Anti-Pjerrot

Hes soft - yet a hardscape .... ARGH now im confused for the rest of the day...

Roy Deki

Sponge Bob's cool...

RoseHawke

If it's not a plant and it's not substrate, it's hardscape .

Yup. The term's been around a looooong time. I know I've got a landscape bush from the 70's that refers to "hardscape."

Erik Aa

I think I heard the word "aquascaping" first time in the late 1970s (or maybe very early 1980s). And at that time internet fora was not impressing...

Robert Hudson

70s is before the internet, (or before th WEB I should say) So in what context did you see it? How was it used, what did it mean? Is aquascaping in the dictionary? I don't think even Amano ever used the term before the first American AGA "aquascaping" contest. A more definite, relevant term would be aquariumscaping! I have hear the term pondscaping used.

OK. So who was the first person in our little circle of hobbyists with a knowledge of landscaping to apply the term to our hobby? There must be someone to blame!

zig

First heard the term "aquascaping" on the interweb in the not too distant past, hardscape is a term I knew from landscaping like most of the others from years ago pre internet.

Wikipedia has aquascaping listed although no clues as to the origin of the term.

Aquascaping - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

jerseyjay

Wasn't me Robert

Hurriken

"Yes, I invented the term 'aquascape'" - Al Gore

jsenske

I first read it used by Erik Leung that issue of the Aquatic Gardener with one of 2001 AGA contest entries on the cover. I know he likely did not invent it, but honestly I had never heard the term before and it really resonated with me as it was obviously the perfect term for the subject at hand.

Robert Hudson

I started using the term aquascaping in 1999 on aquariacentral, but for the life of me I can not remember where I got it from. In 2000 when discussions of a AGA contest started, the name "aquascaping" somehow got incorporated into it. The point of the contest was to promote both Dutch and Nature aquariums as an artistic showcase, but then the idea of including both biotopes and "rock" scapes was also included on the grounds that the word "aquascape" had nothing to do with plants specifically. I was on the planning committie for the first few months before dropping off, so I remember the discussions. I would be curious how James Purchase remembers how the term aquascaping was decided to be used since he came up with the whole idea and ran the show in the first year.

All the judging rules, criteria and how the contest was structured was modeled after the Dutch aquarium contests, NBAT. In fact there was much heated debate at times of how relevant some of those rules were to what we wanted to accomplish. The dutch by the way never called their art "aquascaping" and have no word for it in their language.