Portrait by David Fenton

Passion dances in John Stropko's eyes as he recounts his 30-plus years as an exterior designer, artist and craftsman. The longtime Tucson resident followed a classic apprenticeship of on-the-job training, mastering his trade through ever-bigger challenges. Today he runs New Desert Gallery Inc. with wife Barbara, designing outdoor environments that range from Contemporary to Spanish Colonial in style.

Born in New Jersey, Stropko moved to Tucson in 1953. After serving in the military, he traveled back and forth to El Paso, Texas, to work for a pool company. “We dug pools with shovels, and hand-stacked concrete pool shells instead of the pneumatically applied concrete of today,” he remembers. “We built pools in solid rock, in sand dunes and even hand-dug a pool in a courtyard. I fell in love with the elements: plants, water, pools, concrete and metal.”

Returning to Tucson full time, he established John Stropko Pools and Water Features in 1982. While working on various projects, he noticed a void in the interconnection of elements. “Often there were three or four contractors working on a site. One would do the pool, one the landscape, another the hardscape,” he explains. “The end result would all too often be a puzzle in which all of the pieces did not fit, and I felt there was a need for a new direction.”

In 1988, Stropko changed his focus, and his business evolved into a company that now takes a cohesive approach to outdoor living. “We do everything,” he says of the design/build firm. “We do it all because we are asked for it all—all the paving, walls and stonework and every living plant and object seen therein.” His team handcrafts original pools, spas, fountains, artificial rock, trellises, metal screens, outdoor chandeliers, and even walls and staircases.

At the home of Tucson designer Rochelle Rubin, a shallow backyard abutting a mesquite grove was given the Stropko touch. He illuminated the mesquites from beneath and sank the existing slump-block wall behind a screen of greenery. Those simple effects vastly expanded her vista. For drama, Stropko defined a new foreground with Contemporary-style metal fountains of his own design and installed a piece of sculpture he created.
 
“John has a wonderful sense of proportion and is very strong on details,” notes Rubin. “His work is natural, always fits the environment, and his jobs look like they have been there for years. He’s the most talented person I know.”

Project requests have been varied and include mountainside sites with yards and pools structurally integrated into rock cliffs; desert sites requiring yards to be “surgically” implanted to avoid damage to a delicate ecology; as well as cattle-handling facilities for a Southern Arizona ranch as part of a major ranch remodel.
 
Stropko’s work has been widely published, and this Master of the Southwest recently was recognized as one of America’s top 50 designers in The Perfect Home: Leading Residential Landscape Professionals (Sandow Media, 2006). He also was honored with the coveted Associated Landscape Contractors of America Judges’ Award in 2004. Barbara Stropko remembers with pride how a table-mate explained the Judges’ Award just before the announcement: “This is the award all members aspire to their entire career.”

“What John accomplishes with material and labor is an area that is far beyond what others could ever imagine,” says Gary Florian, a colleague of the Stropkos. “When you see one of his projects you know it is remarkable. You may not be able to figure out why it is remarkable or what makes it remarkable . . . you just know that it is remarkable.”

John Stropko designed this metal gate as a piece of sculpture that correlates to a stained-glass entry door behind it. Photo by Barbara Stropko

Water pours out of a metal spout that cantilevers over a red wall. A metal strip along the wall houses a light that glows the length of the 30-foot-long fishpond. Umbrella plants and pickerel weeds emerge from the water. Photo by Barbara Stropko