Creating A New Paradise Landscape Artists Build Serenity By Mimicking Nature’S Wonders

David Long mimics nature with cement, Styrofoam, plaster and silk.

When Sacred Heart Medical Center wanted a waterfall in its prayer garden, Long fashioned concrete blocks to match a natural basalt outcropping.

When the Coeur d’Alene Tribal Casino wanted to create an outdoor patio atmosphere in its restaurant, Long brought in faux marsh grasses, rocks and a birch tree. He’s currently designing “meditation rocks” for a Zen garden on top of a Manhattan high rise. The client wants lightweight slabs that look like granite.

“He’s really ahead of his time for this area,” said David Bertsch, Long’s cement supplier, and the owner of a 40-foot waterfall and pond that Long built. “It’s neat stuff, very natural looking. Most people think it’s this rock outcropping in your backyard.”

Long and his wife, Theresa, started Lakeland Co. Inc. in Rathdrum seven years ago.

“People want to create their own environment,” said David Long. “It’s kind of like their own little paradise, a place to relax and unwind without going to a resort.

Thirty-foot-tall pine trees and a rock cliff are currently under construction in the couple’s shop. The bookcase in their office is lined with volumes on geology, trees, lost civilizations and art books of nature photography. When the Longs take their three sons out into the woods, they carry materials to mold rocks and branches.

“Nature, in my eyes, is the most beautiful art there is,” David Long said. “When I build something, it has to appear more real, because the purchaser knows it’s simulated.”

People yearn for the natural environment lost to urban development, Theresa Long said. But she’s quick to acknowledge the irony of their work. One of their contracts was for manmade stumps and rocks on a Hayden Lake view lot, which was stripped bare of vegetation when the house was built.

The Lakeland Co.’s clients range from homeowners who buy $500 worth of rocks for their back yard to companies that pay up to $5 million for a landscape.

Restaurants, casinos and amusement parks are good clients, David Long said. They want the customer draw that comes with a novel setting.

The Lakeland Co. is currently working on a project for the Quinalt Beach Resort and Casino in Ocean Shores, Wash. The structure will look like an ancient shrine in a rain forest, complete with a waterfall and a flame that shoots 20 feet up the structure. David Long is also designing a mine shaft with a simulated explosion for Triple Play, a family entertainment complex planned for Hayden, Idaho.

“We’re designing stuff that puts people in awe. They wonder, `How did that get there?”’ David Long said.

That was the thought behind the waterfall Long built for the Coeur d’Alene Tribal Casino, said Jerry Krieg, the casino’s chief financial officer. “We wanted it to look like the casino was built around the waterfall.”

The Lakeland Co. began in 1993 when David Long was laid off from his job at a North Idaho sign company. The family had recently moved from California to Rathdrum in search of a smaller community to raise their kids.

“We figured it was now or never,” David Long said. “We started with a hundred bucks, an unemployment check and a ‘79 GMC pickup.”

The transition was a natural one for David Long, 39, who grew up working in his dad’s sign business. There was lots of craftsmanship and carpentry involved in the days before computers, he said.

The Internet, however, has been a boon to the couple’s business. Their 13-page Web site, wwwlakelandco.com, brings in orders from all over the country. The company also has representatives in Houston.

David is the artistic side of the company; Theresa keeps the books. “I’m the race horse and she’s the jockey reining me in,” he said.

Experimenting with new materials is one part of the job they both enjoy. “We spent some funny days working with foam in our shop,” Theresa said.

The foam grew and grew and grew. They slathered it on screens, to see if it would stick. When it dried, they cut it with a chain saw.

“We’re like the mad rock scientists,” David Long said.