68 



MANUAL OF GARDENING 



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. Figure 66 illus- 

 trates some of the problems coimected with walks to the front 

 door. 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 Ufe by 

 several months or a year. Such a device has no merit in art 

 or convenience. Walk h is better, but still is not ideal, inas- 

 much 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 ap- 

 pear to be direct. It has the 

 merit, however, of leaving the 

 center of the lawn practically un- 

 touched. The curve in walk d is 

 ordinarily unnecessary imless 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 / 

 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. 

 Figure 67 illustrates a long drive that contradicts this principle. 



Forms of front walks. 



