A pattern language

Balconies and porches which are less than six feet deep are hardly ever used.

Balconies and porches are often made very small to save money; but when they are too small, they might just as well not be there.

KiSix feet minimum

Six feet deep.

A balcony is first used properly when there is enough room for two or three people to sit in a small group with room to stretch their legs, and room for a small table where they can set down glasses, cups, and the newspaper. No balcony works if it is so narrow that people have to sit in a row facing outward. The critical size is hard to determine, but it is at least six feet. The following drawing and photograph show roughly why:

167 SIX-FOOT BALCONY

Our observations make it clear that the difference between deep balconies and those which are not deep enough is simply astonishing. In our experience, almost no balconies at all which are 3 or 4 feet deep manage to gather life to them or to get used. And almost no balconies which are more than six feet deep are not used.

II

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I«

IF

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Narrow balconies are useless.

Two other features of the balcony make a difference in the degree to which people will use it: its enclosure and its recession into the building.

As far as enclosure goes, we have noticed that among the deeper balconies, it is those with half-open enclosures around them—columns, wooden slats, rose-covered trellises-—which are used most. Apparently, the partial privacy given by a half-open screen makes people more comfortable—see half-open wall

(*93)-

Not this ... ... this.

And recesses seem to have a similar effect. On a cantilevered balcony people must sit outside the mass of the building; the balcony lacks privacy and tends to feel unsafe. In an English study (“Private Balconies in Flats and Maisonettes,” Architect's Journal, March 1957, pp. 372-76), two-thirds of the people that never used their balconies gave lack of privacy as their reason,

and said that they preferred recessed balconies, because, in contrast to cantilevered balconies, the recesses seemed more secure.

Therefore:

Whenever you build a balcony, a porch, a gallery, or a terrace always make it at least six feet deep. If possible, recess at least a part of it into the building so that it is not cantilevered out and separated from the building by a simple line, and enclose it partially.

Enclose the balcony with a low wall—sitting wall (243), heavy columns—column places (226), and half-open walls or screens—half-open wall (193). Keep it open toward the south—sunny place (161). Treat it as an outdoor room (163), and get the details of its shape and its construction from THE SHAPE OF INDOOR SPACE ( I 91) . . . .

168 CONNECTION TO THE EARTH**

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One example of support for this idea lies in the Blueprint for Survival, and the proposal there to give traditional communities stewardship over certain estuaries and marshes. These wetlands are the spawning grounds for the fish and shellfish which form the base of the food chain for 60 per cent of the entire ocean harvest, and they can only be properly managed by a group who respects them as a cooperating part in the chain of life. (The Ecologist, England: Penguin, 1972, p. 41.)

The residential forests of Japan provide another example. A village grows up along the edge of a forest; the villagers tend the forest. Thinning it properly is one of their responsibilities. The forest is available to anyone who wants to come there and partake in the process:

The farmhouses of Kurume-machi stand in a row along the main road for about a mile. Each house is surrounded by a belt of trees of similar species, giving the aspect of a single large forest. The main trees are located so as to produce a shelter-belt. In addition, these small forests are homes for birds, a device for conserving water, a source of firewood and timber, which is selectively cut, and a means of climate control, since the temperature inside the residential forest is cooler in summer and warmer in winter.

It should be noted that these residential forests, established more than 300 years ago, are still intact as a result of the careful selective cutting and replacement program followed by the residents. (John L. Creech, “Japan—Like a National Park,” Yearbook of Agriculture 1963, U. S. Department of Agriculture, pp. 525-28.)

Therefore:

Define all farms as parks, where the public has a right to be; and make all regional parks into working farms.

Create stewardships among groups of people, families and cooperatives, with each stewardship responsible for one part of the countryside. The stewards are given a lease for the land, and they are free to tend the land and set ground rules for its use—as a small farm, a forest, marshland, desert, and so forth. The public is free to visit the land, hike there, picnic, explore, boat, so long as they conform to the ground rules. With such a setup, a farm near a city might have picnickers in its fields every day during the summer.

