Why use patterns in the garden?

The following excerpt is taken from the introduction to A Pattern Garden

Because I am a garden columnist, it is critical that I design and tend my own garden, for what I learn out there in the dirt informs all my writing. I found the courage to create a garden in large part from what I learned years ago in Christopher Alexander's book A Pattern Language, a groundbreaking slab of a book that advocates the idea that people should design for themselves their houses, gardens, streets, and communities.

Following along a curved path or wall reflects a pattern with universal appeal. Hostas and ferns soften the edges, while low hedging mirrors the shape and curve of the wall.

The surprising revelation that Alexander introduced was not only that they should design, but that they could. For many years I've also been visiting and writing about other people's gardens, and I've learned that the most successful and satisfying gardens are designed by the owners themselves, or with their close participation. This makes sense to me, for I believe that the garden calls up our deepest instincts, and it is from these instincts that good design is born. These archetypal ideas and longings are what A Pattern Language is all about.

Despite its length (more than 1,100 pages!), dense writing, and blurry blackandwhite photos, Alexander's book has for decades influenced my thinking, and that of a great many other people, about how we live and move through spaces, how and why we respond to our environment. I remember as I read the book experiencing a great number of moments when I closed my eyes and sank into remembering the felt experience of different houses and gardens. It explains so much about what makes a home warm and inviting, why some gardens enchant and others merely impress. We know how we feel when entering a space; A Pattern Language puts these human instincts into words, breaks them into "patterns" replicable by those of us not trained in the design professions. Thinking of design in terms of such basic patterns helps us to understand why we feel comfortable in a space.

Green shades in an espaliered apple tree, clipped boxwood, leaves of mayapple, and a foam of lady's mantle offer a display of contrasting textures and shapes.

That book came about when a group of architects and architecture students at the University of California at Berkeley worked together to articulate their design ideas and experiences, distilling them down to some 250 patterns that affect the way we live. These professionals were able to translate "designer brain" for those of us not endowed with the ability to think in three dimensions. Although the book included little about residential garden design outside of trees and vegetable gardens, most of its ideas translate beautifully to gardens because they deal with the underlying patterns of behavior and form that shape our collective experience and stir the emotions.

Even today, the configurations that appeal to our deepest instincts help me to understand why some gardens succeed while others are only showpieces. Many of the gardens I visit coax you through the front gate, draw you in, surprise, delight, and invite you to lounge on an outdoor chaise for a nap or pause beneath a shady arbor. Others, though visually impressive, provoke nothing more than visual admiration. Perhaps it is the difference between simply looking at a garden and feeling yourself moving through the garden, experiencing it on a level that engages far more than your eyes and your intellect. Henry Beston said, "A garden is a mirror of the mind," but this is true only in gardens that go beyond design conventions to truly reflect the passions and interests of their inhabitants. With my own book, A Pattern Garden, I hope to inspire gardeners to create spaces that are more than simply outdoor living rooms or collections of plants. The archetypal patterns of gardenmaking, based on proportions and what our own senses tell us, can be used to make satisfying and memorable gardens. These patterns give a coherence to garden design; they allow us to communicate our creativity and aesthetics, for they are deeply rooted in the nature of things. Perhaps delving deep to understand these patterns is a little bit like outdoor feng shui for Westerners. It's a way to capture our "felt sense" of a garden and transform that felt sense into replicatable concepts, or patterns.

A soft, puffy armchair of moss is both focal point and art object in this Asian-inspired courtyard garden.

The garden patterns in this book have been chosen and named because they are quintessential for good gardenmaking. We instinctively look for and treasure certain specific elements, and working with these elements is the basis for all good garden design. Just as we naturally love to curl up in a cushioned window seat or draw a chair to a warm fireside, so do we enjoy passing beneath the dappled shade of a vinedraped pergola. Certain garden elements offer universal appeal: garden gates, white arbors covered in pink roses, mossy stones, private courtyards, curving pathways, a pair of Adirondack chairs, still ponds, covered porches — we seek such elements in every garden we enter, and relax when we find them. Because each such element, or pattern, is archetypal, site is transcended, and any pattern can be easily adapted and made your own whether you live on a steep hillside, beside a bay, on a flat suburban lot, or in the woods. It isn't sun, shade, or topography that matters, but rather whether there are parts of the garden you long to spend time in, places where the sun falls across your face in winter, areas with views or cozy intimacy. These patterns transcend not only site but style; they can be adapted to English, Asian, or Mediterranean-style gardens. A little bridge crossing a dry gully can be a simple slab of stone, or it can be arched and decorated with Japanese scrollwork. It is the crossing over that matters, not the materials — the feeling of leaving behind one part of the garden and arriving somewhere new.

Alexander's landmark book points out that such design elements as open hearths, alcoves, bay windows, verandas, and fireside corners are some of the components that make a house comfortable and desirable. To pattern a garden is a little more difficult, for gardens are more dynamic than bricks and mortar. The fact that gardens are inherently a metaphor for change is a large part of their appeal. But such constant flux can be a challenge. Our experience of gardens is dramatically influenced by wind, rain, and sun, by deer and slugs, by plants as they spread, mature, and die. Think how you feel in a garden on a mild spring afternoon when the bulbs are bursting through the ground and the trees freshly coated in green. Then picture that same garden during a November windstorm when leaves crunch underfoot and swirl overhead, or on a winter morning when the skeletons of perennials sparkle with frost. But despite the mutability of gardens, the essential patterns, the proportions, the sense of arrival, feelings of shelter and refuge, enclosure and exposure, the canopy and the paths underfoot all remain to form the archetypal garden that stirs our hearts and invites us in.

A simple composition of ribbon grass (Phalaris arundinacea) and an unplanted pot is an artful composition of contrasts: rough and smooth, bulky and slim, dark and light. (Warning: ribbon grass can be invasive.)

This book attempts to put into language and capture in photographs the underlying patterns of good garden design, to connect our thoughts with our feelings, thus making it possible to create satisfying and rewarding gardens. Understanding what it is we love about gardens enables us to build the essence of a garden that we intuitively feel is right for us. The first chapter introduces the essential patterns. Subsequent chapters explore each of the pattern elements, showing them in a wide variety of garden styles, geographical locations, and sites. Taken alone, paired, or in combinations, the patterns create a coherent experience that excites, stirs the senses, and satisfies our notions of what a garden can be.

You'll see that these patterns are in part all about intangible — how we move through space; where we feel protected and where we feel exposed; how we pass through sunlight and shade; the relationship of indoors and out. The book explores how these seeming intangibles can in fact be carefully choreographed to create the experience you seek in your own garden.

Copyright ©2007 Timber Press, Inc. Text excerpts from A Pattern Garden copyright © Valerie Easton. Photographs copyright © Jacqueline Koch, except photos on Bridges, Gates, and Shelters pages copyright © Allan Mandell; and photo on Water page copyright © Richard Hartlage. All rights reserved. Posted with permission of the publisher.