Getting Into a Place 
THE MATTER OF WALKS, ENTRANCES, DRIVEWAYS — WHY WE WANT TO CUT 
ACROSS THE LAWN—PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS FOR THE TYPICAL SUBURBAN PLOT 
by Grace Tabor 
Photographs by Thomas W. Sears, landscape architect, and by Nathan R. Graves 
[This is the second of a series of articles by Miss Tabor on the great subject of landscape gardening as applied to the 
American home of moderate si{e. The preceding article, in the October issue, was upon “Utilising Natural Features in 
Garden Making.”] 
I T is the fashion of some landscape architects to consider all 
roads or walks as simply necessary evils, to be slid over 
and made as inconspicuous as possible—and then forgotten, but 
this seems to me a rather extreme view to take of a thing so 
essential as our exits and our 
entrances, and one that is 
apt to lead to over-elaborate 
efforts at concealment of 
them. This in turn leads 
to freakish results—or is 
likely to. 
Entrances we must have, 
therefore let us be frank with 
them and spare no pains 
to have them beautiful, for 
the entrance gives to the 
whole place its characteristic 
first impression. But let us 
find out very carefully, at 
the outset, what constitutes 
a beautiful entrance. Im¬ 
portant as they are, it be¬ 
hooves us to do this with 
due regard for their impor¬ 
tance. 
The beauty in a gate¬ 
way itself—the actual en¬ 
trance—is secured, I should 
say, first of all by suitabil¬ 
ity; the fascinating arched 
cottage-garden gate, over¬ 
run with rambler and 
honeysuckle, is nothing but 
an absurdity if widened to 
cover the span between big 
posts defining a ten-foot 
driveway, appropriate to a 
five-hundred-foot front-— 
and similarly, huge wrought 
iron gates swung from mas¬ 
sive pillars between which 
sweeps a majestic drive, 
admitting one to the door- 
yard of a house whose key¬ 
note is modest simplicity, is a blunder almost as pathetic as 
it is ludicrous. Make your entrance suitable both in style and 
scale—that is, in proportionate size. 
And then, make it reasonably direct—as direct as the line that 
a tired, or lazy man, coming into the house or driving to the stable, 
would naturally follow. 
No rule can be formulated for laying out a walk or drive; 
generalities for certain circumstances may be developed, but no 
certainties for general application reward even the most earnest 
study—excepting this that is suggested in the last paragraph. 
1 am perfectly sure that no one can go wrong in placing a gateway 
or mapping a walk or drive who understands this one truth and 
acts upon it intelligently. 
So let us take a glance 
into the realm of psychol¬ 
ogy for a minute--after 
premising that of course the 
location of the house and 
any other buildings, being 
governed by the formation 
of the land and other local 
conditions, has been decided 
upon before the question of 
entrances comes up at all. 
It should be; the very 
choicest site which the land 
affords should be selected, 
regardless of how the drive 
or walk is to reach it, or 
where the gate is to be. 
There is never any kind of 
path anywhere in the world 
that doesn’t lead to some¬ 
thing that was there before 
it. 
Given, then, a house situ¬ 
ated where you want it on 
the land, fronting in which¬ 
ever direction is to the 
greatest advantage accord¬ 
ing to the arrangement of 
its rooms, with its doors 
and windows placed where 
they are under the twin 
considerations of conveni¬ 
ence and beauty, the locat¬ 
ing of the gateway and the 
mapping of walks and drives 
become a problem of psy¬ 
chology pure and simple, 
restricted only within the 
purely local lines. 
Lives there a man who doesn’t want to cut across the lawn, 
even though it saves him less than half a dozen steps? The 
impulse is almost always there, though of course he does not allow 
himself to follow it; yet why should it be there? Why this 
irresistible desire to go some other way than along the walk laid 
out? Is it just human nature? 
Undoubtedly it is—just that; and that, again, is psychology. 
So here we are. The highest degree of success attainable in 
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