70 Nebraska State Horticultural Society. 



often be useful as objects of instruction. Indeed, trees rre essentia! 

 to good school grounds. Shrubs are hardly less helpful than trees. 

 They should be used much more than they are. In the way of flowers 

 for general planting, the hardy herbaceous perennials are best. They 

 require less care than annuals and become better from year to year. 

 Annual flowers are good plants to grow in the school garden. Lawn 

 grass should not be overlooked, though it is often difficult to have good 

 lawns on school grounds. A school garden should be provided for the 

 cultivation of some of the easily grown vegetables, and a small nursery 

 where tree seeds and cuttings of some of the easily propagated shrubs 

 may be planted. Here also a few plants of strawberry, raspberry, and 

 the like might be grown. The garden and nursery should afford many 

 useful object lessons in the proper management of the soil as well as 

 in the propagation and care of various plants. There is one other 

 thing that should never be omitted from a school ground. There should 

 be two or three bird houses. Have one house for wrens. If the holes 

 are the size of a quarter the wrens will not be molested by sparrows. 



The Plan of the Grounds. 



In the ornamental planting of any place, whether school grounds, 

 home grounds, public parks, the plan is perhaps the most important 

 part. The difference between bare ground with a school house on it, 

 and a school house filled with trees, shrubs, and flowers, is certainly 

 striking, and yet the latter may be improved immensely, not by planting 

 more or choicer plants, but by simply arranging in an artistic way the 

 plants already there. Indeed, a place containing many of the choicest 

 ornamentals may often, because of their being all jumbled together, 

 receive less favorable notice than a place containing only the most 

 common things from the woods, prairies, or neighboring dooryards, 

 provided these are arranged properly, The plants need lose none of 

 their individual beauty by an artistic arrangement that gives the place, 

 as a whole, a beauty not otherwise attainable. 



It may not be in place here to discuss the principles of landscape 

 art, but there are some things with reference to arrangement that cau 

 not well be omitted. It is of first importance to remember that the 

 place must be treated as a unit. The place as a whole should be a 

 picture, with the school house as the main feature and with all th3 

 parts in harmony throughout. A landscape gardener would no more 

 think of placing a star-shaped flowerbed near a naturalist group of 

 shrubs and flowers than a portrait artist would think of putting a silk 



