It does look a little extra-wiggly to me. Speaking only for myself, I would go from the big curve and extend it down to where the path starts curving to the right, taking out the little curved bump-out. I would probably make the other edge of the path go essentially parallel to the left edge. Then again, I am not exactly a super-creative person. :)

ThinMan

Definitely too wiggly! :-) Wiggly edges are one of those things that drive me crazy! (Sweeping curves are good; wiggles are silly...) This looks like a situation where you can make good use of 'negative space' to add interest and impact to the garden. But it's hard to know the context of what you are doing - e.g. why are you splitting up the space? How did/does the garden space relate to the overall space? Is the path that would apparently be created by dividing the bed supposed to lead you somewhere or direct attention to something/somewhere? Grass or mulch will have different effects in terms of giving visual weight/importance to the path as well as making maintenance easier or more difficult. Personally, I dislike stepping stones - they generally give an awkward and distracting walking surface and most often look (to me) out of place and purposeless. (If the point of them is to provide a path, make a proper, comfortable walking surface instead of something that frequently makes walking the path a treacherous experience!) I tend to be very opinionated on this issue :-)

Yep! Take out the bump-out. That is what is throwing it off a bit. It would be nicer as a sweeping curve, so in this case it would be almost like an upside-down question mark. Then mirror the other side.

The path would be nice as grass so the garden beds would just flow from the lawn, but I know what you mean about dealing with the grass. You probably wouldn't need any edging if you did a sharply cut, deep edge between the beds and the lawn.

What are the short red flowers you have in there? I can't quite make them out.

Thank you both. Thinman, I recognize you from the cutting forums. I made this bed originally for growing cut flowers when a friend and I were selling at farmer's markets. She has moved out of state though and I do not have the space to grow enough on my own. Hope all is going well with your flower business--if you are still doing it. Havent been over to the cutting forum lately.

Woody: I saw an older post when you made the new bed on the edge of your yard. I loved seeing how it evolved. :)

I think just the fact that I posted a picture and asked about it indicates that it is not quite right. When I am up close and placing the edges, the wiggles look like sweeping curves. So funny though when I step back from it I think, "huh that is what I just made?" This one I did outline by raking and mounding up the soil.

I am splitting up the space to help add more (what I think of as) definition to the garden area. I need a large area to grow stuff in (I have to grow things and need space to try out all the wonderful plants out there), but the big rectangle was not visually pleasing to me. One issue is that the growth is too uniform in height. I do have some shrubs that will get larger, but they are still small now. In the early spring it was incredibly bland looking. Plus, I want a better path system. I had two straight mulched paths through the area and they just caused a lot of ... visual sadness...lol I don't know how else to describe it.

How does it relate to the larger area: The trees to the left continue along the side of our house and into the back yard. So, it is the outer edge of a large, rather imposing section of trees (considering we only have a half acre yard). Our side yard ends about 10 feet past the far end of the bed. The neighbor's yard slopes up so that end of our yard gets a lot of water. There is a stormwater drain off the right corner of the garden bed. This picture is taken from our driveway so I do want it to have a good visual presentation.

The path is mostly functional and a visual break in the garden bed. The garden bed continues to the left behind the trees. I am going to see if I can post some other pictures.

Now, if I had to start all over, I would put a smaller bed along the edge of the trees, have a large grass section in the middle of the yard, and then have a large garden closer to the sidewalk (farther to the right off the picture). But, since I already ahve so much there, I do not know if I can manage to re-arrange so many other plants!

Take a long hose and arrange on the ground until you are happy with the shape.
Curves are brilliant, they slow one up so you have time to really see the plants, but too many, or too tight, just becomes annoying.
You have a lovely big garden, you have the space to make the bed bigger.
Daisy

Many thanks all! I am trying to work through how to shape the bed on the left as well. The area slopes down and ideally we would add in a short retaining wall to raise it up for improved drainage (when we have a lot of rain, I think the soil tehre gets so water logged that it starts to have anaerobic conditions--it gets a rank smell).

The short dark red flowers are dianthus barbatus. I started those from seed summer 2010. They flowered the spring 2011 then I cut them back and they re=flowered this year. My foxgloves have done the same. I plan to start new ones this summer of both though. The soil along that area is hard clay and those dianthus bloom for a long time and take the soil conditions in stride.