. . . this pattern helps to create the building edge (160) and

its ARCADES ( I 19), PRIVATE TERRACE ON THE STREET ( 140), the GALLERY SURROUND (l66), and SIX-FOOT BALCONY (167),

by specifying the way the floor of the building reaches out into the land and gardens round about it.

A house feels isolated from the nature around it, unless its floors are interleaved directly with the earth that is around the house.

We shall understand this best by contrasting those houses which are sharply separated from the earth with those in which there is a continuity between the two.

Look first at this house where there is no continuity.

An average house—but look at it closely. It lacks this fattern utterly.

The inside and the outside are abruptly separate. There is no way of being partly inside, yet still connected to the outside; there is no way in which the inside of the house allows you, in your bare feet, to step out and feel the dew collecting or pick blossoms off a climbing plant because there is no surface near the house on which you can go out and yet still be the person that you are inside.

Compare it with the house in our main picture, where there is

I 6 8 CONNECTION TO THE EARTH

continuity. Here, there is an intermediate area, whose surface is connected to the inside of the house—and yet it is in plain outdoors. This surface is part of the earth—and yet a little smoother, a little more beaten, more swept—stepping out on it is not like stepping out into a field in your bare feet—it is as if the earth itself becomes in that small area a part of your indoor terrain.

When we compare the examples, there seems little doubt that some deep feeling is involved, and we are confident in presenting this pattern as a fundamental one. But we can only speculate about its origins or why it is important.

Perhaps the likeliest of all the explanations we are able to imagine is one which connects the earth boundness and rootedness of a man or a woman to their physical connection to the earth. It is very plain, and we all discover for ourselves, that our lives become satisfactory to the extent that we are rooted, “down to earth,” in touch with common sense about everyday things—not flying high in the sky of concepts and fantasies. The path toward this rootedness is personal and slow—but it may just be true that it is helped or hindered by the extent to which our physical world is itself rooted and connected to the earth.

In physical terms, the rootedness occurs in buildings when the building is surrounded, along at least a part of its perimeter, by terraces, paths, steps, gravel, and earthen surfaces, which bring the floors outside, into the land. These surfaces are made of intermediate materials more natural than the floors inside the house—and more man-made than earth and clay and grass. Brick terraces, tiles, and beaten earth tied into the foundations of the house all help make this connection; and, if possible, each house should have a reasonable amount of them, pushing out into the land around the house and opening up the outdoors to the inside.

Therefore:

Connect the building to the earth around it by building a series of paths and terraces and steps around the edge. Place them deliberately to make the boundary ambiguous— so that it is impossible to say exactly where the building stops and earth begins.

BUILDINGS

/

/

brick terraces/
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I

{

Use the connection to the earth to form the ground for outdoor rooms, and entrances, and terraces—entrance room (130), PRIVATE TERRACE ON THE STREET (140), OUTDOOR ROOM ( 1 63) ,

terraced slope (169) ; prepare to tie the terraces continuously into the wall which forms the edge of the ground floor slab, to make the very structure of the building feel connected to the earth—ground floor slab (215) ; and where you come to form the terrace surfaces, use things like hand-made bricks and soft-baked crumbling biscuit-fired tile—soft tile and brick (248) ; and further out, along the paths a little distance from the house, leave cracks between the tiles to let the grass and flowers grow between them—pavinc with cracks between the stones (247). . . .

decide on the arrangement of the gardens_} and the places in the gardens;

169 TERRACED SLOPE*

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. . . this pattern helps to complete site repair (104). Where there are buildings, it ties into the building edge (160) and can help form it; and it helps create the connection to the earth (168). If the ground is sloping at all, this pattern tells you how to handle the slope of the ground in a way that makes sense for the people in the building, and for the plants and grasses on the ground.

❖ ❖ *5*

On sloping land, erosion caused by run off can kill the soil. It also creates uneven distribution of rainwater over the land, which naturally does less for plant life than it could if it were evenly distributed.

Terraces and bunds, built along contour lines, have been used for thousands of years to solve this problem. Erosion starts when the water runs down certain lines, erodes the earth along these lines, makes it hard for plants to grow there, then forms rills in the mud and dust, which are then still more vulnerable to more runoff, and get progressively worse and worse. The terraces control erosion by slowing down the water, and preventing the formation of these rills in the first place.

