How to Design Arches and Pergolas

Keep these principles in mind when designing an arch or pergola for your garden space.

Filed under: Pergolas, How To

Try to match the scale of your structure to the size of your house and garden. For example, a large pergola with stone pillars and massive oak beams will almost certainly look out of place in the garden of a small, simple house.

Movement and Focal Points

A garden with movement allows you to experience it from different views and perspectives, offering maximum enjoyment of the whole. Arches and pergolas can help introduce a sense of movement around even small gardens. An archway will allow access, inviting you to walk from one area to another, while a pergola over a pathway leads you on to another part of the garden.

All gardens should include at least one area for relaxation; aside from its primary function as somewhere to sit, it is itself a place of interest and reason for movement. Plan a lean-to or freestanding pergola to provide shade and screening over a sitting area, or build an arbor in the cool shade of overhanging tree branches.

Focal points are important to attract attention and give visual movement within a garden, but take care not to have too many: this can look fussy and be tiring on the eye. Arches are obvious points of focus and are often used to good effect in leading the eye to the front gate or other access points, for example, thus giving clear directions to visitors. Arbors, too, are often seen as focal points, enticing you to a cool seat on a hot day. The effect is far more appealing, however, if the arbor is softened and half-hidden by plants growing nearby, rather than placed squarely in the middle of a lawn.

Mystery and Tension

Tree tunnels in centuries past were designed to create a feeling of mystery and tension. Today's shaded pergola walks aim to do the same, fostering a sense of intrigue as you pass through the dappled half-light formed by overhead beams and climbers. The longer the walk, the greater the underlying sense of tension, which is broken only when you emerge, inevitably, into full light.