138 
House & Garden 
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Steps and Stairways for the Garden 
(Continued from page 81) 
the retaining wall against which the 
steps are built. On garden stairways 
like those shown in the center of page 
SI the stepped ramp acts as a guard 
in place of a railing. 
A particularly graceful type of gar¬ 
den stairs is the kind which seems to 
spill from one level to another in a 
semi-circular series of steps increasing 
in size from the top to the bottom. 
It is especially well suited to a garden 
in which the steps descend onto a broad 
central space and from which lower 
level the steps may be approached from 
any direction. The same idea can be 
carried out with the steps made rec¬ 
tangular in plan instead of round. It 
is also effective to reverse this type of 
design and build the steps so that they 
radiate from the lower level to the 
upper. In fact, when you have once 
begun to consider the planning of steps 
for your garden you will find their ar¬ 
rangement to be so flexible that the 
difficulty will lie in deciding on the 
most attractive form that is at the 
same time the most appropriate. 
No other phase of garden designing 
requires as much ingenuity. You are 
constantly being faced with the prob¬ 
lem of having to connect two levels 
considerably far apart in elevation and 
with only a limited amount of space in 
which to build the steps. The tempta¬ 
tion is always to make the flight a 
steep one and finish the job as quickly 
as possible. Many steps are built that 
way and the garden is consequently 
robbed of much of its leisurely charm. 
It is no simple task to carry a flight 
of easy steps up a steep slope, but some¬ 
how or other it can always be done, 
and the more impossible it seems at 
the outset the more interesting the re¬ 
sult is apt to be. It can usually be 
accomplished by breaking the direction 
of the steps and letting them return 
upon themselves at right angles to the 
slope. 
Garden steps may be built of stone, 
brick or concrete, or of combinations 
of any two or all of these materials. 
Where brick and stone are combined it 
is generally better to use the flat flag¬ 
stones on all the walking surfaces and 
copings, and the brick in the walls and 
in the risers of the steps. This latter 
scheme has been carried out in the 
double curving stairway illustrated on 
page 81. It is a splendid compromise 
to make where brick, say, has been used 
in the house walls and stone has been 
used in the paving of a terrace or in 
other parts of the garden. Where con¬ 
crete is used as the principal material 
of the steps, the treads and other walk¬ 
ing surfaces should be paved with stone, 
brick or tile. Otherwise, without these 
contrasting colors and textures, the as¬ 
pect of the flight is likely to seem 
somewhat bleak. 
There would be no point to building 
a graceful and comfortable flight of 
steps if its construction were to be so 
faulty that it could not always remain 
graceful and comfortable. First of all 
its foundations must be thoroughly 
substantial. Whether they are of rubble 
masonry or concrete they should ex¬ 
tend below the frost line. In most 
localities this means carrying them to 
a depth of 30" below the surface. It 
is unwise, however, to take any chances 
in this matter as the action of frost 
can be very disastrous and may mean 
the complete rebuilding of the steps. 
The foundations should furthermore 
be stepped at the bottom so that they 
will not slip on the slope and pull the 
steps out of line. 
Where the treads of the steps are 
of a separate piece from the risers they 
should be given a slight overhang in 
order that water may not collect be¬ 
tween the two members and force them 
apart. As has been noted before the 
tread should be sloped toward the 
front, so slightly that it will seem to 
be level yet sufficiently to allow water 
to drain off. 
Exceptions to the rules and sugges¬ 
tions made above occur in informal 
steps in wild gardens and rock gardens 
where the methods of construction and 
design must conform to the irregular 
character of the situation. The rough¬ 
est kinds of steps can be made com¬ 
fortable, however, by keeping the ris¬ 
ers comparatively low and by keeping 
the distances between risers as nearly 
similar as possible. The risers may be 
made of stones, as in the steps shown 
at the bottom of page 81, or they may 
consist of split logs or heavy planks 
held in place by stakes driven into the 
ground against their exposed face. The 
spaces between these risers need not 
be paved but can be filled in with 
gravel or loam. Sedums and other 
rock plants should serve here as cement. 
ON HOUSE & GARDEN’S BOOK SHELF 
G ARDEN Whimseys, by Charlotte 
Rider Lomas, The Macmillan Co. 
That’s just the point about being a 
flower-lover and a gardener—your life 
is so full of whimseys, you are con¬ 
stantly touching the fringe of a world 
that has naught to do with bread and 
butter and stocks and bonds, your feet 
may be on earth but your head is 
eternally in the heavens. Every gar¬ 
dener has her whimsey moods. They 
are strange mixtures of work and 
dreams, unaccustomed combinations of 
perspiration and aspiration. Few of 
us bother to set them down, few, in¬ 
deed, have a mastery of words ade¬ 
quate to putting them in writing. But 
the author of this book has the mastery 
and she manages to make her words 
present exact reflections of her moods. 
These twelve chapters of garden ex¬ 
perience have both the practical and 
the visionary element in them. They 
are not “bitter” practical, however, for 
that was not the intent of the author; 
but they convey the convincing impres¬ 
sion that behind the pages lies a vast 
experience with garden making and 
flower growing. The author has her 
prejudices—what gardener has not? 
Some of us wouldn’t agree with her. 
Michaelmas Daises, for example. She 
doesn’t have much luck with them. We 
do. Every gardener has a right to her 
flower idiosyncrasies. She is a peony 
and an iris fan. For this we respect 
her mightily. She evidently can bridge 
the sad mid-summer gaps in her bor¬ 
ders. Our respect goes up another 
point. But most of all we like her 
book for the human qualities it ex¬ 
presses, for the piquant discoveries, the 
happy friendships, the pleasant ming¬ 
ling of poetry and plants. We place 
it on our shelves beside Charles Dudley 
Warner’s “My Summer In A Garden”. 
(Continued on page 140) 