Even more important, the terraces spread the water evenly over the entire landscape. In a given area, each square meter of earth gets the s..me amount of water since the water stays where it falls. Under these conditions, plants can grow everywhere— on the steepest parts of hillsides as easily as in the most luscious valleys.

The pattern of terracing makes as much sense on a small house lot as it does on the hills around a valley. Proper terracing on a small lot creates a stable micro-system of drainage, and protects the top soil for the local gardens. Our main photograph shows a small building that is built on a terraced site. Once the terracing has been accomplished, the building can fit to it, and stretch across the lines of the terrace.

At both scales—the house lot and the hills—this method of

conserving the land and making it healthy is ancient. “Only very lately has modern anti-erosion practice, for example, through contour ploughing, managed to match the effectiveness of traditional methods of terracing long practiced in countries as far apart as Japan and Peru.” (M. Nicholson, The Environmental Revolu-tion, New York: McGraw Hill, 1970, p. 192.)

At the scale of hillsides and valleys, China is making an impressive attempt to reclaim her eroded land in this way. For instance, Joseph Alsop, “Terraced Fields in China”:

In the Chinese countryside, no effort has ever been spared to get a maximum crop with the resources available. Even so, I was hardly prepared for the “terrace fields” that they took me to see in the farming communes around Chungking.

The countryside hereabouts is both rocky and largely composed of such steep hills that even Chinese would not think of trying to grow rice on them. The old way, ruinously eroding, was to grow as much rice as possible in the valleys: and then plant the hillsides, too, where soil remained.

The new way is to make “terrace fields.” The rocks are dynamited to get the needed building materials. Heavy dry-stone walls are then built to heights of six or seven feet, following the contours of the land. And earth is finally brought to fill in behind the stone walls, thereby producing a terrace field.

Therefore:

On all land which slopes—in fields, in parks, in public gardens, even in the private gardens around a house—make a system of terraces and bunds which follow the contour lines. Make them by building low walls along the contour lines, and then backfilling them with earth to form the terraces.

There is no reason why the building itself should fit into the terraces—it can comfortably cross terrace lines.

*£♦

Plant vegetables and orchards on the terraces—vegetable garden (177), fruit trees (170) ; along the walls which form the terraces, plant flowers high enough to touch and smell— raised flowers (245). And it is also very natural to make the walls so people can sit on them—sitting wall (243). . . .

170 FRUIT TREES*
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. . . both the common land (67) outside the workshops, offices and houses, and the private gardens which belong to individual buildings—half-hidden garden (iii), can be helped by planting fruit trees. After all, a garden, whether it is public or private, is a thing of use. Yet it is not a farm. That half way kind of garden which is useful, but also beautiful in spring and autumn, and a marvelous place to walk because it smells so wonderful, is the orchard.

In the climates where fruit trees grow, the orchards give the land an almost magical identity: think of the orange groves of Southern California, the cherry trees of Japan, the olive trees of Greece. But the growth of cities seems always to destroy these trees and the quality they possess.

The fact that the trees are seasonal and bear fruit has special consequences. The presence of orchards adds an experience that has all but vanished from cities—the experience of growth, harvest, local sources of fresh food; walking down a city street, pulling an apple out of a tree, and biting into it.

Fruit trees on common land add much more to the neighborhood and the community than the same trees in private backyards: privately grown, the trees tend to produce more fruit than one household can consume. On public land, the trees concentrate the feeling of mutual benefit and responsibility. And because they require yearly care, pruning, and harvesting, the fruit trees naturally involve people in their common land. It is an obvious place where people can take responsibility for their local common land, have pride in the results, employ themselves and their children part time.

Imagine a community gradually being able to produce a portion of its own need for fruit, or cider, or preserves. In the beginning it would be a small portion indeed, but it would serve as a beginning. There is not much work involved if it is tackled communally, and the satisfaction is great.

TOWNS

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Within each natural preserve, we imagine a limited number of houses—house cluster (37)—with access on unpaved country lanes—green streets (51). . . .

