Designing and building woodland paths is a fun and rewarding experience. No matter how arduous the preparatory work to make the paths, upon completion the feeling is one of amazement and satisfaction. The woodland paths in my garden are designed to make all parts of the garden visually accessible. Additionally, they are necessary for transporting my wheelbarrow and tools.
I had several overall considerations I wanted to accomplish in laying out the paths.
- Provide for the ability to create distinct garden areas – based on the amount of sun each receives.
- Frame any views or natural features.
- Allow for crossing or bypassing of wet areas.
- Enable the placement of garden furniture.
- Minimize the removal of the few native plants left in the garden.
- Create paths that are at least 4 feet wide.
- Sensitively work with rock outcroppings and trees.
- Establish paths that interconnect and give multiple routes to the various garden areas.
The clean up of all the invasive plants and the fallen trees provided the perfect foundation material for the paths. Wood chips are soft underfoot, decompose and enrich the woodland floor, are easily installed and instantly attractive.
The woodland garden, following the property boundaries, is in the shape of a triangle. Along one side of the garden is an old road. This road was originally planted with catalpa trees spaced evenly at about 10 feet. An arborist friend of my neighbor estimated the trees were planted about 140 years ago. Some of died (hence all the dead trees and branches in the garden) and others are now quite sparse. Over time, I intend to replant small catalpa trees along the road, restoring the historical character.
The old catalpa road is about two feet higher than the floor of the garden. An old stone wall ran the length of the road. As trees fell in storms, or otherwise died, this wall was allowed to crumble and the stones scattered. Instead of replicating the wall, a nearly impossible feat given how the trees have grown along side it, I am taking the scattered stones and placing them where the wall originally stood. This provides a nice sloping rockery which I will plant as a traditional rock garden, with ferns and other shade loving plants.
Tree trunks and rounds that could not go through the chipper are being used to frame paths and make walls to level the surface of the path. Many gardens around the world use fallen branches and tree rounds as borders to paths.
Winter is not the usual time to work in the garden, but with a few warm days last week, the paths have been significantly completed.
In the coming weeks, the weather should clear enough for the completion of the paths. As spring approaches I will begin to plant the various garden areas and begin using the paths in earnest.
The old catalpa road reminds me of a poem by Rudyard Kipling:
‘The Way through the Woods’
They shut the road through the woods
Seventy years ago.
Weather and rain have undone it again,
And now you would never know
There was once a road through the woods
Before they planted the trees.
It is underneath the coppice and heath,
And the thin anemones.
Only the keeper sees
That, where the ring-dove broods,
And the badgers roll at ease,
There was once a road through the woods.
Yet, if you enter the woods
Of a summer evening late,
When the night-air cools on the trout-ringed pools
Where the otter whistles his mate,
(They fear not men in the woods,
Because they see so few.)
You will hear the beat of a horse’s feet,
And the swish of a skirt in the dew,
Steadily cantering through
The misty solitudes,
As though they perfectly knew
The old lost road through the woods.
But there is no road through the woods.