A path most traveled

Walking

around the back of my garden yesterday, after dumping kitchen trimmings on the compost, I realized a major design flaw in the landscape. My garden is functional enough, producing an abundance of fruits, flowers, and vegetables. But like so many backyards, the garden per se is aesthetically disjunct from the house, separated by a breadth of lawn. Over the years, I have dressed up the garden with a pair of dwarf roses that flank the garden gate, rows of pot marigolds to stare over to the house, and mounds of alyssum to brighten the ground beneath the gooseberry bushes. Still, something has been lacking. Yesterday, as I cast my gaze through the garden towards the back of the house, I imagined a path running from the living room right across the lawn, then right into and through the garden. And all of a sudden, the whole landscape was knit together. The coherence I envisaged was more than just aesthetic. My path would create a physical and psychological connection between house and garden (psychological because a path can lead the imagination, even if the feet stay in place).

There is no time like late winter, with the garden devoid of lush, green foliage and splashes of flower color, to reveal the unadorned essentials of the landscape.

My path is going to be a straight shot right from the living room to and through the garden. A straight path such as this adds a formal air to a garden’s design. Curved paths, which are informal, are no less suitable for tying together a landscape.

Whether formal or informal, any garden needs to be balanced around the axis created by a path. Balance is achieved with visual “weight.” The easiest way to achieve balance is with a mirror-image planting on either side of the axis. Such symmetry is an earmark of the formal garden. In the informal garden, plants need not match on either side of an axis, but the total visual “weight” — taking into account plant sizes, shapes, colors, and textures — is balanced. For example, a clump of shrubs could be balanced by a suitable expanse of lawn, a rocky outcropping, or a single large tree.

Imagine, if you will, how a straight-as-an-arrow, formal path leads you along: quickly. The smooth curves of an informal path tend to slow down your feet and your imagination. This is not to say that one must feel hurried through a formal garden. A path that is suitably wide, even if it is straight, invites a slow stroll. An abrupt jag in a path can be used to cause hesitation, an opportunity to glimpse a particularly beautiful flower, or an otherwise unnoticed figure carved of stone. The intersection of two paths through a garden likewise creates a point for reflection. I am going to have to think of something — perhaps a sundial underplanted with bright flowers, or a garden bench — for the terminus of the proposed path from my house. I can’t let this straight path dissolve in the woods or, unseen water is a persuasive lure.

Paving on any path should harmonize with the landscape. A path that is too obtrusive, either because of gaudy paving or largness, draws attention away from and detracts from the paving patterns (the same parquet pattern on wood indoors and brick outdoors).

It is especially nice this time of year, when the weather sometimes obviates going outside, to be able to look out a window and not only enjoy the landscape, but feel part of worse yet, leave the doghouse presently in that line of sight. If you can see the end of a path, there should be something there worth seeing or going to. In an informal garden, a path can disappear out of sight as it curves, with the implication that there lurks something worth drawing footsteps or imagination. The sound of landscape. On the other hand, commonality between paving outdoors and flooring indoors bring the garden and house even closer. Commonality might be achieved though with the use of similar materials (bricks indoors and out, for example), similar colors (wood floor indoors and crushed stone of similar color outdoors), or similar it. A well-placed path can do this. A well-placed path also provides firm, dry ground on which to trod out to the garden to drop the first seeds of the season into warm ground.

Any gardening questions? Email them to me at garden@ leereich.com and I’ll try answering them directly or in this column. Come visit my garden at www.leereich.com/blog.