THIRTY-SEVENTH ANNUAL REPORT. 129 



"Trees — delicate, beautiful, grand or majestic trees — pliantly answering to the wooing 

 of the softest west wind, like the willow; or bravely and sturdily defying centuries of storm 

 and tempest, like the oak — they are indeed the great 'princes, potentates and people' 

 of our realm of beauty. 



"With such a lawn and large and massive trees, one has indeed the most enduring 

 sources of beauty in a country residence. Perpetual neatness, freshness and verdure 

 in the one; ever expanding beauty, variety and grandeur in the other — what more does 

 a reasonable man desire of the beautiful about him in the country? Must we add flowers, 

 exotic plants, fruits? Perhaps so, but they are all, in an ornamental light, secondary 

 to trees and grasses, where these can be had in perfection." 



The extensive lawns at the Agricultural college have received many favorable com- 

 ments — perhaps too many, when the details are carefully examined, for there are many 

 noticeable defects. There is a great variety of soil, ranging from light sand to stiff clay, 

 from dry knolls to moist hollows. For many years past different portions have been seeded 

 at different times by different persoixs, some sowing a complicated " la\\'n-grass " mixture, 

 others making use of only one or two species of grass. Existing in the ground or sown 

 with the grasses w^ere seeds of many kinds of weeds. 



Let us visit portions of the lawn that have certainly been seeded for forty years, and 

 probably some of them for a longer period. The lawn is extensive, fertilizers costly, 

 and for these reasons very little has been done except to apply a lawn mower from sum- 

 mer to summer. 



For a time the land was "new," grass grew luxuriantly, and was mowed for hay. A 

 steady decline has been noticeable, especially in dry seasons, and with the decline the 

 better grasses were less and less capable of maintaining a struggle with each other and a 

 supremacy over nmnerous kinds of weeds. The lawn has become spotted with large 

 numbers of patches where each kind grows more or less by itself. 



In places, June grass maintains its hold very well, but it is interrupted by light patches 

 of sweet vernal grass which was highly spoken of at the time the lawn was seeded. Patches 

 of a small, fine red top, much like Rhode Island bent grass, have held their own very 

 well for the past thirty years. Under the shade of trees v/here the limbs do not rest on 

 the ground, are numerous patches of a fine-leaved grass having a bright green color. Here 

 are some nearly in the form of circles, ranging from a foot to four feet in diameter, where 

 the roots have apparently gone farther and farther out from the growth of a single seed, 

 and here some of these circles have merged into each other. This is the best grass I have 

 found to sow in the shade of trees on ground that is not very strong. It is red fescue, 

 from Europe, technically known as Festuca rubra, genuina Hackel, not to be found in any 

 market that I know of. Yonder, growing in the open on a sandy and gravelly soil, are 

 patches of considerable size of a hard, blue-leaved bunchy grass, though not very bunchy 

 where the seed was sown thickly and mowed often. This is our best grass for a lawn on 

 dry land, where it is liable to be much trampled in dry weather. It is a variety of sheep's 

 fescue, from Europe, without a common name, known to botanists as Festuca ovina 

 marginata. 



The best grass for lawn in the open for nine-tenths of home grounds in Michigan is 

 June grass, known also as Kentucky blue grass, Poa pratensis. It is not the flat-stemmed 

 wire grass that early settlers called blue grass. In wet seasons, especially if cool, white 

 clover will appear in generous quantity with the June grass, its creeping habit enabling 

 it to spread with great rapidity from a comparatively small nimiber of centers. If the 

 season be dry and hot, little white clover will be seen. 



In too many places, I am sorry to say, quack grass, Agropyron repens, is abundant in 

 the lawn. The leaves are broad and coarse, giving a lawn much the appearance of a 

 field of timothy. All of the lots, or nearly all, of those in Oakwood, north of the College, 

 are thoroughly overrun with this worst of weeds. It has staying qualities to commend it. 



If lawns are thin, several annual grasses, such as smooth crab-grass and two fox-tails, 

 stink grass, barnyard grass, and others, work their way in during the summer and dis- 

 appear in September, leaving many unsightly open places. 



For more than ten years I have been watching several pieces of lawn where June grass 

 and Bermuda grass together have been occupying the ground. In the spring, for four 

 to six weeks or more, as long as the weather is cool, nothing is seen except a dense growth 

 of June grass, but later, when the weather becomes hot and diy, June grass is made to 

 retire, and one sees nothing but Bermuda grass. On the arrival of frosts and cool weather, 

 in autumn, Bermuda retires and June grass reappears, covering the ground. Thus from 

 early spring to late autumn, the lawn is a perpetually green, soft carpet, a delight to the 

 person who walks upon it. Even on light land no dead spots appear in dry weather as 

 is the case with June grass and many others. 



One of the prettiest lawns I ever saw was north of a house on a lot of moderate size 

 on Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio where trees shaded most of the area and free use 

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