January 5, 1984

OUTDOOR space is one of New York's precious commodities, and those New Yorkers fortunate enough to have some - whether a sliver of terrace or a full backyard - are missing months of garden pleasures if they have not factored winter into garden design. ''To ignore designing a garden for winter,'' says the New York landscape designer Halsted S. Welles, ''is virtually to eliminate the garden for five or six months a year.'' While the thought of a winter garden may bring to mind images of weeping hemlocks capturing snow or honey locusts turning into white etchings, the New York city garden is more likely not to have much snow. It does not stick on windy terraces, and it usually does not drift in the garden hollows between buildings. While the Japanese have evolved a concept of the winter garden as a place in which snow blossoms, the idea is somewhat misplaced in New York, where urban circumstances conspire to make snow especially ephemeral.

Sixteen Israeli fighter-bombers, flying in four- plane formations, struck targets in eastern Lebanon today, reportedly inflicting heavy casualties. The Beirut radio said the raids, flown for an hour in the area of Baalbek, 40 miles east-northeast of here, left nearly 100 dead and 400 wounded. The International Committee of the Red Cross said its casualty count had reached 40 dead and 360 wounded and was still incomplete. Most of the casualties, it said, were civilians.

FOR the growing numbers of Americans engaged in the long-distance care of elderly relatives, stress can be a way of life. According to social scientists who have studied them, caretakers may be beset by staggering financial burdens, by the frustrations inherent in making medical or housekeeping arrangements at a distance and by confusion about the services that are available from government bureaucracies and social agencies. Frequently, too, there is the toll of emotional strain arising from dealing with elderly relatives' illness or incapacity. ''Somehow, you feel that if you're not present, you just aren't doing everything possible for your parent,'' said Crayton E. Rowe Jr. Last March, his 69-year-old mother, Lucille, became severely ill and needed to be hospitalized. Mr. Rowe, who lives in Manhattan, began flying back and forth to North Carolina to make arrangements during her hospital stay and to get ongoing care for her when she was recuperating at home. Mr. Rowe's perspective on the situation is unusual in that he is a psychoanalyst who has treated many people in similar caretaking sitations. But he found, as have others arranging for long-distance care, that even getting specific information about eligibility requirements for Federal, state and other services for the elderly in a far-off state may be difficult.

In a compromise with the Reagan Administration, the four-member board of the Export-Import Bank decided unanimously today to guarantee commercial export loans for a South Korean steel complex while refusing to lend Government money at subsidized interest rates. The bank, a Federal entity, also stipulated that its loan guarantee would be limited to 85 percent of the cost of the equipment that might be purchased from two Pennsylvania- based exporters bidding for contracts on the project - the Dravo Wellman Company of Pittsburgh and Air Products and Chemicals Inc. of Allentown. The question of aid for companies seeking to sell equipment for the South Korean facility has generated intense debate. The Commerce Department, in a rare intervention, asked that export assistance be denied entirely, on the ground that the United States should not aid construction of foreign steel plants when imports are hurting the domestic steel industry.

Administration officials told Republican Congressional leaders today that the diplomatic and military situation in Lebanon was showing some signs of improvement, and they asked the leaders to withhold any drastic action that could undercut that movement. A State Department official reported later that the American Embassy in Beirut said that negotiations by the Lebanese Government with several factions on expanding its area of control might bear fruit in the next few days. The Republican leaders at the meeting, in turn, warned the Administration that Congressmen and their constituents were rapidly losing patience with President Reagan's policy in Lebanon and demanding progress toward a more stable situation in the Middle East. Criticism Is Played Down The exchange came at a meeting this morning between Robert C. McFarlane, the President's national security adviser, and about 15 senior Republicans. Afterward, the party leaders said they were encouraged by the reports of progress and played down some of their recent criticisms of the Administration.