Spring 2003

Designing Your Garden Walkway
Your Path to Beauty

Careful planning and development of your garden walkways can do so much more than provide egress though your garden. They can direct the visitor from one vista to another, they can define public areas and most of all they can provide your collection of fine perennials a sense of unity as the walkway groups hundreds if not thousands of cultivars into visually manageable components.

Our natural emphasis and primary interest as we work in our perennial collections are the plants themselves. We dream about the peak display times during Winter darkness. We imagine the leaves and blooms as we plant the roots in the Spring or Fall. However, too often we forget the powerful effect that the walkways have on our gardening experience both to the garden owner and the visitors enjoying the beauty.

Garden Pathways Should Provide Access and Egress while Directing the Garden Visitor through the Garden at the Same Time as they Define the Tour

Looking at Illustration #1, we can see that this Spokane, Washington garden of Dave Daniel during the American Hosta Society national tour gardens, perfectly exemplifies his excellent use of pathways to lead the visitor through the garden. As we stroll through the lush plantings, there is absolute clarity as to where we should step. When you design your walkways, you will want to make access to the different parts of your display area clearly defined. I have too often seen someone carelessly step into and across a bed of plants when they want to see a plant more closely and the pathways seem arbitrary.

Not only are these walkways very clear in their intent to direct the garden visitor but they also succeed at improving the garden appearance. Too often we've all walked through a garden with straight walkways placed between rigid rows or beds of plants. While those paths may be functional, they do nothing to improve the aesthetics of the garden. Good walkways should do both. These paths feature pleasant bends and curves with "overlooks" that direct the viewer to slow down and gaze at a favorite cultivar or landscape feature.

If your pathway has a dominant entrance, you can direct the visitor from one vista to another from the moment they enter the garden. They will be much more comfortable walking along this clearly defined path than if they were to wander aimlessly from bloom to bloom and worry that they may miss something.

Another important part of any home owner's walkway plan is to both invite the garden visitor into parts of your yard at the same time as you prohibit them from other areas. This will be true for parts of your yard not related to your perennial collection or even unfinished areas. Visitors will need to be directed away from utility areas and private family areas off limits to the general visitor enjoying your plants.

Illustration #2, from the Greenville, South Carolina garden of Ben and Karen Allen on tour during the American Hemerocallis Regional Meeting, successfully uses the garden walkway to direct visitors to a great view of the lake while keeping them safely away from the steep bank. It's not only a matter of displaying the best side of your garden and hiding your least attractive areas, it's sometimes a matter of danger. You will want to direct them away from areas with difficult footing, dangerous drops in slope and possibly even irate neighbors. You will want to direct them to nearby background views which can make stunning backdrops to your plantings as well as frame the bed with a complementary emphasis.

Also in Spokane, Washington at the American Hosta Society's national meeting, Illustration #3 shows Charles and Connie Gillingham's garden's wonderful conversion of an almost unwalkable slope into a pleasant walkway. The path traverses the hill and eases the visitors down through amazing displays of established hostas. Like switchbacks on an alpine road, this garden walkway transforms a difficult slope into a pleasurable experience at the same time as it prohibits the visitor from slipping and sliding down a direct descent. The garden is packed with many cultivars and the experience is completely positive since the visitor feels safe on the gradual traverse at the same time as he takes in the sequence of plants, one at a time. Without this well-done path, most of this yard would be impossible to view up close.

Your Garden Path Design Can Organize an Entire Assortment of Display Beds into a Unified Design

We have all experienced the bloom in a private garden only to feel disappointed because we were looking at a random collection of display beds with no overall sense of unity. The eye wanders from scattered plantings distributed across the yard with no feeling of a unifying design holding them together. This not only distracts from the featured plantings but leaves the visitor with the impression that the gardener's cultivation of his plants must be as careless as his garden layout.

Compare this kind of randomness with the first illustration above where the overall affect and impression is one of careful tending of the plants. The walkways create a unity of design which holds everything together. These pathways are much more than a simple means of access, they are also framing the plantings into a "picture" that pleases the visitor and implies the gardener's care for his collection.

With the second illustration we see a similar effect. Imagine looking down the slope at hundreds of hosta cultivars without the walkway. Your eye would wander and skip from one part of the hill to another without ever appreciating the individual characteristics of the plants. The unity provided by the walkway visually ties together the plantings into a single garden display. It also gives the visitor the opportunity to appreciate the uniqueness of each cultivar as he moves from plant to plant.

Walkways Should Highlight Cultivars as They Feature Elements that Add Variety and Texture to Your Landscape

It is easy to overwhelm your garden visitors and your garden design with too much ornamentation or a tacky collection of objects placed among the plants. However, you can successfully incorporate elements which complement the plants and add interest during the off season.

Martin and Lydia Kamensky' s Utica, Michigan garden on tour during the American Hemerocallis national meeting uses glacial rocks from the area to add both a unifying theme to the beds at the same time as an authentic natural texture to the plantings. This arrangement of stones looks as if a glacier dropped them in place. The arrangement is so much more attractive than if they had surrounded the bed with an artificial outline with these stones. Additionally, leaves and blooms stand above the rocks with the stones providing an interesting but non-competing background.

Using similar but larger glacial boulders, Jack Krasula's tour garden in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan during the American Hemerocallis Society's national meeting features an entire garden "room" defined by the rocks. While the stones were hauled in with heavy equipment, they have the appearance of a natural deposit left over from a distant time. Not only do they provide backdrops for the hostas and ferns, they make an interesting diversion off the garden path. They invite the garden visitor into the area to sit and enjoy the well established shade plants. From here, you could gaze across the entire garden and take in the sunny areas featuring daylilies in peak bloom.

Rather than a distraction to the plantings, these boulders unify the garden as they emerge at different locations throughout the garden walk. They are placed together rather than scattered about so that your eye can take in the smaller number of groupings rather than a yard full of random rocks. These make for attractive back drops as well as comfortable benches on which to rest while on the garden tour.

Also, by placing the cultivars among the rocks, they have a natural appearance and seem a perfect part of the environment. This is so much more attractive than cultivars lined up in straight rows. The garden path becomes an exploration of nature rather than just a presentation of one cultivar after another.

When the cold claims the bloom and the foliage, a garden walk still delights the garden visitor with interesting shapes and forms emerging from Fall leaves or Winter snow. Another benefit is the sheltering effect from gusts of wind seemingly intent on collapsing your daylily scapes. These microclimates can provide thermal sheltering and spread your peak displays over the season.

You may add other natural forms to your garden walkway to include more than rocks. Pat Saulk's Metamora, Michigan garden on tour during the American Hemerocallis Society's meeting featured a dramatic tree stump. It looked like it had blown over in the wind and made the perfect setting for the artistic spider crafted from copper.

Daylily plantings cluster around the exposed tree roots and work together in a delightful visual moment. Be careful though and don't overdo it. One or two stumps look natural. A dozen would quickly look overwhelming and more like a clearcut than a natural windfall with plants growing up among the roots.

Now it is time to reconsider your garden paths. How can you redesign the walkway throughout your display beds to direct your garden visitors and visually unify your garden landscape?