224 



LANDSCAPE DESIGN 



Paths in 



Naturalistic 

 Design 



Form of Paths 



tlon may well depend the main organization of the whole design. (See 

 Drawing XXXV, opp. p. 298.) 



Footpaths in naturalistic landscape are subject to most of the 

 considerations which we have discussed in regard to roads, but being 

 smaller, less important, and able to turn sharper angles and surmount 

 steeper gradients, they may be and should be fitted more closely to 

 the topography than are roads. Where they are used in conjunction 

 with roads, as in park design, and even sometimes in land subdivision 

 schemes of large lots in a varied landscape, the paths need not slavishly 

 follow the road, but may depart from it to surmount a steep gradient 

 in an easier way, to go around a ledge or a tree, even to seek some point 

 from which a view may be obtained. In some designs, indeed, it is 

 not desirable to parallel the road with the path, if the foot traffic may 

 be carried to its destination in some other way as well, since the wheel 

 traffic and its attendant noise and perhaps dust is not the most desirable 

 adjunct to a pleasure path. 



As a general principle, a path, like a road, should go from one point 

 of interest to another as directly as is reasonable under the circum- 

 stances. Even in a fairly open country, it is usually possible, by 

 judicious disposition of trees and shrub masses and minor accidents of 

 ground, to make the separate open stretches of path from curve to 

 curve short enough to be fairly direct and still not uninteresting. 

 Where a path continues, however, for a considerable distance over an 

 undulating open country, something more is likely to be necessary for 

 its pleasant appearance than merely a succession of these minor unified 

 stretches from interest to interest. In places at least, it may be well 

 to have a certain correspondence of the curving of the path to the un- 

 dulation of the ground, — not running in the straightest way over the 

 knolls, not running on a level line around them, but making a sort of 

 compromise between the directness of the path and the suggested more 

 than real difficulties of the topography, — which taken as a whole will 

 make the path more a part of the landscape. This subtle play of curve 

 of surface on plan and profile is an extremely difficult thing to study, 

 except in Its larger aspects, on the drafting-board in the office. It 

 must be staked out upon the ground, studied, re-staked, changed in 

 plan and profile perhaps only by inches, but in this way delicately 