Not sure if the link works, but here's a few other pictures to see the bigger view.

Oh, and on stepping stones: we have high clay content soil. I walk through the garden several times every day and thought stepping stones might be a good way to prevent compaction. I was considering stepping stones (flagstones) even in the grass because the grass gets so compacted where we walk. Along the back yard we are re-seeding some areas after putting in drainage tiles, and we have had to walk along a very narrow area. We have just about worn away the grass there from the frequent walking. I do not really want to put in permanent paths (I tend to change my mind a lot).

Here is a link that might be useful:

One additional point about curves. Smaller curves (the inner part of the curve) are really annoying to mow. I learned this the hard way and have been gradually flattening out 2 curvy areas in my yard.

Also that looks like a very nice spot for an arbor arching across the new path. I could picture climbing roses or morning glories.
Christine

So this bed is in the front yard and there's a seating area at one end...? Can you do a quick sketch showing a plan view of the area? We have soil with high clay content here too. I have lots of paths through the garden to both make WALATing (WALAT = walking around looking at things...) and maintenance easier. Paths in the beds are mulch ones; paths outside the beds are grass or mulch depending on the conditions of the area and the effect I want. It sounds like the area in your yard where the grass is almost worn away is perhaps an exceptional thing due to the work being done in the area. Unless you have very high volume or heavy traffic (loaded wheelbarrows very frequently, for example), a grass path should easily survive normal family foot traffic.

Here is a rough sketch of the area around house.

The photo in my first post is of the area labeled *garden* and then *path* below it. The second garden bed below the path is currently an elongated rectangle. The arrows indicate direction of slope. Picture is oriented with North up.

The path just delineates between the two garden beds to-be. It doesn't really go anywhere as our yard ends shortly after the path ends. I have considered a small seating area there, but the entire yard is sloped toward the drainage and any kind of seating would be a bit awkward--I have played around with chairs in this area.

I do like the idea of an arch of some sort. I do have a new William Baffin rose waiting to be planted and have considered jsut such a placement. But, the drainage is very poor at that end and we do have many deer here.

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Here are some pictures from an upper story window.

Seeing it from this view, the bed seems to swing out way too far. I did that because I wanted more area for planting. :)

I am going to try the hose edging idea. I have tried it before but apparently I had a very inflexible hose because it went its' own way.

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Then to the left a bit. This area has 2 Box Elder trees that lean toward the house and should be removed. We have already gotten some estimates for this work to be done. My husband doesn't want them taken out right now though (mainly because this is our kids' favorite spot with the swings and fire pit).

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Then farther to the left, into the back yard we have many more trees. The edging visible here was just set down by hurriedly to see if I wanted it there--it needs to be smoothed out and continued aroudn the bend. We are trying to re-establish grass in this area (see the straw) eventhough it is quite shady, some grass does grow pretty well closer to the house.

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Ok, looking at it from the window has me thinking the shape should be re-worked a lot more.

Instead of it jetting out so much, the edge could actually come in more, closer to the tree line. Then the bed to the right could have a better kidney shape. I'd then have space for a small *clearing in the middle--either just a grass area or a space for a large item/focal point.

Here is my quick potential sketch:

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It's hard to tell if I'm interpreting things right, but if I were you, I'd switch your focus from shaping the garden bed(s) to shaping the grass and paths. That's what 'shaping the negative space' is about. Can you see in the first picture in this latest group how nice a space the grass is between the brick edge of the bed and the edge of the road? It's a nice, calm green space to rest your eyes, and serves as a foil for the flower garden. Now look at your first sketch - can you picture that green swath making the turn at the driveway and running up the side of the driveway, past the garden bed(s) and sweeping around past the firepit area, towards the back of the house? It's not clear what happens when you get to the retaining wall/slope/shade garden area... If you focus on the sweep of grass as the important thing to carry you visually - and physically - through the area, then the path through the garden bed(s) become secondary things that you keep as simple as possible in line and material (mulch) to keep them in a minor role(the grass and the garden plantings are the highlights and the paths in the beds sort of disappear). There looked to be a grass slope behind the beds (?) How does that extend in relation to the shed? Could a mulch path extend past the firepit area, along the woodland edge to the shed while the grass swath continue to sweep in a U from the back yard, along the driveway, and along the back of the beds? If you stop thinking of the grass as an unimportant nothing relative to the plantings and instead think of it as a feature to use to enhance the garden and shape the space - and beds, you can create some high impact effects that might surprise you.

