vehicles often drive in it. The best gutters and curbs are now made of
cement. Figure 72 shows a catch basin at the left of a walk or drive,
and the tile laid underneath for the purpose of carrying away the
surface water.

[Illustration: Fig. 72. Draining the gutter and the drive.]

The materials.

The best materials for the main walks are cement and stone flagging. In
many soils, however, there is enough binding material in the land to
make a good walk without the addition of any other material. Gravel,
cinders, ashes, and the like, are nearly always inadvisable, for they
are liable to be loose in dry weather and sticky in wet weather. In the
laying of cement it is important that the walk be well drained by a
layer of a foot or two of broken stone or brickbats, unless the walk is
on loose and leachy land or in a frostless country.

In back yards it is often best not to have any well-defined walk. A
ramble across the sod may be as good. For a back walk, over which
delivery men are to travel, one of the very best means is to sink a
foot-wide plank into the earth on a level with the surface of the sod;
and it is not necessary that the walk be perfectly straight. These walks
do not interfere with the work of the lawn-mower, and they take care of
themselves. When the plank rots, at the expiration of five to ten years,
the plank is taken up and another one dropped in its place. This
ordinarily makes the best kind of a walk alongside a rear border. (Plate
XI.) In gardens, nothing is better for a walk than tanbark.

[Illustration: Fig. 73. Planting alongside a walk.]