month or two months.

- Mowers are noisy.

So Toro engineers are constantly trying

to build a quieter machine.

The sound test tries to pinpoint noise

that can be eliminated.

- What we're looking for is objectionable sounds or noises

that might be coming from the panels

that aren't on the machine.

The engine, the fan, the hydraulics.

- While microphones measure, external machine noise,

a second test judges the effects on the operator's ears.

- This is the test where we've tried to measure

what the sound level would be at the operator's ear,

and we try to stay within certain measurable limits.

- Not all yards are flat.

So Toro uses a tilt table test

to determine machine rollover angles.

- It has two main purposes.

One, to check the parking break of the machines.

And second, is to check the overall stability.

We go up to first 16.7 degrees,

which is the minimum level for parking brakes.

And then we go all the way up to in this particular case,

25 degrees, which is the upper limit of stability.

- But even if your lawn is perfectly level,

what if there's something unexpected

lurking beneath the grass?

The drastic stake test is an alarming, suburban vision

of what could happen.

- Is to represent the worst we could imagine,

a customer doing in their lawn,

if they hit the water main, or a sprinkler head,

or other objects in the lawn.

- A one inch diameter steel stake

is positioned below ground level.

The engineers engage the mower blade,

move it over the impact zone, and then cringe.

(lawnmower blade snaps)

- And what we're after there is to make sure

that there are no failures on the machine,

to make sure that the machine can still be used

for the intended purpose, which is cutting grass.

- These and dozens of other tests,

health engineers build safer and better mowers.

Toro was even tested an autonomous lawnmower,

with high precision global positioning

and obstacle recognition capabilities.

It represents one possible future option

for commercial and municipal grounds, and golf courses.

But the future is now for the gadget happy homeowner.

Luis Medina founded his company, Evatech to build a mower

for people who would rather do their yard work sitting down.

- I used to cut my grass with regular typical push mower.

And I wanted to come out with something easier to use,

not just for me, but for my friends.

- The Evatech machine puts mowing at your fingertips,

with wireless joystick control.

- Well, here we have the transmitter,

has two joysticks that controls a unit.

The transmitter sends the signal to the brain,

the brain decodes the signal

through a very sophisticated algorithm,

that makes mower go forward, reverse,

and zero turning radius.

- All that movement is powered by an electric hybrid engine.

A separate gasoline engine operates the cutting blade.

It even comes with its own seed spreader attachment.

Choosing a remote controlled lawnmower,

over a self propelled or a ZTR model,

is a lifestyle choice.

But there are other ways to beautify your lawn.

Inside this greenhouse complex in Marysville, Ohio,

even a snowstorm can't delay the future of the American lawn.

The grass breeders at Scotts Miracle-Gro Company,

do more than just figure out how to keep your lawn green.

They're conducting experiments aimed

at re-engineering the lawn itself.

As public water supplies dwindle, and fuel prices rise.

They're trying to breed grasses that need less water

and less mowing.

- These greenhouse facilities allow us to conduct some

of the more controlled and precise experiments

that we do with the Scott's company.

We can control light.

We can control the soils that we use.

We can control the irrigation,

the nutrition that we're providing,

and really simulate just about any environment

that you'd find any place in the world.

- The greenhouse contains multiple rooms,

each design to simulate different climates

while growing a variety of grasses.

In one room, they're developing slow growing,

or slow mow grass to give lawn mowers a break.

These grasses are bred to possess fewer of the hormones

that encourage plant cells to elongate.

- And then they will cross those and go through

this plant breeding that can take up to 12 years,

to develop a grass that will then give a desirable lawn

without requiring a lot of mowing.

- Another experiment could put an end

to brown lawn syndrome,

by cross breeding popular grass varieties,

with those that can withstand desert conditions.

- These grasses are in a drought test.

They look the same now, they have the same soil.

The difference is we are starting to withhold the water.

After a period of time, some of them will die.

Some of them will just turn brown,

and maybe green up later when they have water.

The key is we're trying to find the ones

that are gonna last.

You would think that the beautiful patch

of green grass we've all come to know as a lawn,

is an idea that dates back to the Romans and antiquity.

But surprisingly, it's a fairly recent phenomenon.

The word lawn dates to 16th century Europe,

and the old English word "Launde" meaning open space.

- That simply was an area that livestock grazed and that

that grazing kept the grass short.

And that short crop grass is really the genesis of lawns.

