3840 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
to do, you will care for them. Little do we care in these days for the 
beautiful woman who is of no use in this world. 
Your trees, your shrubs and your flowers should help to make your 
buildings a part of a beautiful picture. They should be massed against the 
high blank walls of the barns, sheds and fences, to merge them into the 
landscape. Are they not now too often the most obtrusive objects in the 
landscape with their hard angular lines and great bare masses, as conspicuous 
as a brazen city hoyden in a crowd of quiet country folk and as garishly 
colored at times, too? All your buildings should grow out of a mass of 
trees and shrubs, which, in their turn, grow out of and seem to be a part* 
of the landscape. You say this is a purely aesthetic consideration; it is not. 
You can arrange your fruit trees to be a part of this mass. You need the 
mass of trees in these places for protection, and belts of trees and shrubs 
will form the division sometimes in connection with fences and sometimes 
without, between the different parts of the ground; such as the barnyard 
with its surrounding fences, buildings and sheds; a service yard, perhaps, 
at the kitchen door, in which to deposit supplies and set out house wastes; 
a laundry yard with its sod surface and its surrounding plantations so ar- 
ranged as to hide clothes from the living rooms and street. These would be 
the working parts of the grounds. There would be, besides, the front lawn, 
thrown open to the street in the hospitable country way; and a side lawn 
or flower garden, so intimately connected with the house that the family 
could step into it from the living rooms as they step from room to room, 
and so screened from the entrance and road as to give seclusion. It should 
be an outdoor apartment of the house, so large, so inviting and so con- 
veniently arranged as to be the common meeting place of the family in 
pleasant days for meals, for sewing, for neighborly visiting, etc. It may 
seem rather absurd to suggest more of an outdoor life for the farmer, but 
many of you will find, when you think of it, that there are some in your 
household who do not get out of doors as often as they ought to. 
When you decide to study out a plan of your grounds, first look about 
to see what existing conditions there are that may be utilized to give your 
place a distinction that will set it apart from all others, There may be a 
fine view or one may be secured by cutting a few trees or moving a small 
building; there may be a fine tree or group of trees or thicket of native 
wild shrubs and flowers; or a mossy boulder, or a graceful undulation of 
surface, any one of which would be an interesting feature of the pleasure 
ground or out of door living apartment. 
When you plan, have regard for the trouble of maintenance; avoid 
when possible all walks and roads that must be weeded and edged. Walk 
over the grass or use stepping stones. Make good roads. Plant your 
shrubs and flowers in thickets so close that they will drive out weeds and 
care for themselves. Cut your grass with the lawn mower or scythe or a 
tethered grazer. 
After you complete your plan, you may not be able to fully execute it 
at once, but whatever you do may be directed toward its ultimate execution. 
Do not assume that all this means much expense or trouble. You can do 
it all yourself. You can use the native trees, shrubs and flowers, which are 
as beautiful as any that grow, and are of sufficient variety in size.and habit 
to meet all special conditions. You can collect these for your main planta- 
tions, and later add for variety the cultivated plants. If you would know 