That first picture in the group above reminds me of my front garden in some ways. Using the grass to shape spaces and using different material to make some areas subordinate to others is something that has worked very well for me here. Some of these pictures are a few years old and the plantings have changed a bit but they may serve to illustrate what I'm trying to describe...

This is the front bed in early April a couple of years ago (taken from the roof of the garage!)
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Can you see that the grass path is the dominant sweep through the area and the mulch path past the small bed on the right is clearly secondary? You have more space so you would have a much wider grass path. There are also three mulch paths through the big bed - you can only see them in this view by looking to see where there are no (faint in early April!) signs of emerging plants. By mid-May those paths are a bit more obvious:
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Looking at the sweep of grass path from a different point of view, you can see that it is a powerful thing that draws your eyes as much as the plantings do and draws you into the garden. The line curves as the path changes direction but is otherwise straight and strong - it follows the line your feet would naturally take if you were walking past those beds. The narrow outer bed was shaped by the line of the top of the ditch by the road-side, and by measuring a constant distance from the big garden bed on the other side:
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I think your space lends itself to that sort of focus on laying out the space....

I really appreciate your thoughts on ways to approach the paths and garden beds. I tend to arrange them based on various existing constraints: a clematis vine, the edge of where DH tilled the grass, where I already tend to walk, etc. Trying to take a broader view VERY is helpful.

We have been going back and forth on what to do with mulching/paths etc around the fire pit area. I understand what you mean about the mulch and grass (I think I do at least!); it is similar to some scenarios we have discussed. We had thought grass would not grow in the area leading to the shed, but I think it gets a fair amount of morning sun--last year a large tree in the neighbor's yard fell down, exposing the area to morning sun. Also, we may get rid of the fire pit all together. To me, it is too close to the house and trees. I think within a year or two that entire area will change dramatically as our kids age (they are already young teenagers but they go out there every afternoon, often for a few hours, weather permitting, well, sometimes even in the rain).

Is your transition from grass to mulch just an end to the grass? Is there any kind of edging and do you have any problems with mulch getting excessively into the grass?

Because the mulch path is roughly level with the grass, the mulch stays put. There is no barrier between the mulch and grass. Several times during the growing season I just use an edging spade to cut a straight line across the line where the grass and mulch meet - that severs any roots that are starting to invade the mulch area. Then I just loosen the mulch/soil behind the line I cut and remove whatever has crossed the line. The grass in the path isn't too invasive - but there is white clover that attempts to spread into the mulch path! The cut line and removal of invading bits is easy to do. If you have really invasive grass you'd probably need a root barrier across the end of the path where the grass and mulch meet. I use a root barrier between the brick edging and the grass. I use a metal barrier called Curv-rite that I got at a landscape supply store. It's expensive but works great.

Speaking of the brick edging... It looks like you are planning on using the brick edging along the internal path too...? I used the bricks only on the outer edge of the big bed; the internal paths have a 'threshold' of wider paving stones with side bricks where the path crosses the main brick edge. That provides a nice feel of entrance to the garden and the absence of bricks on the edge of the internal paths makes it easier to reshape or move the paths if necessary. I can't find a picture of the arrangement at the ends of the two side internal paths but you can see the arrangement at the end of the main center path that connects the bed to the driveway in the picture below. The two side paths have a slighly simplier version that only uses two of the wider paving stones with a one brick companion on either side.
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I think that sort of thing would work well in your case too.

From what I could tell from your pictures, a mulch path past the firepit, along the woods, towards the shed would probably be the way to start. The question is how far towards the shed could you bring the grass behind the beds, with the intent of having the grass and mulch paths meet up in a harmonious way near the shed. I can't tell how that would/could work from the pictures you've posted. In my garden I use mulch paths in and along the woodland areas. It feels more natural to me and is easier to maintain.

I did wonder if there is any risk with having the firepit near trees... Firepits are not common here - and open fires are not permitted in this particular suburbia :-), so I'm not at all familiar with their use.