Do all gates stem from this utilitarian design with the top header (roof) the lower plank or strut(perch)and the two legs. Is there a signifigance to the tilt of the legs? Are there gates with vertical legs? The simple or minimalist types of gates are very pleasing to me and seem very ballanced, both strightlegged and tapered legged.

I am planning a very large gate for my setting which is a 2/3 acre pond and it needs big size in order to scale the feeling correctly. I fear It's going to be expensive. The gate will be a formal entry / exit into the garden - a passageway from intimacy into a wide open Missouri farm. It will visually exit into wide open space - a very large 100 acre valley, so it has to be big.

paul

not all gates come from the Torii template, roosting chickens saved from foxes was the translation. Gates have a slightly different background based on the human need for territory, boundary and land markers from earliest on. These were a subtle as a sheaf of grass tied together or an alleyway.
edzard

The reason that I feel that it has to be big is because of the setting. If I am correct, here in Missouri there are no natural lakes due mainly to the karst topography in the south and lack of galcial digging pressure in the north.

As such lakes and ponds are formed by placing an earthen dam @ the mouth of gullies and re-entries at the base of hills. In my situation if you can imagine walking out of the wooded hill and it opens onto a pond that sits slightly above a 100 acre valley, so with the woods and hill to your back you see only the pond and vast openess. In essence this is my main intimidation - it's completely open to crop fields with no trees - nothing to scale it. I am having a hard time trying to get the pond/garden integrated with such vastness. Initially I planted Thujas in the fore ground and mid ground (oposite side of pond) and then I planned on putting more Thujas further out in the valley in order to scale it and give the view some perspective leading to or more like insinuating a vanishing point. If you have seen some of the landscapes in the mediterainian with high terraces overlooking tall narrow cedars as they taper out into the distance - this what I had initially planned. But then I discover J=gardens and now I am moving in that direction.

So I figured the gate would have to be emence in order to scale the space - the gate will be on the oppsite side of the pond and viewed from the hill.

Thanx for the input. I still want a Torii for the chickens - they are droppin like flys.

this seems to go back to compensating for people (large immense gate) so that people should feel more comfortable...
why should they? let them get over it if they must or let them accept nature in its immensity..
not for you to take away, this sense of the immense.

Too large a gate:
-is scaled for giants,
-the greater the expectations, why advertise?
-they won't walk through,
-greater cost-lesser experience
-they won't learn from having gone through the gate.
imo, from prairie experience...
edzard

thanx again edzard