Design
Landscaping Around a Pool on a Lake Property
Planting near a pool on a lake property has to survive the conditions, keep debris out of the water, and preserve the view that made the lot worth buying. Those three pull against each other.
Pool landscaping is usually discussed as decoration. Near water on an exposed lot it is closer to engineering: the planting does real work holding ground, filtering wind and screening sightlines, and the wrong choices generate maintenance for as long as they live.
The debris problem is the one to design out
Anything that drops - leaves, needles, blossom, seed, fruit - eventually ends up in the pool or in the filter, and on a property nobody visits mid-week it accumulates for days before anyone sees it. This is the single most useful design principle available: keep heavy droppers away from the prevailing downwind side of the water.
Mature trees that already exist are usually worth keeping regardless. They are why the lot looks the way it does, and a pool sited to work around them is nearly always a better result than a pool that required their removal.
Roots, which are a slower and more expensive problem
Vigorous root systems near a pool shell, a deck sub-base or a plumbing run are a decade-out problem that arrives without warning. Species choice and distance are the whole of the solution, and both are free at the design stage and very expensive afterwards.
Wind, and using planting as structure
On lake-adjacent ground, wind off the water strips heat from a pool continuously and makes a deck less comfortable than the air temperature suggests. A planted windbreak on the exposed side does more for the usable season than most mechanical measures, and it works every day without being switched on - see the season piece.
The constraint is that on a shoreland parcel you are not free to plant or clear whatever you like near the water. Within 35 feet of the water, vegetation may not be removed at all - that strip is protected outright - and the view and access corridor carved through it is capped at 35 percent of the frontage. Screening therefore has to be planned within what is permitted, not imposed on it.
The view is a fixed quantity - design to it
Because the permitted view corridor is capped, the sensible move is to treat it as a given and orient the pool and the seating to it, rather than assuming the sightline can be widened later. Owners who plan the other way round tend to end up with a deck facing a screen they are not allowed to remove.
Surfaces and what washes into the water
Loose material near a pool ends up in it. Fine bark, small gravel and light mulch all migrate with wind, feet and rain, and each one is abrasive to a liner and unhelpful to a filter. Larger-grade material, planted ground cover or paving in the immediate zone all avoid it.
Runoff matters too: a pool deck plus its landscaping is a substantial change to how water moves across a site, and on shoreland ground where that water ends up is regulated as well as practical. It is worth resolving with the decking drainage rather than after it.
What tends to look right here
Restraint, generally. A pool on an established lake property looks best when the planting reads as part of the grounds rather than as a poolside installation - which usually means fewer species, larger groupings, and materials that match what is already on the site. The pools that look imported are the ones with a distinct landscaping vocabulary of their own.