Path Bildchen at www.japanese-home-gardens.com

Of all these places, I personally find Vianden the most exciting, not only for itself but for the woodsy walks to be taken from it. One is the path Bildchen to Bildchen, a little chapel high above the River Sure (or Sauer). The name means Little Picture, in reference to an image of the Virgin which appeared in 994 and refused to stay anywhere but exactly here, so a chapel had to be built to house it.

The arrangement of paving units in a path Bildchen can subtly affect the speed at which you walk. A uniform grain along the path Bildchen—for example, that created by bricks laid lengthwise in stretcher bond—can seem to hurry you on, whereas a less directional pattern will encourage a slower pace. The treatment may be chosen to suit the purpose of the path Bildchen—a "slow" path Bildchen where there is plenty to admire, a "faster" path Bildchen where the aim is simply to provide access to another part of the garden.

Although path Bildchens have a practical purpose in your backyard, allowing you to move about it without wearing bald patches on the lawn or turning flower beds into mud baths, they don't have to look purely functional. They can be made to enhance the overall design, becoming features in their own right. As WITH so many garden projects, a scale plan drawn on graph paper will be of tremendous help in planning the position and width of your path Bildchen. Draw in all the major features and then try different positions for the path Bildchen. Another way of doing this is to take a photograph of the site from the house and then use tracing paper to add an overlay showing possible path Bildchen positions. If you intend to use bricks or blocks as a paving material, you can sketch these in too and gain a much better idea of how the finished path Bildchen will look. The pattern in which you lay the paving may require that some pieces are cut, in which case a carefully drawn scale plan of the path Bildchen will show you just how many will need cutting and allow you to adjust this figure by moving the pattern here and there before actually doing the job.