Barefoot in the Garden

We touch with our feet as well as our hands, and so the gardener may decide to provide for that aspect of our senses as well. Paths give us a good opportunity to vary materials as the length is traversed, creating a sensual treat that may remain beneath the threshold of full consciousness, but is nevertheless appreciated by visitors as a subtextual part of the garden experience. Path materials should have their forms fit their functions. As functions vary, so will the materials naturally and intelligently. For example, in a low part of the yard, or a wet pond in the terrain, the path may be a boardwalk over mud. In other places where the sun calls forth too many weeds, the walk can be plain cement or cement set with millions of small, black cabochons, or concretes made with dry paint color added to cement. A shady place may be best served by a path made of soft and spongy shredded barks and natural materials. Big, flat stones can be set craftily to guide visitors up a slope. Bright crunchy gravel may accent a border. Mown grass may be the best material where the path attends a lawn. Even plain bare earth may have its place. All these materials feel different under the feet.

This fact brings to mind the possibility of a "barefoot garden," where friends are invited to take off their shoes and socks as they walk the path through the garden. Their eyes will be drawn to the gardens you have created pathside, but their feet will be occupied adjusting to new and sensuous materials to walk on.

At the natural stopping places along the path, you can place stones or benches for sitting. I once found a stone that formed a natural seat, with perfectly shaped depressions for a human bottom, set at just the right height above the ground. I would walk a mile or more through the woods to reach the seat. I used to sit there, comfortable in the feeling that the natural world is home and that I was at home in it.

Because of that experience and many others, I am always looking for unusually beautiful stones to bring home to use in the landscaping. They look nice, they function as steps or earth holders in the form of terraces and berms, they can pave the ground or make a wall, and they are tactile, with all kinds of surfaces to touch—from slick, water-worn quartz, to fine-grained slate, to sandy conglomerate, to the roughest granite.

Stones with the most interesting surfaces can be placed beside sitting stones or benches, so that the hand can naturally fall to them and feel them.

Garden structures such as pergolas, benches, and railings can be purchased in extremes of design. Some are stark, industrial, slick enameled metals and burnished aluminum that contrast with the vegetation. Others are very rustic designs recalling the "naturalistic" look of Victorian gardens-in-the-woods. These tend to disappear in the landscape. In either case, the surfaces of these structures are usually very inviting to the touch. Garden sculptures can be fun to touch if they are made with that purpose in mind. Surfaces such as the burnished copper or brass used as liquid shapes in a modern design are so inviting to touch that they are sometimes incorporated into fountains where water can continuously lave them.




A carefully considered feast for the sense of touch is offered by this path at this garden designed by Oehme and Van Sweden on Long Island, New York. It is designed so that we cannot help brushing against the soft seed heads of the nodding Pennisetum alopecuroides on the left, and I would be compelled to tousle the woolly heads of Sedum 'Autumn Joy' on the right, and even feel the prickles of the blue-green junipers waiting farther down the path.