A Guide To Gardening Part 9

Walks and drives.
So far as the picture in the landscape is concerned, walks and drives are blemishes. Since they are necessary, however, they must form a part of the landscape design.

They should be as few as possible, not only because they interfere with the artistic composition, but also because they are expensive to make and to maintain.

Most places have too many, rather than too few, walks and drives. Small city areas rarely need a driveway entrance, not even to the back door.

The distance from the house to the street on the back is about ninety feet, yet there is no driveway in the place. The coal and provisions are carried in; and, although the deliverymen may complain at first, they very soon accept the inevitable.

It is not worth the while to maintain a drive in such a place for the convenience of truckmen and grocers. Neither is it often necessary to have a drive in the front yard if the house is within seventy-five or one hundred feet of the street.

When a drive is necessary, it should enter, if possible, at the side of the residence, and not make a circle in the front lawn. This remark may not apply to areas of a half acre or more.

The drives and walks should be direct. They should go where they appear to go, and should be practically the shortest distances between the points to be reached.

A common type of walk is a, and it is a nuisance. The time that one loses in going around the cameo-set in the center would be sufficient, if conserved, to lengthen a man's life by several months or a year.

Such a device has no merit in art or convenience. Walk b is better, but still is not ideal, inasmuch as it makes too much of a right-angled curve, and the pedestrian desires to cut across the corner.

Such a walk, also, usually extends too far beyond the corner of the house to make it appear to be direct. It has the merit, however, of leaving the center of the lawn practically untouched. The curve in walk d is ordinarily unnecessary unless the ground is rolling. In small places, like this, it is better to have a straight walk directly from the sidewalk to the house.

In fact, this is true in nearly all cases in which the lawn is not more than forty to seventy-five feet deep. Plan c is also inexcusable. A straight walk would answer every purpose better.

Any walk that passes the house, and returns to it, e, is inexcusable unless it is necessary to make a very steep ascent. If most of the traveling is in one direction from the house, a walk like f may be the most direct and efficient.

It is known as a direct curve, and is a compound of a concave and a convex curve.

It is essential that any service walk or drive, however long, should be continuous in direction and design from end to end. A long drive that contradicts this principle.

It is a series of meaningless curves. The reason for these curves is the fact that the drive was extended from time to time as new houses were added to the villa.

The reader will easily perceive how all the kinks might be taken out of this drive and one direct and bold curve be substituted.