- Prior to the 16th century, there were few lawns in Europe.

Pastures and public green spaces contained a smorgasbord

of grass varieties.

- The grass types were quite different

than what we see here.

In fact, some of the grasses or early lawns rather,

were actually things like Chamomile or Clover,

and Meadow grasses.

And these were things that were native

to Northern Europe at the time.

- French landscape architect, André Le Nôtre,

designed one of the first Ornamental lawns in 1661,

at the gardens of Versailles', near Paris.

Soon after, British nobleman,

began planting formal English gardens.

But for the English peasant class,

the lawn was still an impractical dream.

The grass wasn't necessarily greener

in the American colonies.

Native grasses like Broom Straw and wild Rye,

didn't have the nutrients

to sustain the grazing animals brought from Europe.

- So very early on in the 1600s

colonists were writing home to Europe,

asking for clover and grass seed to be sent.

Many of the colonists animals starved to death,

over the winter before the colonists

could get grass seed that would sustain them.

- Even with imported European grass,

a low cut English style lawn

didn't germinate on American soil,

until after the civil war.

Then by the late 1800s the lawn took root,

at least in the city.

Mechanical lawn mowers, fertilizer,

and access to city water made growing grass affordable.

The lawn also got a boost from the people

who depended on lush grass,

the United States Golf Association.

Thanks to its research, improved strains

of Kentucky blue grass and other varieties hit the market.

But it took a suburb to spark a yard revolution.

In 1947, Levittown became one of

the first suburban tracked home developments.

- Levittown was built in potato fields in Long Island.

There were no trees.

And the easiest way to cover

the dirt and the construction scars was grass.

- Soon middle class America was obsessed with grass lawns.

Everyone wanted one,

and the Scott's company was happy to deliver.

Founded by civil war veteran, Owen Scott in 1868,

the company learned that the quickest way to a man's heart,

was through his golf clubs.

- They were very early mass marketers.

They bought or obtained the mailing lists for golf clubs,

and they targeted golfers.

And they sent out newsletters to tell people

how to have a home lawn that looked like a golf course.

- Today, Golf courses and American lawns,

are cut from the same roll, with the sod cutter.

- Sod is instant lawn for those not patient enough

to plant it themselves and wait a few weeks for it to develop.

The sod just gives you an automatic lawn.

It's nice and green.

And you know, some people prefer that.

- A sod farm operates like a nursery.

It grows grass specific to the local climate

over a period of 18 months.

A sod cutter skims the turf a quarter of an inch

below the surface, creating carpet like rolls.

Rolls provide a mature lawn in a matter of minutes.

But some homeowners prefer their grass homegrown.

For that, they need pure straight

from the bag grass seed.

- It's a good idea to have multiple varieties

involved in a seed mix.

We try and mix and match a strength and a weakness

against each grass so that if something happens in a lawn

like a disease, for example,

it doesn't affect all the varieties.

There's something there to take over.

- But some homeowners are not purists.

Seeding a yard takes time, and sod can be very costly.

For them, imitation is the sincerest form of ground cover.

This new lawn in Phoenix, Arizona

is getting a buff and polish.

But look closer.

The grass is fake.

Synthetic grass or new grass,

is a vast improvement on Astro-turf.

The fake grass pad that carpeted sports fields and yards

in the 1970s and eighties.

It was made of polyethylene,

an abrasive material, with no shock absorption qualities.

- With the new grass products versus real grass.

In addition to your watering,

mowing, fertilizing, thatching,

new grass, the only maintenance required is

an occasional leaf-blower, plastic rake, or a broom,

just to remove debris.

- Today's synthetic grass, version 2.0,

is made of the less abrasive polypropylene,

with twisted nylon fibers for shock absorption.

Customers can even choose their own imitation variety,

Rye, Fescues or Bluegrass,

and have it pre-mowed to the height they desire.

Synthetic turf is an alternative to natural grass

and a possible answer to shrinking water resources.

Lurking beneath the turf in millions of American yards,

is a gadget that dispenses the elixir crucial

to the survival of a lawn.

- These days, a lot of people are concerned with drought

and how we're using water.

We don't wanna waste water.

It's a very precious resource.

- In many yards, this resource flows through

an underground sprinkler system.

The homeowner programs a computerized controller

that executes a watering schedule.

But there are some systems that think for themselves,

their only master, is the weather itself.

(lightning striking)

For these models, the computer links wirelessly

with a nearby weather monitoring station.