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Therefore:

Plant small orchards of fruit trees in gardens and on common land along paths and streets, in parks, in neighborhoods: wherever there are well-established groups that can themselves care for the trees and harvest the fruit.

fruit trees

If you have an especially nice fruit tree, make a tree place (17 i ) under it, with a garden seat (176), or arrange a path so the tree can provide a natural goal along the path—paths

AND GOALS ( I 20) ....

I 7 I TREE PLACES**

797

. . . trees are precious. Keep them. Leave them intact. If you have followed site repair (104), you have already taken care to leave the trees intact and undisturbed by new construction; you may have planted fruit trees (170); and you may perhaps also have other additional trees in mind. This pattern reemphasizes the importance of leaving trees intact, and shows you how to plant them, and care for them, and use them, in such a way that the spaces which they form are useful as extensions of the building.

-h *»* -!♦

When trees are planted or pruned without regard for the special places they can create, they are as good as dead for the people who need them.

Trees have a very deep and crucial meaning to human beings. The significance of old trees is archetypal; in our dreams very often they stand for the wholeness of personality: “Since . . . psychic growth cannot be brought about by a conscious effort of will power, but happens involuntarily and naturally, it is in dreams frequently symbolized by the tree, whose slow, powerful involuntary growth fulfills a definite pattern.” (M. L. von Franz, “The process of individuation,” in C. G. Jung, Man and his Symbols, New York: Doublcday, 1964, pp. 16r, 163-64.)

There is even indication that trees, along with houses and other people, constitute one of the three most basic parts of the human environment. The House-Tree-Person Technique, developed by Psychologist John Buck, takes the drawings a person makes of each of these three “wholes” as a basis for projective tests. The mere fact that trees are considered as full of meaning, as houses and people, is, alone, a very powerful indication of their importance (V. J. Bieliauskas, The H-T-P Research Reviezv, 1965 Edition, Western Psychological Services, Los

Angeles, California, 1965; and Isaac Jolles, Catalog jor the Qualitative Interpretation of the H ouse-Tree-P erson, Los Angeles, California: Western Psychological Services, 1964, pp. 75—97).

I 7 ¹ TREE places

But for the most part, the trees that are being planted and transplanted in cities and suburbs today do not satisfy people’s craving for trees. They will never come to provide a sense of beauty and peace, because they are being set down and built around without regard for the -places they create.

The trees that people love create special social places: places to be in, and pass through, places you can dream about, and places you can draw. Trees have the potential to create various kinds of social places: an umbrella—where a single, low-sprawling tree like an oak defines an outdoor room; a pair—where two trees form a gateway; a grove—where several trees cluster together; a square—where they enclose an open space; and an avenue— where a double row of trees, their crowns touching, line a path or street. It is only when a tree’s potential to form places is realized that the real presence and meaning of the tree is felt.

The trees that are being set down nowadays have nothing of this character—they are in tubs on parking lots and along streets, in specially “landscaped areas” that you can see but cannot get to. They do not form places in any sense of the word—and so they mean nothing to people.

Now, there is a great danger that a person who has read this argument so far, may misinterpret it to mean that trees should be “used” instrumentally for the good of people. And there is, unfortunately, a strong tendency in cities today to do just that —to treat trees instrumentally, as means to our owm pleasure.

But our argument says just the opposite. Trees in a city, round a building, in a park, or in a garden are not in the forest. They need attention. As soon as we decide to have trees in a city, we must recognize that the tree becomes a different sort of ecological being. For instance, in a forest, trees grow in positions favorable to them: their density, sunlight, wind, moisture are all chosen by the process of selection. But in a city, a tree grows where it is planted, and it will not survive unless it is most carefully tended —pruned, watched, cared for when its bark gets pierced . . .

But now we come to a very subtle interaction. The trees wdll not get tended unless the places where they grow are liked and used by people. If they are randomly planted in some garden or in the shrubbery of some park, they are not near enough to

people to make people aware of them; and this in turn makes it unlikely that they will get the care they need.

So, finally, we see the nature of the complex interactive symbiosis between trees and people.

