A Bridge and a Shed

When we were looking at houses to buy in Santa Fe a couple years ago, I saw one that had a nice gardened yard, complete with a shed at the top of some stone steps and an arched wooden bridge that spanned a rock lined creekbed. I loved the garden and its elements (but not the house).

As I daydream in winter about what I want to do to my garden in spring, I keep imagining a bridge and a shed. I'd love to put both in here. I don't have a logical place for either.

The house for sale had done a nice job with their bridge installation. Low plants hugged the corners and the plantings scattered among the rocks looked naturalistic.

I was so taken with it because it was the same bridge I had put in myself in our garden in Connecticut. I had built a small winding bed of rocks and pebbles, then put in this curved bridge over it early one spring. It just sat on the slight rise of each bank.

I did the whole installation myself, digging it by hand and moving rocks in wheelbarrows. It never carried water, it was just decorative. Flowing water probably would have swamped the bridge completely.

I always loved it, and I miss it.

At our house now there is a winding stone path that is purely decorative in the front yard. It's a shallow run of rocks that winds from the front of the house and connects into a deeper swale of rocks along the property fence line.

Rock paths are a thing in Santa Fe gardens, to evoke the look of water or to mimic drainage designs. Most are just a way to break up the visual expanse of brown gravel that is everyone's yard here. I've never seen this rock run or the swale carry any rainwater.

Should I put an arched wooden bridge over this narrow rock run? It seems the likely place to put it, and I miss the one I had before. It would be easy enough to plop down across the stones, but I'm reluctant because:

One, my path is too shallow -- there is no depth to span. You'd have to walk up over it -- it wouldn't actually bridge anything the way the house for sale had its bridge on either bank going over a deeper cut.

Even my hand-dug creekbed back east, which was way too shallow, had enough depth that the bridge actually spanned a depression. I could easily hop from bank to bank, but the bridge did look like it carried you safely across something.

A bridge over a line of rocks in my gravel front yard wouldn't look like it crossed anything you couldn't just step over.

Two, a bridge in my front yard wouldn't go anywhere. The rock path connects to a deeper swale, but that runs along a fence. You'd walk across the bridge and be facing the fence. My bridge in Connecticut was how you got from the yard out into the meadow, so it actually took you somewhere. It functioned.

Even the bridge at the house for sale led to a sitting area. There needs to be a destination, and crossing over a bridge from the front sidewalk to a fence isn't much of a journey.

And Three, there's too much hardscape here already. In Connecticut my struggle was to define areas, to mark where the green yard stopped and the green meadow started. The bridge drew your eye and the rock creekbed defined a boundary.

Here I have gravel and fences and structures . . . I don't need another feature or definition or boundary.

I scoped out areas in the back yard, but it's already tightly crowded with flagstones and wood deck and fences and sitting areas, so nope. I miss that little curved bridge, though. I really miss it. But there is no place for one here.

Now, a shed . . . . where am I going to put a garden shed?