The weather station measures temperature, humidity,

and other data,

and then transmits hourly updates.

The controller receives the data,

and then tells the sprinkler system when to water

and for how long.

- It actually knows how much water the landscape is using,

and puts back only the amount of water that the plants need

without any over-watering, without runoff,

and without waste.

Water savings can be tremendous.

We found you can save as much as 30, even 40 percent

on your water bill.

- With savings like that, you can bet smart irrigation

will eventually become a standard in the American yard.

We've come a long way from the garden hose.

In the early 1870s,

the BF Goodrich company began manufacturing the rubber hose.

It made effective watering of the American lawn, possible.

In the early 1900s

along came the first true sprinkler, The "Pluviette".

The water drove a turbine.

The turbine distributed the water stream

while turning on an axis.

But better designs lay ahead.

In 1935, businessman Clem Lefraitra,

began marketing a sprinkler that was first developed

to irrigate California orange groves.

It was called "The Horizontal Action Impact Sprinkler."

It marked the beginning of the Rain Bird company.

- The one I'm holding is a model 60,

it's the first production model,

that Rain Bird actually made and sold.

It will go 360 degrees,

in other words, a full circle

as it's spraying the water.

- The impact sprinkler has a spring loaded spoon arm,

that repeatedly interrupts the water stream,

creating an evenly spread curtain of water.

As the arm returns,

it strikes the sprinkler head causing it to rotate.

Today's sprinklers, go to boot camp,

at the Rain Bird testing facility in Tucson, Arizona.

On the demo lawn, both rotary sprinklers

and circular pop-up sprinklers,

that have survived various water torture tests,

are taking a final exam.

That includes the 115-E,

one of the world's

most powerful gear driven rotor sprinklers.

It casts a jet of water as far as 115 feet,

providing 360 degrees of coverage.

For golf course or backyard mega lawns,

just one of these monsters can water an area equivalent

to the size of a football field.

In the test center, Rain Bird's team of hydro engineers,

puts the sprinklers crucial head assemblies

through pure hell.

- We literally just run them, and run them, and run them,

until they break, find out why they break.

We fix that and continue to run 'em,

and make a better product.

- Sprinklers can also take a beating in your own backyard.

An accidental water pressure surge, called water hammer,

can occur in a long section of pipe.

(water gushing)

The result could be explosive.

The burst test simulates the potential yard disaster.

- So we've set up an extreme test out here,

that can get hundreds of pounds of pressure,

400 plus pounds of pressure.

And we make sure that our sprinkler heads can withstand

that kind of pressure.

- Rain Bird sprinklers perform under pressure,

but can they deliver water to every blade of grass?

- This is Rain Bird's distribution test.

We have over 1000 catch cans here,

and we're measuring the amount of water in each one.

The they're equally spaced apart,

and we're trying to get a very smooth

even distribution pattern.

Computers measure the amount of water,

and we can adjust the nozzle technology so

that we get a perfect even distribution.

- Distribution is never an issue with drip irrigation.

This water stingy method is designed for trees, bushes,

gardens, flower beds, or any other part of the yard,

except the grass.

- It uses, what we call spot watering emitters,

or a small area emitters.

It literally drips the water on drop-by-drop,

and you run it for much longer periods of time,

and just at the base of each individual plant.

- Irrigation and its evolving technologies are

the mandatory accessories for a green lawn.

But one trip to the lawn and garden aisle reveals

a garage clogging collection of yard gadgets.

You may not even know that you need.

The tractor supply company showcases the latest technology

for the Do-It-Yourself, backyard pro.

- We got tillers, lawn tractors, chainsaws, trimmers,

blowers, every gadget you can possibly imagine

to use in your yard and to keep it green all summer long.

- One versatile gadget is the yard's version

of a Swiss army knife.

- This is the basic line of weed trimmers

everybody's used to seeing,

but the newest thing in the yard is the four cycle trimmer.

It has a highly efficient motor

that keeps the environment clean.

It also has a fast attached system,

where you can put on the regular weed trimmer end,

an edger.

You can also use a tree pruner.

A hedge trimmer.

And a blower attachment all with one unit,

and use one motor in your garage

as opposed to having different pieces of equipment.

- Detested by many, the ear splitting leaf blower,

is being converted to a kinder, gentler tool.

- What we have here is the latest in the backpack blowers.

This has 140 mile an hour wind speed,

a real low vibration motor, and a smart start spring.

