A Pattern Garden | Pattern 6: Shelters

Pattern 6: Shelters

What is a pattern garden?

Why use patterns in the garden?

The 14 Patterns:

Scale

Garden rooms

Pathways

Bridges

Gates

Shelters

Borders

Patios

Sheds

Focal points

Water

Ornamentation

Containers

Materials

Buy A Pattern Garden at TimberPress.com

About Valerie Easton

Christopher Alexander and A Pattern Language

Pattern 6: Shelters

<< 5: Gates | Patterns | 7: Borders >>

Arbors and pergolas offer shade, shelter, enclosure, and patterning of light and dark in the garden. The experience of being outdoors is greatly enhanced by having a roof over some portion of the garden, for only when you come out from under an arbor and look up do you really appreciate how high and open the sky is. Any sunny spot where you'd like to grow a vine or two, or a destination spot in the garden, as well as any location where you'd like to create a seating area, is a potential site. Walk slowly through the garden, look up, and think about where patterns of shade and sunlight might be welcome. Sooner or later, most of us run out of ground space in our gardens, while the vertical space goes untapped.

Stone brings a sense of age and stolidity to even the most extravagantly planted garden, as with these hunky stone arbors trimmed in ivy.

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.

<< 5: Gates | Patterns | 7: Borders >>

Arbors and pergolas offer shade, shelter, enclosure, and patterning of light and dark in the garden. The experience of being outdoors is greatly enhanced by having a roof over some portion of the garden, for only when you come out from under an arbor and look up do you really appreciate how high and open the sky is. Any sunny spot where you'd like to grow a vine or two, or a destination spot in the garden, as well as any location where you'd like to create a seating area, is a potential site. Walk slowly through the garden, look up, and think about where patterns of shade and sunlight might be welcome. Sooner or later, most of us run out of ground space in our gardens, while the vertical space goes untapped.

Stone brings a sense of age and stolidity to even the most extravagantly planted garden, as with these hunky stone arbors trimmed in ivy.

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.