How to build a labyrinth

A labyrinth set in the garden offers a chance for a meditational journey and quiet reflection.

If you’re looking for something new to challenge your horticultural leanings, why not build a labyrinth.

Now, either you are saying, “Yes! That’s what we need to be mindful!” or, “Pfft. What’s the next article?” Hear me out, though. A labyrinth is a good way to create a walking space in your garden among your plants, be they flowers or vegetables. And if it happens to be spiritually uplifting to walk through a labyrinth as you check on your plants, so be it.

A labyrinth can be made of anything; there are groups who make them out of canvas so they can be moved around and installed temporarily in a place. Others use stones to demarcate paths or simply mow the areas, leaving the rest to grow. But we are concerned with making one using plants as the lines separating the pathways.

Think about the garden shapes. In your imaginings, start with a plot of, say, 30 feet by 30 feet. If you planted the full 30 feet, you couldn’t easily get to all the plants, either to see them or to tend to them. You’d need walkways.

You could make the walkways in parallel rows. You could make a kind of checkerboard, as Marjorie Harris, the editor at the now defunct Gardening Life quite famously did. You could make a spiral. A labyrinth is just another design choice, possibly the most elegant.

You could make the labyrinth your herb garden, keeping things mostly low to the ground. Or you could plant roses or make it a perennial bed. For a little French glamour, you could make a parterre, with low, neatly clipped boxwoods or yews.

To keep the directions as simple as possible, we’re going to describe how to do a pretty easy square, one with two-foot wide paths and twofoot wide “walls” or beds. If you’re a geometry wiz, you can make something more complex.

Marking out the labyrinth

Start with a 30-foot by 30-foot square of land. Note: this design isn’t quite square. There is a two-foot margin at the bottom, where you enter the labyrinth. But the centre of the labyrinth is the centre of the 30-foot square.

Mark out the perimeter with string and stakes. Make certain it is square by using the Pythagorean theorem. If your geometry is a little rusty, go to the link provided.

Make an X over the square by stringing diagonally opposite corners. Measure one foot on each side of the cross point and make another, smaller square, two feet by two feet; you can use a carpenter square if you like. This is the centre of your labyrinth.

Measure out two feet from three sides of the centre square. The space between your newly measured distances and the centre square becomes the first three parts of the planting bed.

From here, it’s a matter of following the diagram, measuring carefully and keeping right angles all the way through. Use the Pythagorean theorem to get perfectly right angles on at least some of the corners to keep your angles straight.

Planting the labyrinth

Now you can see the areas where you need to remove sod to plant your beds. You can leave the walking area of the labyrinth with sod, provided you mow it and edge it (or install edgers); a typical mower cuts a swath of around 20 inches, so you will be good with a 24-inch path. Or you can remove all the sod and put pavers in the walking parts.

In the centre square, you may want to put a birdbath or a tree. You may want to make the centre area bigger and have seating.

With the bedding area uncovered, amend it with compost and start planting.

There you go; you now have a labyrinth! V

Here is a sample plan for a labyrinth to give you an idea of how simple it can be.

People make labyrinths anywhere, in all sorts of settings. Above: a labyrinth created on the beach out of loose stones; below left: in an open field created simply by mowing grass; below right: using stones and gravel set in a forest clearing.

People make labyrinths anywhere, in all sorts of settings. Above: a labyrinth created on the beach out of loose stones; below left: in anopen field created simply by mowing grass; below right: using stones andgravel set in a forest clearing.