It'll help it easier to start.

A lot less fatigue on you

when you don't have all the vibration,

but it does hang off for your back and easy controls,

and you can work with it for hours.

- The 21st century home store carries

an endless catalog of power gadgets

to help the Do-It-Yourselfer, keep order in the yard.

(chainsaw motor revving)

High above the backyard,

a crew is preparing to bring down a monster.

Trees are the pillars that can give a yard scale,

but sometimes they must come down.

(chainsaw motor revving)

Bringing a tree down is only half the battle.

The other half is cutting it down to size.

The wood chipper is the Godzilla of yard gadgets.

It's designed with rotating drums or discs and sharp knives,

that can devour a tree and reduce it to sawdust,

in a matter of minutes.

Bring down a tree is a relatively quick job,

but planting a tree and waiting for a shady canopy,

could take 15 or 20 years.

For those who can't wait that long,

an outfit like the Davey Company can supersize your order.

They're a select fraternity of tree movers.

The Davey crew hasn't met a tree they can't handle.

When the trunk is 24 inches in diameter or larger,

they use a gantry system.

They trench beneath the tree,

and insert pipes to act as a lifting platform.

- It's a hydraulic process of actually lifting

or jacking the tree up.

Very similar to what you see in the building movers

or the structural movers around the country,

that move buildings.

Once we've got the tree lifted vertically,

we have tracks where we can roll it,

or we bring in our trailer

that we assemble alongside the tree,

and then roll it beneath the tree.

- If the tree is less than 12 inches in diameter,

a customized trailer mounted spade is all they need.

The hydraulic spade uses a high pressure pump to drive its

blades deep beneath the roots.

One scoop, and this tree is ready to roll.

Davey company put down roots in the US in 1880.

By the late 1920s,

the company had perfected a moving method.

- They used what was called an Irish Whip,

or some people called it an English Spar.

And it was a device where you

actually, mounted wheels to the tree itself,

and tilted it down and toed it to the receiving site,

and then stood it back up and planted it.

- In this muddy field at a tree farm west of Houston, Texas,

the Davey crew is preparing to move a 40 foot tall,

50,000 pound Red Oak tree.

This is one of six trees destined for a single backyard.

Once the crew has excavated the soil around the trunk,

trimming the roots is the biggest concern.

- Our initial process is to come in and root prune the tree.

We determine that for this tree

to have a success transplant,

we size the root ball at 12 foot diameter.

- The root ball is a neat packaging cased

in burlap and steel wire.

It's the trees life support system.

The crew trims the roots to a safe length

based on the size of the tree,

and then drives in steel pipes.

- Once we have a significant number

of pipes beneath the ball,

we'll mount a beam with U-bolts,

to hold the pipe in a rigid platform.

So essentially we have a grid of pipe,

which is our steel lifting device.

- Rainstorms have turned the earth

at this tree farm into thick mud.

The moisture has increased the overall weight by some 5%.

Getting the heavy tree out of the muck is no simple task.

The tightly wound root ball and its support platform,

will prevent damage during transit.

A tree hurdling down the freeway is officially a wide-load,

and must travel with a police escort.

Upon its arrival,

in Houston's elegant River Oaks neighborhood.

The team begins the arduous process

of maneuvering the trailer into the backyard.

Now it's time for some heavy lifting.

This tree move is called a round ball crane process.

It will use a 120 ton crane,

to try and lift the 50,000 pound tree to its new home.

The crane must work in a tight space.

Existing tree limbs, and power lines, complicate the lift.

- We've left the tarp on, on purpose

so that as we brush by this existing tree,

we don't snag a limb.

Now we're gonna pick it up,

and lift it up and over the house,

and set it down in a receiving spot.

- The connections are checked and rechecked.

The last thing anyone wants

is a 40 foot Oak tree falling into the house.

Once the tree is airborne, all eyes are on the root ball.

- As you notice, the root ball is the integrity of the tree.

We treat that like a cake, and therefore,

we don't want to crack the icing on the cake.

That's why we do all of our lifting

from the structural bottom.

- With a tree dangling a few feet above its new home.

It's spun to find the right spot

that will cast shade near the house.

- Well, these limbs are longer.

Let's let them go out that way.

That way, to that side.

- Stop, stop there.

- The move is complete, but the work is far from over.

- All of the trees that are transplanted essentially are

going into a critical care method at that point in time,

because we are cutting off a good percentage

of the root system.

