174 Trellised Walk**

. . . suppose the main spots of the garden have been defined - Outdoor Room (163), Tree Places (171), Greenhouse (175), Fruit Trees (170). Now, where there is a special need to emphasize a path - Paths and Goals (120) - 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.

1. 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.

A trellis gives shape to an outdoor area.

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.

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). . . .

A Pattern Language is published by Oxford University Press, Copyright Christopher Alexander, 1977.