Hi Lori, You might find this site useful for your garden design http://www.bbc.co.uk/gardening/design/ One principle of design that is often overlooked when designing gardens, or any other open space, is 'lines of desire'. Ignore these at your peril. They are not going to go away. In Finland the parks planners go out after the first snow and see where people are walking, this is where they put the paths. The term was coined by Gaston Bachelard in his book The Poetics of Space. Lines of desire can usually be found as shortcuts where constructed pathways take a circuitous route. (di.ZYR lyn) n. An informal path that pedestrians prefer to take to get from one location to another rather than using a sidewalk or other official route.
Example Citation: In areas with no sidewalks, beaten-down paths in the grass, known as "desire lines" in planning-speak, indicate yearning, said John La Plante, the chief traffic engineer for T. Y. Lin International, an engineering firm. "When sidewalks are provided, people do walk," he said. *Patricia Leigh Brown, "Whose Sidewalk Is It, Anyway?," The New York Times, January 5, 2003 Earliest Citation: Study participants also drew charts of pedestrian traffic to take note of what are delightfully termed "desire lines"*paths actually made by walkers as opposed to those created on the drawing board. *Thomas Frick, "Rebuilding Central Park," Technology Review, August 1987 Notes: Desire lines (or natural desire lines, as they're also called) are those well-worn ribbons of dirt that you see cutting across a patch of grass, often with nearby sidewalks * particularly those that offer a less direct route * ignored. In winter, desire lines appear spontaneously as tramped down paths in the snow. I love that these paths are never perfectly straight. Instead, like a river, they meander this way and that, as if to prove that desire itself isn't linear and (literally, in this case) straightforward. Karen Cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education. Mark Twain -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://list.communitygarden.org/pipermail/community_garden_list.communitygarden.org/attachments/20090831/c6198ff7/attachment.html> _______________________________________________ The American Community Gardening Association listserve is only one of ACGA's services to community gardeners. To learn more about the ACGA and to find out how to join, please go to http://www.communitygarden.org To post an e-mail to the list: community_garden@list.communitygarden.org To subscribe, unsubscribe or change your subscription: http://list.communitygarden.org/mailman/listinfo/community_garden_list.communitygarden.org