So we're trying to regenerate new roots,

once the tree is installed.

- The key to root growth is efficient watering,

and loose air-rated soil.

The crew buries, perforated drainage pipe on a slope,

to ensure that gravity will carry water away from the tree,

and avoid over-watering.

A backfill of loose soil compost will help

with the drainage.

- Essentially, it's a two to three year process

to regenerate enough of a root system

for the tree to survive on its own,

without the critical care treatments.

- The Davey company has moving trees down to a science.

The American backyard has long been the home turf

of man's best friend.

But today, a new creature is challenging the dog's domain,

and you don't even have to clean up after him.

Koi fish, originated in China, and in the 19th century,

the Japanese bread them for enhanced color.

They are now tenants of a new vision of the American yard,

The Waterscape.

This living, breathing pond

is a suburban wilderness adventure designed

to bring out the child in all of us.

Pacific outdoor living in La Crescenta, California,

has been taking the yard aquatic for more than 20 years.

- The ecosystem we create with our pond is a community

of plants, animals,

and microorganisms that we introduce into the area,

and they all depend on each other to survive.

- Before the tranquility comes the heavy lifting.

Take this project at a new home in Bel Air, California.

- So basically we have about 55 feet of waterfall.

It starts up here with a spring, and it's gonna come here,

we're gonna have a nice cascading waterfall.

We're gonna have 10,000 gallons flowing through here.

So it's gonna be a really, nice, loud, noisy type waterfall.

It's gonna be very, very beautiful.

- The waterfall will feed into a two foot deep Koi paradise.

First, comes a felt underlayment

to prevent weeds from invading.

Then a rubber liner will form the bottom of the pond.

- Once this is set in place,

we set the rocks all the way around,

starting from the bottom, we rock up,

and get the different levels rocked in.

And then we pour in gravel.

- Just as the dog gets a doghouse.

There's another pond feature

that every Koi literally can't live without.

- So this is basically a Koi garage.

In this area, we have different predators,

there's birds, and coyotes, and raccoons, and so forth.

So this gives a place for the Koi to hide.

And really the water only needs to be about two feet deep

for the Koi to actually be protected.

- The Koi aren't expected to do their own housework.

This pond is self-cleaning.

- So this is the skimmer,

which is basically a mechanical filter.

So we have the water level,

is about one inch below this line here,

and allows the leaves to be drawn into the basket.

And the leaves are picked up,

and then you can take out the basket,

pull the leaves out and rinse it out, dump it.

And then we have a filter mat, that sits on top of there.

- At the top of the falls,

a second water scape filter relies

on an unlikely collaborator.

- Beneficial bacteria is a very important part

of the ecosystem.

It's something that we introduce to the pond,

to help with controlling the algae.

It's not gonna stop the algae growth,

but it helps starve the algae of its food source.

- The bacteria are introduced to the top of the waterfall

in a bio fall filter.

The filter contains lava rocks

that encourage bacteria to colonize.

The bacteria consumes enzymes and other nutrients,

and minimize the overgrowth of algae in the ecosystem.

- The whole stream actually works

as a biological filter as well too,

'cause you're gonna get bacteria

that will colonize throughout all the gravel,

and all the surface space on the stream.

- The Koi do their part by feeding along the pond's bottom,

dislodging debris that will end up in the skimmer.

The fish are famously tough,

and can easily survive freezing temperatures

by hibernating beneath the ice.

This water scape is complete.

Once the landscaping is finished,

this yard will certainly draw a crowd.

- A lot of these areas that we put these water features in,

is a location where maybe they weren't using very much.

It was just another patch of grass in their lawn.

But now we actually put a living, breathing organism

in that area.

- Self-sufficient water scapes are making some

rethink our vision of the traditional yard

as a carpet of green turf.

That turf requires resources,

like fertilizer, pesticides, herbicides,

and in most cases, a great deal of water.

What is the future of the American yard?

- I think that's the struggle as municipalities

look to balance the needs of the homeowner and the desire

to have a nice lush lawn,

the desire to use scarce resources appropriately

and manage them well.

- We have created a Savannah, from coast-to-coast.

This whole idea of the lawn around the house,

has become a national aesthetic.

It's only maybe 150 years old,

but this is what people have been taught to believe.

- No matter what you cover it with,

real grass, fake grass, trees, or water wonderlands.

The yard is a refuge and buffer zone.

It's our chance to create a particular vision of nature,

right in our own backyard.