Hey guys, it's Brian from Team AquaScape and once again thanks for joining us on this Sunday edition of our Team AquaScape videos. Last week, wait a second, you know as I'm looking at myself really quick, before we get any further, the beard's getting a little aggressive. Is it a yay or a nay? Maybe we'll take you guys on that epic journey, huh? Do I bring it all the way down here? Diet white? Become Santa Claus? Or do I go back to the clean shaving responsible young man I am? Last week we took you guys kind of a stroll down memory lane through some of those past flowering garden shows and you can see my excitement when building those things. I'm also the total exhaustion I have when building those things. But the main reason we showed that was because of some of the inspiration I'm hoping to get. From you guys and our artists of the year as they come in and continue to build in our sandbox slash studio movie set back there that's being created. Because of all the great comments and everything else, I thought we'd kind of keep rolling down memory lane and show you the last three years we shared things out at Navy Pier there during that flowering garden show. And remember at any time if you want to see the full build out of those, just go to YouTube type in aquiscape flowering garden show and whatever year you want to see and they'll show you the whole process and set up all those things. But for the edit at Chortka version, check this out. So let's start with year 2015. Last time we left off with 2014. 2015 was a super memorable year because it was way more of a collaboration. We brought in some amazing people, Jack Harju from Atlanta's Water Gardens, Chris Baker and BJ Linger and they came out and it really bailed me out. I had recently been feeling under the weather and they came out and really helped bring my vision to full reality and it couldn't have turned out better. I love the way that all turned out. I'm more importantly, I loved the way we were all kind of able to work together and create something that was just memorable but inspirational for contractors across the country, which is why we do what we do. That thing has been duplicated at least 50 different times in different versions. In fact, even this behind me is a small version of what we did out there that you're at the flower garden show. The other reason I like that show so much is it was the first time I was able to create a formal looking pond. Again, the main reason we do these shows is because I got to experiment and nobody got to tell me what I could or could not do and I loved that formal pond. I thought it was really cool and it inspired us to do a lot of other things for projects sense, right? It's just a really cool thing. Tell me what you thought of that. So then we moved to 2016. Now 2016 was kind of a strange year because we were undecided if we were going to do the flower show anymore and at the last minute I said yeah, let's do it. I still love it. We have the time to do it. We actually didn't but we did and so we decided to do it. So they gave us their last available booth, which was the most challenging part of that year. The last available booth was a 45 foot circle, a 45 foot perfect circle. And he said you can have this booth. You can do whatever you want to with it. And I don't know why but instantly my mind went to pizza and maybe it's because that's where my mind is a lot of the times. Yeah, I love pizza. And I thought of pizza pie slices and how cool would it be if I could divide this thing up into five different pizza pie slices and recreate a different booth in each identical slice. So as we move through these things, pay attention to one thing. You're going to see the before version. It's just a big area of grass in a very unique shaped pizza pie slice. And there's a Japanese maple there. That Japanese maple is in the exact same location in every single booth. And what I really liked about that booth was taking like we always say we love to take unique spaces to their fullest potential. And if we could take these weird odd shaped pizza pie slices about 25 feet of frontage on the front down to zero space in the back to their fullest potential, then we could really show everybody how we could build something in any space. And so the first one you're going to see is really just kind of a typical I would call it more of a bird loving backyard. We have a very simple bubbling urn sitting over there, lots of flowering paths, a bench for cutting flowers. And that booth turned out great or that piece of the pie turned out really great. Right next to that we did a pondless waterfall. More of this mountain looking stream, lots of different cascades. And remember the exact same space. Look at where that Japanese maple is. Right next to that we did a pond with a little fire rock. Some really unique fence walls. We just tore a bunch of pallets down and then kind of stapled them to the fence. But a really cool intimate little pond with the fire rock, little babbling brick waterfall, Japanese maple in the same space. Next to that we did more of a Japanese themed garden with a nice little pondless waterfall. The traditional deer scare with