INDIANA HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 301 



bery, but these should be grouped around the sides, leaving the clear, 

 open green for the center. A small, sharp sickle is necessary to get the 

 grass around the trees, flowers and the house. A close watch must be 

 kept for the encroachment of weeds which threaten the beauty of the 

 lawn. The dandelion-starred grass is a thing of beauty in early spring, 

 but very ragged looking all the rest of the year, so dig the dandelion 

 out with a strong, narrow bladed knife at its first appearance, and give 

 the sam^ treatment to the plantin and buckthorn. Eternal digging is 

 the price of beauty in your lawn. The grass should not be raked down 

 with a sharp-toothed rake, The autumn leaves, against which so vig- 

 orous a fight is kept up, provide a useful mulch and fertilizer when left 

 until spring. 



If the soil is not sutficientl'y rich in humus, the grass should be given 

 a light covering of well-rotted stable manure in the fall. Otherwise, a 

 commercial fertilizer is best, as it contains no weed seeds. A dusting of 

 slacked lime in the spring is a stimulus to growth. 



The lawn should be put in order after the first killing frost. All dead 

 flowers should be removed and burned, and delicate vines and shrubbery 

 should be carefully wrapped at the first hard freeze. The desolation of 

 winter should not be emphasized by forlorn, unkempt flower beds and 

 shrubbery. 



DISCUSSION. 



S. Johnson: There is one feature about the lawn we have not touched 

 upon, and that is the mole. After digging up our lawn we can not get rid 

 of them. 



President Stevens: Mole traps are the best thing. 



A Member: One of my neighbors had a very fine lawn. Dandelion^ 

 sprang up in it. Last spring he took his knife and dug up the dandelions. 

 He then tooli his coal oil can and dropped a few drops in the center of 

 the dandelion plant. He got rid of the dandelions. 



A Member: While I answer Johnson's question about the moles, I 

 would tell him to get five cents' worth of strychnine. Then boil some 

 corn until it is soft, split the grain of corn one-half way through, drop 

 the strychnine in, press the corn together and drop in mole hole. Sure 

 cure. 



H. W. Henry: I think, in this lawn discussion, one of the most im- 

 portant things that makes a lawn beautiful has not been touched upon, 

 and that is the rose bush. There is no one thing in the lawn so beautiful 

 as the rose bush, if they are properly kept up. Two years ago I thought 

 my lawn was too large to run the lawnmower over. I plowed a strip 

 twelve feet wide and forty feet long and planted a rose bed of all the 

 different varieties, but I found I got myself into more work than I would 