1. First, people need trees—for the reasons given.

2. But when people plant trees, the trees need care (unlike the forest trees).

3. The trees won’t get the care they need unless they are in places people like.

4. And this in turn requires that the trees form social spaces.

5. Once the trees form social spaces, they are able to grow naturally.

So we see, by a curious twist of circumstances, trees in cities can only grow well, and in a fashion true to their own nature, when they cooperate with people and help to form spaces which the people need.

Therefore:

umbrella grove avenue

If you are planting trees, plant them according to their nature, to form enclosures, avenues, squares, groves, and single spreading trees toward the middle of open spaces. And shape the nearby buildings in response to trees, so that the trees themselves, and the trees and buildings together, form places which people can use.

Make the trees form “rooms” and spaces, avenues, and squares, and groves, by placing trellises between the trees, and walks, and seats under the trees themselves—outdoor room (163), trel-LISED WALK ( I 74) , GARDEN SEAT ( I 76) , SEAT SPOTS (241). One of the nicest ways to make a place beside a tree is to build a low wall, which protects the roots and makes a seat—sitting wall (243). . . .

172 GARDEN GROWING WILD**
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. . . with terracing in place and trees taken care of—terraced SLOPE (169), FRUIT TREES (170), TREE PLACES (171) , We come to the garden itself—-to the ground and plants. In short, we must decide what kind of garden to have, what kind of plants to grow, what style of gardening is compatible with both artifice and nature.

❖ ❖ *5*

A garden which grows true to its own laws is not a wilderness, yet not entirely artificial either.

Many gardens are formal and artificial. The flower beds are trimmed like table cloths or painted designs. The lawns are clipped like perfect plastic fur. The paths are clean, like new polished asphalt. The furniture is new and clean, fresh from the department store.

These gardens have none of the quality which brings a garden to life—the quality of a wilderness, tamed, still wild, but cultivated enough to be in harmony with the buildings which surround it and the people who move in it. This balance of wilderness and cultivation reached a high point in the oldest English gardens.

In these gardens things are arranged so that the natural processes which come into being will maintain the condition of the garden and not degrade it. For example, mosses and grasses will grow between paving stones. In a sensible and natural garden, the garden is arranged so that this process enhances the garden and does not threaten it. In an unnatural garden these kinds of small events have constantly to be “looked after”—the gardener must constantly try to control and eradicate the processes of seeding, weeds, the spread of roots, the growth of grass.

In the garden growing wild the plants are chosen, and the boundaries placed, in such a way that the growth of things regulates itself. It does not need to be regulated by control. But it does not grow fiercely and undermine the ways in which it is planted. Natural wild plants, for example, are planted among

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172 GARDEN GROWING WILD

flowers and grass, so that there is no room for so-called weeds to fill the empty spaces and then need weeding. Natural stone edges form the boundaries of grass so that there is no need to chop the turf and clip the edge every few weeks. Rocks and stones are placed where there are changes of level. And there are small rock plants placed between the stones, so that once again there is no room for weeds to grow.

A garden growing wild is healthier, more capable of stable growth, than the more clipped and artificial garden. The garden can be left alone, it will not go to ruin in one or two seasons.

And for the people too, the garden growing wild creates a more profound experience. The gardener is in the position of a good doctor, watching nature take its course, occasionally taking action, pruning, pulling out some species, only to give the garden more room to grow and become itself. By contrast, the gardens that have to be tended obsessively, enslave a person to them; you cannot learn from them in quite the same way.

Therefore:

Grow grasses, mosses, bushes, flowers, and trees in a way which comes close to the way that they occur in nature: intermingled, without barriers between them, without bare earth, without formal flower beds, and with all the boundaries and edges made in rough stone and brick and wood which become a part of the natural growth.

roughnatural edges

Include no formal elements, except where something is specifically called for by function—like a greenhouse—greenhouse (175), a quiet seat—garden seat (176), some water— still water (71), or flowers placed just where people can touch them and smell them—raised flowers (245). . . .