the water kind of coming out of a bamboo pole into a rock. And then that really neat aqua blue stream with all those Mexican river pebbles. Again a unique wall on the side. And then my favorite part of that booth was taking something to its fullest potential with all those hanging bowls. Something I shared with Chris I was like hey Chris let's do something like this. And we just got to figure out how we're going to suspend these bowls, how we're going to get water in the room. And Chris really ran with that vision. And we just kind of collaborated quite a bit to come up with that. And I think it turned out amazing. We even have one of our patio bowls sitting there with a glass countertop over it as water comes up and underneath the glass countertop, which was really cool. That was inspired from Joey Genevieve's out in Canada who does some amazing, amazing work too. So really really cool booth. Very unique taking those unique spaces to their fullest potential. And showing the before and after is what we really got out of that booth more than anything. Alright so let's fast forward to 2017. 2017 might be one of my most memorable years. We did something that nobody has ever seen before. And we also created a booth that looked enormous in a relatively small space. I think the total booth space was 40 by 70, which is very similar to the booth space we have back here at Aquiscape where we've got our house and our shed and all that stuff going up. What I loved about that booth so much was the mystery. And you guys have heard me talk about this before how I love to create mystery in a backyard where you don't see everything from one vantage point. The kind of yards that pull you off the deck, pull you from inside the house to constantly keep discovering what's around the next corner. And that's 100% what we focused on that year. We also focused a lot on different types of artwork kind of throughout the show. So as you walk into the booth right away you're greeted by a giant moss wall that Chris and I created. And we just kind of freeform that thing. Got a bunch of moss glued into a wall glued some other things to the wall. And we came up with the entrance to our booth. So right away people are already taking pictures in front of our booth being inspired and kind of enticing people on what's going to be on the inside. I love creating booths where they couldn't actually see what was on the inside of the booth. Really really forcing home that mystery side of things and making them wonder what's on the other side of that wall. And as they moved past that moss wall they came in they saw the facade of a house that we reused at our old sandbox. Next to the facade we're just some simple bubbling rocks trying to represent the space of where you would actually put bubbling rocks in your own backyard. As you move past that you saw more of a fountain escape with the stacked urns turned out really nice. Just to the side of that you saw a piece of artwork that I created just gluing some miscellaneous things from around the house to a wall. That actually sold which was kind of cool. As you went past that you saw a giant pondless waterfall sitting right next to a small pondless waterfall just to show the comparison. Like here's what a pondless waterfall looks like with big machine sized boulders meaning we have to use a machine to set all this stuff next to a pondless waterfall that's with hand sized boulders. One's going to cost 15,000 and another one's going to cost you five. Just depends if you have the space and or maybe the budget. If you move around there you saw a signature pond. We also had I think some new stack slate walls that we were showing off. We had the shed in there that again was used to hide literature and our jackets and our refrigerators and everything else. And then the most memorable part was something that was actually inspired from a customer. A customer didn't like the way their new house looked in the front with this big metal aluminum gutter coming down by their front door. And I said have you ever thought of doing rain chains? She said no what are they? And the rain chain is an alternative way to bring water off your roof rather than using an aluminum downspout. It actually collects along the chain. An interesting thing about rain chains is over 95% of the water actually hugs the chain as it comes down. And so I was thinking to myself as we were setting up this rain chain for a customer how cool they look but they only look cool when it's running and who the heck is going to sit outside in the rain and watch this thing run. So instantly my mind said if one looks cool what would 150 look like and this is what it looked like. Well hey hopefully you guys enjoyed our stroll down memory lane. We took so much from that show. Hopefully we inspired other contractors. Hopefully I just recently inspired you guys to do something maybe a little different than out of the box with your own yard. If you like this stuff you know what to do. Like, comment, subscribe, share, tell a friend and I will keep doing it. Next time I see you I would imagine it'll be in our sandbox doing something big and epic. Hopefully you enjoy. Bye.