Yard Design

This morning I received in my Gmail account the following edited message:

“Hello Mr. Canessa,

I have a long fixed rectangle in my front yard and I would like to design a Fibonacci garden within this rectangle.

The width of the rectangle is 16.5 feet. The length is 48.5 feet.

I am thinking I could fit two Fibonacci designs within this but I don’t know where to start with my measurements.

How do I go from a 16.5 x 16.5 big square to the smaller squares and rectangles?

Any help will be appreciated.

I do sort of understand but would like some help so that it looks right.

Thank you!

Regina”

The message was also left in this post.

I am not artistically oriented. I would go with a plain rectangle (no Fibonacci patters and easier to mow) and fill it with grass. Given that this is not what Regina is asking for, using Microsoft Visio, I made the following diagram:

Regina wishes to build two Fibonacci patterns of the same size in her yard. There are different places that the patterns could be placed (e.g., opposite ends, centered, etc). After looking at the dimensions of the yard, I decided that if it would be my yard, I would put the same size pattern on each end. For aesthetic purposes I would leave some space from the sides of the yard. Once again, I am not artistically inclined.

For simplicity I would go with two 21 x 13 or 13 x 8 designs.

It is hard for me to define a starting point due to the fact that you might want to leave some space behind to allow for a mower. I am assuming you are building the patterns on a grass lawn. If you are using an area with crushed stone or concrete, then the back space could not be needed. That said, I assume it would look better with some space around the two patterns.

Given a starting point which can be computed based on the rectangle of choice and the space on the different size, start with a square of 1 x 1 in the spots pointed to by the red arrows, and go in a clockwise direction adding the squares using the Fibonacci sequence. This article illustrates how to build the squares step by step.

Good luck in your project and if possible send me a picture of the completed yard.

If you have comments or questions regarding this post or any other entry in this blog, or if you need some help in any aspect of the SDLC for a software project, please not hesitate and leave me a note bellow. Notes for help will not be made public.

Enjoy;

John

Twitter:  @john_canessa