Peter Dowdall: The structures that add balance to any garden 

The Chinese pagoda is among the many architectural gems to be found in the Co Waterford gardens Mount Congreve. 

Every garden needs somewhere for the eye to go. Without a destination, the gaze slides over a space regardless of how well the plants are growing. A focal point fixes that. It draws you through the garden, creates something to look at and to move towards, and once you arrive, gives you a new vantage point from which to read the rest of the space. 

Think of it as punctuation as much as decoration, the full stop that gives the sentence around it its meaning, the sentence in the garden context is the surrounding planting.