In those few cases where there are small walled gardens in a city, open to the public—Alhambra, Copenhagen Royal Library Garden—these gardens almost always become famous. People understand and value the peace which they create.
. . . your garden or park wall of brick . . . has indeed often an unkind look on the outside, but there is more modesty in it than unkindness. It generally means, not that the builder of it wants to shut you out from the view of his garden, but from the view of himself: it is a frank statement that as he needs a certain portion of time to himself, so he needs a certain portion of ground to himself, and must not be stared at when he digs there in his shirt-
| 173 GARDEN WALL |
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| Walled gardens—Mughal. |
sleeves, or plays at leapfrog with his boys from school, or talks over old times with his wife, walking up and down in the evening sunshine. Besides, the brick wall has good practical service in it, and shelters you from the east wind, and ripens your peaches and nectarines, and glows in autumn like a sunny bank. And, moreover, your brick wall, if you build it properly, so that it shall stand long enough, is a beautiful thing when it is old, and has assumed its grave purple red, touched with mossy green. . . . (John Ruskin, The Two Paths, New York: Dutton, 1907, pp. 202-205.)
This pattern applies to all private gardens and to small parks in cities. We are not convinced that it applies to all small parks— but it is hard to differentiate precisely between the places where a walled garden is desirable and the places where it is not. There are definitely situations where a small park, and perhaps even a small garden that is open to the rush of life around it, is just right. However, there are far more parks and gardens left open, that need to be walled, than vice versa, so we emphasize the walled condition.
Therefore:
Form some kind of enclosure to protect the interior of a quiet garden from the sights and sounds of passing traffic. If it is a large garden or a park, the enclosure can
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be soft, can include bushes, trees, slopes, and so on. The smaller the garden, however, the harder and more definite the enclosure must become. In a very small garden, form the enclosure with buildings or walls; even hedges and fences will not be enough to keep out sound.
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Use the garden wall to help form positive outdoor space— positive outdoor space (106); but pierce it with balustrades and windows to make connections between garden and street, or garden and garden—private terrace on the street (140), trellised walk (174), half-open wall (193), and above all, give it openings to make views into other larger and more distant spaces—hierarchy of open space (114), zen view (1 34). . . .
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| 174 trellised walk** |
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. . . suppose the main spots of the garden have been defined—
OUTDOOR ROOM (163), TREE PLACES ( I 7 I ) , GREENHOUSE ( I 7 5 ) ,
fruit trees (170). Now, where there is a special need to emphasize a path—paths and goals (I 20)—or, even more important, where the edges between two parts of a garden need to be marked without making a wall, an open trellised walk which can enclose space, is required. Above all, these trellised walks help to form the positive outdoor spaces (106) in a garden or a park; and may perhaps help to form an entrance transition (112).
Trellised walks have their own special beauty. They are so unique, so different from other ways of shaping a path, that they are almost archetypal.
In path shape (121), we have described the need for outdoor paths to have a shape, like rooms. In positive outdoor space (106), we have explained the need for larger outdoor areas to have positive shape. A trellised walk does both. It makes it possible to implement both these patterns at the same time—simply and elegantly. But it does it in such a fundamental way that we have decided to treat it as a separate pattern; and we shall try to define the places where a trellised structure over a path is appropriate.
I. Use it to emphasize the path it covers, and to set off one part of the path as a special section of a longer path in order to make it an especially nice and inviting place to walk.
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| A trelhs gives shape to an outdoor area. |
8lO 174 TRELLISED WALK
2. Since the trellised path creates enclosure around the spaces which it bounds, use it to create a virtual wall to define an outdoor space. For example, a trellised walk can form an enormous outdoor room by surrounding, or partially surrounding, a garden.
Therefore:
Where paths need special protection or where they need some intimacy, build a trellis over the path and plant it with climbing flowers. Use the trellis to help shape the outdoor spaces on either side of it.
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Think about the columns that support the trellis as themselves capable of creating places—seats, bird feeders—column places (226). Pave the path with loosely set stones—paving with cracks between the stones (247). Use climbing plants and a fine trellis work to create the special quality of soft, filtered light underneath the trellis—filtered light (238), climbing PLANTS (246). . . .
| 175 greenhouse |
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8 I 2
. . . to keep a garden alive, it is almost essential that there be a “workshop”—a kind of halfway house between the garden and the house itself, where seedlings grow, and where, in temperate climates, plants can grow in spite of cold. In a house cluster (37) or a work community (41), this workshop makes an essential contribution to the common land (67).
Many efforts are being made to harness solar energy by converting it into hot water or electric power. And yet the easiest way to harness solar energy is the most obvious and the oldest: namely, to trap the heat inside a greenhouse and use it for growing flowers and vegetables.
Imagine a simple greenhouse, attached to a living room, turned to the winter sun, and -filled with shelves for flowers and vegetables. It has an entrance from the house—so you can go into it and use it in the winter without going outdoors. And it has an entrance from the garden—so you can use it as a workshop while you are out in the garden and not have to walk through the house.
This greenhouse then becomes a wonderful place: a source of life, a place where flowers can be grown as part of the life of the house. The classic conservatory was a natural part of countless houses in the temperate climates.
For someone who has not experienced a greenhouse as an extension of the house, it may be hard to recognize how fundamental it becomes. It is a world unto itself, as definite and wonderful as fire or water, and it provides an experience which can hardly be matched by any other pattern. Hewitt Ryan, the psychiatrist for whom we built the clinic in Modesto with the help of this pattern language, thought greenhouses so essential that he included one as a basic part of the clinic: a place beside the common area, where people could reintegrate themselves by growing seedlings that would be gradually transplanted to form gardens for the clinic.