Garden Design Magazine
“As a garden editor, I’ve encountered enough exposed plastic pond liners and red lacquered bridges to know better. But as soon as I met Richard Cohen and his business partner, Jim Kutz, in Amagansett, NY, and saw their work, I tossed away my prejudices. Because in their hands, every cliché is avoided. Their raked Zen gardens somehow feel at home in Long Island backyards; a blue-bottomed swimming pool surrounded by cemented boulders sounds dicey, but theirs looks fun, witty, and wild. And when it comes to the duo’s naturalistic ponds, client Steve Frankfurt says it best: ‘The great thing about Richard and Jim is that no one can tell they’ve been here.’ “
-Sarah Gray Miller
The New York Times
“From 44,000-square-foot ponds to 2-by-2 garden streams, the pond people, as Mr. Cohen and Mr. Kutz are known, create it all. ‘Our ponds are all around town,’ Mr. Cohen said as he took a visitor on a tour of the artificial waterways of East Hampton. ‘Some are behind small house. Some are on large estates. We build to scale.’ Mr. Cohen also added that the key to man-made ponds is to keep the man out of it. ‘We want it to appear as if we were never there.’ The more overgrown the waterway the happier the pond people are.”
-Diane Ketcham
Dan’s Papers
“Richard Cohen and Jim Kutz of Rockwater Ltd. have spent the last 35 years hanging their talent for building custom rock and water features, running the gamut between perfectly formed stone walls and pools to boulder arrangements with little trace of human intervention. The men share an independent spirit revealed in one-of-a-kind creations as unique as the stones from which they’re built. Even a cursory look at Cohen and Kutz’s many completed projects reveals the breadth of their achievement. Together, the duo has seemingly defied nature and bent it to their will, often while making their work look beautifully endemic to the land or water around it.” Click here to see more.
-Oliver Peterson
Better Homes and Gardens
“A natural stone pool is what the homeowners wanted, and they were open to suggestions. Luckily for them, partners Jim Kutz and Richard Cohen, of Rockwater. Ltd., had lots of them to offer. The result is a nature-lover’s dream—right down to the shady nooks and crannies filled with moss. The effect is that the stonework is not merely scattered about the surface but emerges naturally from the water. The designers, who do all of the backbreaking muscle work on each job they design, made on-the-spot selections from tons of stones that were trucked to the site. ‘We start with only a sketchy idea of how the pool will look and design as we go.’ “
-Bonnie Maharam