Garden Design & Construction Assignment

Exercise 1 (a)
Describe an existing pavement.
Materials:
Trowel
String Line
Level
Spade
Rake
Rubber Mallet
Tape Measure
Hammer
Cold Chisel
Compactor
Bricks (20 x 10 x 5 cm)
Sand
Recycled Concrete Rubble.

The path that this assignment is about is what is called in

Theravada Buddhism a Cankama (Sinhalese/ Pali) or
Jongrom (Thai), it is known in English perhaps somewhat less
poetically as a Walking Meditation Path. Because I follow a
Thai version of Theravada, I will refer to the path as a
Jongrom.

The Jongrom was built on the Southern side of the Monks

Quarters/Meals Area of the Buddhist Society of Victoria’s
property at 71 - 73 Darling Road, East Malvern. Jongroms are
not designed to bear any significant loads, in a strictly
Monastic environment they are frequently no more than paths
cleared in the forest and then kept clear by the frequent traffic
of the feet of the Bhikkhu (Monk) or Meditator that they were
built to serve, and the occasional weeding by a Layperson
.Thus this Jongrom is unusually well constructed, and it is
possessed of more aesthetic appeal than Jongroms are
known for, Jongroms function in a quite limited fashion, they
are no more than places of exercise for Meditators. Aesthetics
are not a priority. To be totally truthful neither is construction,
though dryness, and flatness are considered to be nice extras.

The Jongrom is roughly 17 x 0.90 metres in dimension, which

is just wide enough for one person to walk to and from a
marked point on the Jongrom.

Strictly speaking the length of a Jongrom is like the Ancient

form of measurement the cubit, which was as long as the
distance between the ruling Pharaoh’s’ elbow and the tips of
his fingers, Jongroms are generally 20 paces long and paces
like cubits and people vary enormously. We chose to simply
fill a piece of vacant & weed filled land that was visible from
the Meals area with a path, hence a Jongrom was born.

The Jongrom is not possessed of any significant changes in

gradient once the Meditator is on the Jongrom proper, the
section of it that connects it with the back verandah of the
Meals Area does have a drop of roughly 10 degrees as it
navigates a mature Loquat Tree (Eryobotria japonica) but
even this is over a metre to a metre and a half. This is the sole
visible change in gradient.

Figure 1: Photograph showing the Western End of the Jongrom

The Jongrom continues on a flat gradient until it terminates at

a Telopea speciosissima “Shady Lady”. Traditionally Jongrom
are defined by trees or in this case a shrub.

Figure 2 : Photograph showing the Eastern end of the Jongrom

Due to financial, aesthetic, and quantity of a building material
( the bricks were finite.... we could only avail ourselves of the
left overs from a project that one of the people who helped
construct the pavement was doing for a Government body)
restraints, patterning was not considered a priority, hence the
extremely simple pattern.
We simply made do with what was available....720 bricks 2
cubic metres of gravel made from recycled concrete,
approximately half a cubic metre of sand, and plenty of human
muscle.

To begin we dug a trench about 30 cm deep and 17 metres

long by 0.90 metres wide. We used a Stringline to ensure that
our Jongrom trench was perfectly straight.

In this we laid the gravel to a depth of about 10 cm which we

compacted with a vibrating plate until it was quite solid to the
touch. Checking repeatedly along the length of the Jongrom
that it was level. Over this we laid a bed of sand to a thickness
of about 1 cm, taking care to scree it flat and to make it as
compact as possible. We used two 10 mm lengths of electrical
conduit to ensure a uniformity in the depth of the sand.

Figure 3: Diagram showing Screeing technique.

Lastly came the bricks, these were laid in the pattern shown in
the photographs. We used as length of board & the rubber
mallet to ensure that all the bricks were level. We cut with the
Cold Chisel any bricks that were needed to fill the gaps left in
going around the corner or at the ends when irregular gaps
were left. We then bonded the bricks together with a mixture
of sand & concrete sweeping the mix in then wetting slightly to
create a mortar. We then sealed the Jongrom with a wedge of
mortar around the edges.

Diagram 4: Photograph showing the pattern of the bricks

References
Personal experience
“How to “ leaflet produced by Bunning Warehouse.