Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1926-08-07
Landscape Planning
For the Home Owner
BY ROSE 0REELY.
Landscape Architect.

To the house owner the garden area
back of the house is most important,
but to the casual stranger, who does
not penetrate so far, the approach to
, the front of the house is the keynote
to the landscape development. BY
your front walk and the area i'm
mediately around it the man in the
str eet judges you. 1t may be worth
while to consider your approach from
this outside point Of view. 1t is diff
ficult to consider any Of the familiar
everyday things III detached way,
because we are so accustomed to
them. But go, out into the street and
try to look at your front walk as IL
you had never seen it before. Ten to
one that you will find that it is ugly,
and If you care about the impression
that your house makes you may want
to change 1t.
An Individual walk does more to
make a small house stand out from
it's fellows than any differences or
garden treatment. because 1t Is the
monotonous front walks that make the
row houses depressing. If the houses
themselves are ugly they can be
draped with vines by the resourceful
householder, but little can be done to
mask the sharp repetition Of concrete
walks and Of badly designed concrete
steps mounting grass banks. Even
when the curse Of changeless repetl-
ton is lifted, when the houses are
larger and stand farther apart, when
they are separately designed, the
concrete walk too often holds sway.
That concrete as a material can be
beautiful is proved by various Wash
ington buildings in which it is well
used. In the walls and the concrete
ramps of Meridian Hill Park and IN
the walls and floors of the Church OF
the Sacred Heart the material Is sur
faced with a broken stone aggregate
of various colors. The texture OF the
surface and the play of color entirely
remove from the concrete the me-
chanical surface that we so object TO
in the usual concrete pavement. There
are many ways in which to add IN
terest to the concrete path. One OF the
simplest is by combining with 1t
enough brick to work out a pattern.
The pattern may be a simple one. The
center of the walk may be Of concrete
and the borders of brick. Or there
may be only a narrow edging OF brick
and an occasional design introduced
into the center of the walk to tie the
two materials together. For any one
who Is interested, q trip to the Uni
versity of Virginia Is worth while
simply to examine the amusing walks
and driveways that have been worked
on the campus in just such combina-
tions Of brick and concrete.
1t is sometimes a source Of wonder
that concrete walks have so entirely
superseded brick. When one thinks
of the lovely old moss-grown walks
of our childhood, walks that led, per-
haps, from a white picket fence
through borders Of flowers to the
front porch. one wonders how we
ever came to discard them. Fortu
nately the tide is turning in the other
direction and we are returning to the
old-faShioned things that were scorn-
ed 20 years ago. In the more expen-
sive houses walks OF brick and stone
have already ousted concrete, but in
the smaller houses concrete still
holds first place. This is largely be-
cause of the fear that the path of
brick or stone will be prohibitive in
price. It is true that concrete is the