My left foot

I've looked everywhere for a supplier of these pavers. I saw these on 17th between Park Ave. South and Irving Place, just across from Union Square Park. For scale, I put my left foot (shoe, actually) into the picture. About four and a half inches across. Squarish cobble stones, used in historic areas throughout New York City. If you know where I can buy these, let me know. Please.

It's all about scale. Like my foot defines the scale of the stone surface around it, measuring the extension of the paved surface, giving rough dimensions of 6 by 8 feet in abstract measure, but more significantly, a feeling for the space in human terms, relating the space to the human body, my body.

The more I think about how to design my new city garden, the more I find myself wrestling with the concept of scale. In memory, things seem larger than they really are. My 20- by 40-foot space is smaller than I think. Much smaller. I look at similar spaces, and see the need to cut back, edit, make choices, simplify.

So I need to start with my foot, then my height, my body, how I move in the space. I need to walk the garden space more. Sit out there. Get the feel of the space, the objects around it.

I like the scale of these stones, their elegant patterns, the way their small size can play off larger slabs of stone, contrast with gravel, I like their texture; they break up the space and carry the eye toward detail.

Garden Diary: Structure

Much of the structure of my garden is native stone (argillite, known by old timers as "blue jingle" or "blue jingler") made into dry laid walls. So far we've built 300 to 400 feet of low wall at the base of the little manmade hill that raises the house above the wet landscape and along a curving path on the west side of the garden. Now I want to use the stone to build a raised linear planting area.

This will be at the far end of the little pond (shown above), which is about 40 feet long. Picture first a stone wall, 8 to 10 feet long, cutting diagonally across the end of the pond - a full visual stop, perhaps with a slanting top, rising from left to right (I haven't decided about that yet). On the other side of that transverse wall will be a raised planting area, trapezoidal in shape, at least 4 feet wide and probably 20 or 25 feet long. This stone planter will echo the shape of the pond, but will "bend" to the left. It will be about 18 inches high.

My garden is so wild I need to add more structured, formal elements for contrast. This new feature will make it possible to grow plants that can't survive in my wet clay soil. I'm thinking the new planting may be as simple as a row of boxwood balls - a formal, repetitive pattern as counterpoint to the naturalistic background planting. But that's still to be decided too.

The next photo shows the same area from another perspective. I have to move quite a few plants - winterberry hollies, a button bush, several aster tartaricus 'Jin Dai', assorted water irises... But that may be the easiest part.


The black and white photo highlights the roughly rectangular area in the center where the new stone planter will be. Here is the rough shape of the new stone feature, in plan view.