173 garden wall*

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through city policies_y encourage the piecemeal formation of those major structures which define the city:

8. MOSAIC OF SUBCULTURES

9. SCATTERED WORK

10. MAGIC OF THE CITY

11. LOCAL TRANSPORT AREAS

. . . in private houses, both the half-hidden garden (ill) and the private terrace on the street (140) require walls. More generally, not only private gardens, but public gardens too, and even small parks and greens—quiet backs (59), accessible creen (60), need some kind oh enclosure round them, to make them as beautiful and quiet as possible.

Gardens and small public parks don’t give enough relief from noise unless they are well protected.

People need contact with trees and plants and water. In some way, which is hard to express, people are able to be more whole in the presence of nature, are able to go deeper into themselves, and are somehow able to draw sustaining energy from the life of plants and trees and water.

In a city, gardens and small parks try to solve this problem; but they are usually so close to traffic, noise, and buildings that the impact of nature is entirely lost. To be truly useful, in the deepest psychological sense, they must allow the people in them to be in touch with nature—and must be shielded from the sight and sound of passing traffic, city noises, and buildings. This requires walls, substantial high walls, and dense planting all around the garden.

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
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.

❖ v v

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). . . .

808

174 trellised walk**

809

. . . 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.

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.

*$♦

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

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.

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Several recent “energy-systems” inspired by the ecology movement have sought to make greenhouses a fundamental part of human settlements. For example, Grahame Gaines’ self-contained eco-house includes a large greenhouse as a source of heat and food. (See London Observer, October 1972.) And Chahroudi’s Grow Hole—a glazed sunken pit for growing vegetables in winter—is another kind of greenhouse (Progressive Architecture, July 1970, p. 85).

Therefore:

In temperate climates, build a greenhouse as part of your house or office, so that it is both a “room” of the house which can be reached directly without going outdoors and a part of the garden which can be reached directly from the garden.

Place the greenhouse so that it has easy access to the vegetable garden (177) and the compost (178). Arrange its interior so that it is surrounded with waist-high shelves (201) and plenty of storage space—bulk storage (145) ; perhaps give it a special seat, where it is possible to sit comfortably—garden SEAT ( I 76) , WINDOW PLACE ( I 80) . . . .

8 14

176 GARDEN SEAT
•v.^%

815

8 MOSAIC OF SUBCULTURES**

42

. . . with the character of the garden fixed—garden growing wild (172), we consider the special corners which make the garden valuable and somewhat secret. Of these, the most important is the sunnv place (161), which has already been described, because it is so fundamental to the building. Now we add to this another seat, more private, where a person can go to sit and think and dream.

* *

Somewhere in every garden, there must be at least one spot, a quiet garden seat, in which a person—or two people—can reach into themselves and be in touch with nothing else but nature.

Throughout the patterns in this pattern language we have said, over and again, how very essential it is to give ourselves environments in which we can be in touch with the nature we have sprung from—see especially city country fingers (3) and quiet backs (59). But among all the various statements of this fact there is not one so far which puts this need right in our own houses, as close to us as fire and food.

Wordsworth built his entire politics, as a poet, around the fact that tranquility in nature was a basic right to which everyone was entitled. He wanted to integrate the need for solitude-in-nature with city living. He imagined people literally stepping off busy streets and renewing themselves in private gardens— every day. And now many of us have come to learn that without such a place life in a city is impossible. There is so much activity, days are so easily filled with jobs, family, friends, things to do— that time alone is rare. And the more we live without the habit of stillness, the more we tie ourselves to this active life, the stranger and more disquieting the experience of stillness and solitude becomes: city people are notoriously busy-busy, and cannot be alone, without “input,” for a moment.

It is in this context that we propose the isolated garden seat: a place hidden in the garden where one or two people can sit alone, undisturbed, near growing things. It may be on a roof

I76 GARDEN SEAT

top, on the ground, perhaps even half-sunken in an embankment.

