Sitting in a vine-covered gazebo framing a lakeside view, walking under a pergola connecting an orchard and pool garden. having lunch in a summerhouse with lavender blooms in the foreground while roses scramble over the roof--variety is what engages visitors to a garden, and once you understand that garden design gathers around making places for people, then you begin to find just the right places for plants that will engage those people.

Built structures in a garden provide anchors, centers and starting places for good garden design. Features such as garden sheds, arbors, pergolas. gazeboes, trellises, fences, gates, bridges, decks, arches and smallbuildings--playhouses, summerhouses and pool houses--provide valuable dues as to how to develop gardens around them, and how using a variety of these structures can solve many design problems.

When my wife, Mary and I started developing our garden in southern Vermont over twenty-five years ago. one of the very first gardens we made was a small herb garden that we developed in relation to an old garden shed that was on the property when we bought it. The I.essons learned as we built that modest herb garden next to the Uttte shed have herd me in good stead as a garden designer over the years: gazeboes and arbors, pergolas and bridges, built structures of all kinds are hugely helpful in developing a garden design. They help you see how to devetop gardens around them or to one or more sides of them. And in doing so, they help you find just the right places for plants. In fact, they anchor your thinking about where new gardens belong.

Introduction

CHAPTER 1

Arbors Connected to the House

CHAPTER 2

Decks 2

CHAPTER 3

Freestanding Arbors

CHAPTER 4

Gazeboes

CHAPTER 5

Sheds

CHAPTER 6

Pergolas

CHAPTER 7

Playhouses, Summerhouses, Poor Houses

CHAPTER 8

Fences and Gates

CHAPTER 9

Trellises

CHAPTER 10

Bridges

CHAPTER 11

Putting It All Together

APPENDIX

Fence Designs

Bibliography

Resources

Photo Credits