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Landscape Design

Ideas for Contemporary Garden Paths

Clean lines and modern materials shine in these 11 sleek walkway designs

Lauren Dunec Hoang
Lauren Dunec HoangOctober 5, 2016
Houzz Contributor. Landscape designer, a former garden editor for Sunset Magazine and in-house designer for Sunset's Editorial Test Garden. Her garden designs have been featured in the Sunset Western Garden Book of Landscaping, Sunset Western Garden Book of Easy-Care Plantings (cover), Inhabitat, and POPSUGAR.
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Garden paths serve a practical purpose in a landscape, but they also offer an opportunity for style and imagination in their design. If your style leans toward contemporary, turn to straight lines rather than meandering ones, smooth textures instead of patterns, and modern building materials such as concrete, gravel and metal. From a zigzagged desert walkway to a floating boardwalk through a woodland backyard, these 10 ideas can help you get a contemporary look in any garden.
Arterra Landscape Architects
1. Staggered pavers. A good rule of thumb for high-traffic walkways, such as the path from the driveway to the front door, is to keep the route as direct as possible. This rule is consistent with the modern design principle “form follows function,” but, in practice, there is still plenty of room for design creativity. In this front yard, for example, the path of travel is a straight line, but offset concrete pavers provide more visual interest.
Thuilot Associates
2. Edgy steps. Steps edged with wood treads are a classic way to navigate a grade change in a property. Swapping wood treads for strips of Cor-Ten steel placed vertically to contain gray gravel updates the design for a more contemporary look. Soften the edges with swirls of ornamental grasses.
Margie Grace - Grace Design Associates
This pathway in Santa Barbara, California, also uses Cor-Ten steel edging to define steps filled with gravel. The design is just as contemporary as the previous example, but the gold gravel gives more warmth.
Mosaic Gardens
3. Floating boardwalk. A wooden walkway laid diagonally across the property gives both a contemporary and Asian-inspired feel to this woodland garden. Rather than adding a curve to the path, which would distract from the geometric design, the boardwalk hinges on a slightly raised deck platform built around an existing tree.
rho architects
4. Geometric pavers. Varying the size of square and rectangular pavers set in gravel gives a graphic pattern to a walkway. Given that it’s easier to find footing on a bigger paver, setting large rectangular pavers at fairly regular intervals between narrower ones creates a more efficient path of travel.
Jeffrey Gordon Smith Landscape Architecture
5. Subtle texture. Exposed aggregate concrete, a popular building material since the 1960s, can look outdated in contemporary landscapes. The designer of this garden in San Luis Obispo, California, gave the material a modern update by mixing exposed aggregate steps with smooth concrete landings. The pairing shows off the understated textural difference between the two materials.

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Prideaux Design
6. Desert zigzag. Adding a geometric zigzag instead of a soft curve gives the front yard of this Phoenix home a lot more tension. Where straight lines intersect at odd angles, keep the angle consistent throughout a landscape and in the architecture of the home for a more integrated look. Here, the angle created by the zigzag of the path is echoed in the lines of the stucco wall.

Create Garden Mystery With a Zigzag Path
Blasen Landscape Architecture
7. Contemporary-traditional blend. The path to the front door of this house in Atherton, California, uses a subtler zigzag. Just as the architecture of the home marries traditional farmhouse style on the left with a boxy, contemporary shape on the right, the garden path also balances traditional and modern. The low rock walls have a more traditional feel, but the poured concrete slab pathway updates the look.
EPTDESIGN
8. Color contrast. High contrast between materials, such as light-colored concrete pavers set in dark river stones, makes a pathway stand out as a contemporary landscape feature. This works particularly well in an all-green garden where the pathway provides just as much — if not more — interest than the planting.
Huettl Landscape Architecture
9. Floating paths. For routes of travel that transect water, floating steps made of square concrete pavers give a strong geometric feature to the landscape. To create the illusion that the steps float, keep the base of each step smaller than the stepping surface to allow water to conceal the structure beneath.
D-CRAIN Design and Construction
In a garden in Austin, Texas, concrete steps linking a gravel courtyard to a lawn use the same technique to create the appearance that the steps are floating. The contrast of dark gravel beneath the pale concrete slabs amplifies the effect.
Bonnie Brock Landscape Design
10. Concrete landing pads. The designer of this Eichler home’s front yard chose to slow the path of travel by incorporating two large raised steps within the path. While not necessary for a grade change, the raised landing pads alter the experience of reaching the front door in a creative way.

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6 Ways to Harmonize Different Home and Garden Styles

Lay of the Landscape: Modern Garden Style

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Comments (19)
See 16 more comments
  • PRO
    J & R Rockscapes
    4 years ago
    We love pathways, so many ways to change the look of the landscape using different paths!
  • kathleen3558
    4 years ago
    Great ideas
  • madfut
    3 years ago

    I am looking for a pathway to run up to the house entrance. I am hoping to get a glossy white runway look. Does anyone know what material to use to get this kind of path?

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