There are literally hundreds of old books about gardens which testify to this pattern. One is Hildegarde Hawthorne’s The Lure of the Garden, New York: The Century Co., 1911. We quote from a passage describing the special kind of small talk that is drawn out of people by quiet garden seats:

Perhaps, of all the various forms of gossip overheard by the garden, the loveliest is that between a young and an old person who are friends. Real friendship between the generations is rare, but when it exists it is of the finest. That youth is fortunate who can pour his perplexities into the ear of an older man or woman, and who knows a comradeship and an understanding exceeding in beauty the facile friendships created by like interests and common pursuits; and fortunate too the girl who is able to impart the emotions and ideas aroused in her by her early meetings with the world and life to some one old in experience but comprehendingly young in heart. Both of them will remember those hours long after the garden gate has closed behind their friend forever; as long, indeed, as they remember anything that went to the making of the best in them.

Therefore:

Make a quiet place in the garden—a private enclosure with a comfortable seat, thick planting, sun. Pick the place for the seat carefully; pick the place that will give you the most intense kind of solitude.

quiet place

Place the garden seat, like other outdoor seats, where it commands a view, is in the sun, is sheltered from the wind—seat spots (241) ; perhaps under bushes and trees where light is soft and dappled—filtered light (238). . . .

177 VEGETABLE GARDEN*

818

. . . we have one pattern, already, which brings out the useful character of gardens—both public and private ones—fruit trees (170); we supplement this with a smaller, but as important aspect of the garden—one which every public and private garden should contain: enhance common land—common land (67) and private gardens—half-hidden garden (ill) with a patch where people can grow vegetables.

In a healthy town every family can grow vegetables for itself. The time is past to think of this as a hobby for enthusiasts; it is a fundamental part of human life.

Vegetables are the most basic foods. If we compare dairy products, vegetables and fruits, meats, and synthetic foods, the vegetables play the most essential role. As a class, they are the only ones which are by themselves wholly able to support human life. And, in an ecologically balanced world, it seems almost certain that man will have to work out some balanced relationship with vegetables for his daily food. (See, for example, F. Lappe, Diet for a Small Planet, New York: Ballantine, 1971.)

Since the industrial revolution, there has been a growing tendency for people to rely on impersonal producers for their vegetables; however, in a world where vegetables are central and where self-sufficiency increases, it becomes as natural for families to have their own vegetables as their own air.

The amount of land it takes to grow the vegetables for a household is surprisingly small. It takes about one-tenth of an acre to grow an adequate year round supply of vegetables for a family of four. And apparently vegetables give a higher “nutrient return” for fixed quantities of energy—sun, labor—than any other food. This means that every house or house cluster can create its own supply of vegetables, and that every household which does not have its own private land attached to it should have a portion of a common vegetable garden close at hand.

Beside this fundamental need for vegetable gardens in cities,

there is a subtler need. Parks, street trees, and manicured lawns do very little to establish the connection between us and the land. They teach us nothing of its productivity, nothing of its capacities. Many people who are born, raised, and live out their lives in cities simply do not know where the food they eat comes from or what a living garden is like. Their only connection with the productivity of the land comes from packaged tomatoes on the supermarket shelf. But contact with the land and its growing process is not simply a quaint nicety from the past that we can let go of casually. More likely, it is a basic part of the process of organic security. Deep down, there must be some sense of insecurity in city dwellers who depend entirely upon the supermarkets for their produce.

Community gardens needn’t be expensive propositions either. When Santa Barbara residents decided to start a downtown garden back in May, 1970, they used their ingenuity. A vacant downtown lot was acquired (at a cost of one dollar for 6 months), and the city provided free water and a tractor with operator for two days. Compost was no problem. The group got leaves from the park department, hard sludge from the local sanitation district, and horse manure from a nearby riding club. Tools and seeds were donated. (“Community Gardens,” Bob Rodale, San Francisco Chronicle, May 31, 1972, p. 16.)

School garden in Amsterdam, worked by the children. Therefore:

Set aside one piece of land either in the private garden or on common land as a vegetable garden. About one-tenth of

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177 VEGETABLE GARDEN

an acre is needed for each family of four. Make sure the vegetable garden is in a sunny place and central to all the households it serves. Fence it in and build a small storage shed for gardening tools beside it.

a/4o acre per person

To fertilize the vegetables, use the natural compost which is generated by the house and the neighborhood—compost (178); and if possible, try to use water from the sinks and drains to irrigate the soil—bathing room (144). . . .