126 ANNUAL REPORT 
and try and make them worthy the title. If you do not try to improve them, 
why, just as well call them yards, and then the front yard, the sheep yard and 
the cow yard, synonymous in title as they are like in appearance, enables you to 
illustrate the fitness of language in applying similar names to similar objects. 
The lawn is not only the basis of ornamental grounds, but when well kept, the 
most pleasing part of your miniature landscape. A smooth, closely cropped car- 
pet of bright green, velvety grass, is in harmony with anything nature places 
near it. A tree, ashrub, astump, a rock, alog, or a bit of statuary, a 
vase, a bed of flowers, a bird, an animal, or human being, any or all of them 
borrow beauty from such a carpet when standing on it. You admire it on 
the bank of a stream, on a city lot, about a farm house, or back among your 
lake hills, with your wildest or grandest scenery. Why then, not reproduce it 
where it will cheer you every time you enter your home gate? 
The lawn must not be a dead level. All perfectly level tracts appear to be de- 
pressed in the center. Nature very seldom places a dead level spot where men 
care to select a site for a house. In this case then, nature assists you, as you 
will find she always does when you attempt to make her more beautiful; but in 
this attempt you must be very careful how you go to work. Itis much easier 
to spoil a plan that nature has made attractive, than to improve it. You must 
study the situation very carefully, much as an artist would study a subject be- 
fore committing it to canvass. He starts out to delineate that which you create 
when you dig and arrange and plant to produce the miniature landicape that we 
all do when we attempt lendscape gardening on a large or small scale. