Regulating Nature: How the function of a garden dictates its form

Gardens are a particularly interesting situation in the fabric of a city. Cities are entirely manmade environments designed to suit the needs of their populations. A garden is, in general, a natural or semi-natural spaces that acts as an addition to the city environment. This is a very different situation than the relationship that normally encountered when designing architecture (that of a building to a site). The level of human regulation that a garden is subject to is determined by the purpose that the garden is meant to serve. A garden may act as a foil for the city, as a way of recording the original environment of a space, as a relaxation area, or as a recreation area.

Alan Sonfist - Time Garden

The natural space of a garden punctuates the manmade city space. The relationship between the two spaces can say as much about the city as it does about the natural environment. This is accomplished through the tension created between the contrast of the two spaces (especially when a garden is not highly regulated). One great example of a highly unregulated garden is Alan Sonfist’s Time Garden which is located in New York City. This garden is a careful recreation of the natural flora that originally occupied the space that is now New York. This extreme break from the order of the city serves as a form of punctuation and as a living natural record.

Catherine Mosbach - Jardin Botanique Bordeaux - Plan

A garden can also record the natural environment in a slightly more ordered way. Catherine Mosbach’s Jardin Botanique Bordeaux, for example, presents the natural flora as one would present objects in a museum. She carefully compartmentalizes different vegetation and presents many different sorts of environments within a very confined space. Though form of presenting the natural environment is less authentic it also allows visitors to the space to gain a broader idea of what the space the city occupies would have actually been like.

Gardens are also often meant to serve the needs of the population of the city. Traditionally the purpose of gardens has been to provide a place for relaxation and respite from the city itself. Spaces designed for this purpose tend to be more structured that the previous examples because they, like the city itself, are designed largely to accommodate people. Gardens meant for the purpose of relaxation can be either private or public. Gardens that are private tend to contain more order because they typically occupy a smaller space and very often have walls which are a strict regulating feature.

Parc De Villette
Competition Entry -
Diagram of form generating layers

The final purpose a garden might serve is for the purposes of recreation. Often such gardens are the most highly ordered because they are meant to serve specific purposes other than simply providing a place to relax. Oma and Rem Koolhaas’s entry for the Parc de Villette competition in Paris is an extreme example of a garden as a regulated space. This garden is intended specifically as a space for activity. The design of the garden is entirely geometric and regulated by mathematical formulas and algorithms. It is essentially a structured space that includes some natural elements as opposed to a natural space with some structural elements. 

Restriction and Release

Restriction and Release

By Sarah Wilson

A study of the methods of movement through a promenade

Jardin aquatique

What better to examine in a promenade garden than its namesake? A ‘promenade’, defined as both a leisurely walk and an opening dance in a ball, is chiefly concerned with movement. The well-known Jardin Botanique of Bordeaux was created in 2002 by landscape architect Catherine Mosbach and Françoise-Hélène Jourda. This piece of landscape is classified as a promenade for its organization of various sequentially connected gardens. The method of movement between these botanical areas takes a few different forms, which are created from the conversation between restriction and release. One or both of these functions appears in the movement within and between each of the gardens, but perhaps appears best in the first three gardens: the jardin aquatique, the galerie des milieux, and the champ de cultures.

                The jardin aquatique’s organization is a series of small square ponds arranged around one side of a larger water garden. The stone path zigzags its way around each piece of these gardens. The path from the first gate to this water garden is much wider, encompasses the span of the water garden, and it made of gravel. This transition from wide to narrow, from loose rock to compact stone, marks a change in movement. Guests feel this change as they are filtered, like the water through the jardin aquatique, from the wide and free to the narrow and confined as they wind their way through. After restricting themselves in their own erratic path, they are released into a more open space, a transition point between the jardin aquatique and the next garden. 

Galerie des milieux

From here, there is a very noticeable change in movement and spatial experience. This next aforementioned garden is the galerie des milieux, in which there are several landscapes in miniature, elevated in their own islands above the ground plane. Widely spaced apart with only a suggestion of a central path, these landscape islands provide obstacles similar to the small square water gardens: both offer points of visual interest while asking guests to find their way around them. The difference, however, is in how controlled that round-a-bout path is. In the galerie des milieux, the path is widely spaced and thus gives the inclination to slow down or even pause for a conversation; this is not dissimilar to a trail through the woods or a grassy plain, where a path may meander but does not demand a pace. On the other hand, the jardin aquatic’s narrow suggests a quicker, more precise passage. After the last landscape island there is another transition space, though larger and more defined in shape. What follows is another change in movement.

Champ de cultures

                The champ de cultures garden is essentially a series of agricultural fields, arranged in rows of long rectangles with grassy spaces for passage in between. At the head of each field is a small raised viewing platform. The paths between these fields are defined by long white stones spaced loosely apart, their lengths running along the long sides of the fields. While there is some freedom of movement, this garden suggests a much more streamlined and path. Once a guest chooses an aisle to walk down, their chances of switching aisles are somewhat restricted. This is in great contrast to the first two gardens where the paths where much more meandering, however fast or slow. Though the pace of the third garden is ambiguous, it is highly suggestive of a straight path, and therefore more controlled. However, this appropriately mimics the streamlined and controlled environment defined by an agricultural field.

                Mosbach seems to have had in mind the character of each of her individual gardens when she was designing the method of movement within and without each of these. The range between narrow, meandering, wide, and streamlined reflects the nature of the filtering water gardens, the landscape islands, and the efficient fields. A change and flow of movement is paramount in a promenade garden, and even in the first three pieces alone, it is clear that the Jardin Botanique of Bordeaux lives up to its classification as a promenade.