90 WALKS AND ROADS. 



Pine walks, if made of good stuff, and tarred as suggested, will 

 last from eight to ten years ; and if sufficient care is used in their 

 construction, will be found very satisfactory substitutes for stone or 

 gravel, even for curved lines. For straight walks they are always 

 satisfactory as long as sound. In districts where stone and gravel 

 are scarce and dear, they must long continue in use ; and there is 

 no reason why they should not be shaped into graceful forms, 

 since wood is so much more facile to work than stone. Several 

 methods of preserving wood from decay are now attracting great 

 attention, and it is believed that some of them will be effectual 

 to so increase the durability of wood that its use for walks will be 

 far more desirable than heretofore. It is essential in all walks that 

 the sod shall be about an inch above the outer surface of the walk, 

 so that a scythe or rolling mower may do its work unobstructed in 

 passing near or over them. 



To lay out the carriage-drive and the walks in conformity to 

 the paper plat that has been made, is a work requiring some 

 patience and skill. There are persons whose love for beautiful 

 effects in landscape-gardening is evident, who are so wanting in 

 what is called a mechanical eye, as to be incompetent to lay out 

 their own grounds, even with a plat before them. If you, kind 

 reader, are one of those, send for the nearest good gardener to do 

 the work for you ; or invite some friend or neighbor, who has 

 given evidence of this talent by the making of his own place, to 

 come and help you. He will not be likely to turn away from your 

 appreciation of his taste and skill. If, however, your ground is 

 large enough to admit of much length of walks, the labor of laying 

 them out would more properly devolve upon a professional gar- 

 dener if such there be in your neighborhood. It will not, how- 

 ever, be advisable to listen to all the suggestions of improvements 

 that any " professional gardener " may volunteer for your guidance. 

 Genuine landscape-gardeners are rare everywhere, and bear about 

 the same proportion to good common gardeners that accomplished 

 landscape-painters do to house-painters. The probabilities are 

 that your neighborhood has some gardener competent to plat 

 walks, lay turf, cut your shrubbery-beds, and do your planting 

 but, ten chances to one, he will lay more stress on the form of some 



