S O M E B A C K Y A R D S H A V E A P O O L .

T H I S O N E H A S T H E W O R L D .

Story by Ann Butenas | Photography by Matt Kocourek

Tucked on ten acres in Olathe, homeowner Melissa Morris and her husband Mike have spent the better part of a year turning two of those acres into a private lagoon, which includes 100,000 gallons of water stretching nearly 100 feet long and 50 feet wide, ringed by boulders hauled down from a Colorado mountaintop, fed by six waterfalls, and populated by tropical fish trained to swim to Melissa’s voice. Incredible can barely describe this outdoor oasis.

“I look out the window, and I get this fat, cheesy grin on my face,” Melissa laughed. “I’m like, is this real? Do I actually live here? Even when I’m slaving and sweating in it, I look around, and I smile, because I realize this is paradise.”

The idea started, fittingly, with frustration. Melissa had watched her in-laws build an elaborate water feature up the street only to battle years of construction issues, the price, she noted, of building anything in Kansas, where freeze-thaw soil cycles punish even the best-built pools. Melissa had always dreamed of living somewhere warmer, near a coastline, but with family rooted in Kansas, leaving was never really on the table. So, she flipped the idea: if she couldn’t get to the beach, she’d bring the beach home.

A family trip to Tahiti sealed the vision. The resort where they stayed had built a cove using natural stone from the surrounding area, with a barrier reef-style boundary keeping the ocean’s bigger animals out while letting warm water and reef fish flow in. Guests swam alongside tropical fish, with a stepping-stone edge tracing the cove’s perimeter. Melissa came home determined to recreate that feeling in her own yard, swimming in something that felt more like the ocean and less like a pool, without leaving Olathe.

The rockwork became the soul of the project. Unsatisfied with the region’s typical limestone, Melissa had a friend drive to Colorado, climbing 14,000 feet up, to source granite boulders streaked with gray, white, and glittering swirls. She calls them her family. She talks to them. She hugs them. Partway through installation, she took to marking her favorite pieces with spray-painted red dots so the crew wouldn’t move them without her sign-off, a system that occasionally meant racing home from the gym to rescue a boulder from being set face-down.

One rock earned a name of its own: Jabba the Hutt. At 23,000 pounds, it arrived almost by accident, tacked onto a delivery truck by a crew who didn’t realize what they were loading. Too heavy for standard equipment, it had to be pushed off the truck by an excavator. When it first landed on its back, it looked squat and unremarkable, until the crew propped it upright, revealing a wrinkled, dimpled face that, Melissa swears, is a dead ringer for Jabba the Hutt himself.

Details compound from there, with every detail being thought out with love. Chunky acacia wood furniture and stump-style seats, hand-selected in Thailand by a friend in the import business, fill both the house and the cabana. The cabana itself takes its black-and-white palette from a family trip to Cabo. Eight authentic-looking faux palm trees constructed with real palm husks have been arranged to keep the tropical look alive through a Kansas winter. The “beach” entries are tumbled white marble rather than sand, chosen for a coastal look without the mess. And a hollowed-out walnut log nicknamed the Shrek log, pulled from a nearby river on Mike’s family property anchors one of the water features, alongside branches and driftwood the couple spent a full day salvaging themselves.

Depths range from a five-foot shallow shelf to six and a half feet in the diving area, with two zero-entry beach access points in the waterfall pond.

“We decided to hire Good Earth Water Gardens for the lagoon project,” shared Melissa. “Mike and I are both pretty ambitious and planned on doing it ourselves, but after almost finishing the waterfall pond by our barn, we realized this lagoon would probably take us two years to complete on our own and I don’t have that much patience or time.” Everything beyond the water’s edge, including the landscaping, the plantings, the finishing touches, has been an ongoing, hands-on project for Melissa and Mike, often resulting in 12-to-14-hour days as they race toward completion of this dream of theirs.

The couple landed on a permanent name for this space: Morris Lagoon, and after a video of the space went semi-viral online, strangers have already started asking to book photo shoots there. Melissa isn’t ruling out weddings or private events down the line. For now, the goal is simpler: finish the landscaping, enjoy the water, and maybe, just maybe, get some zebra decorations she’s been talking about.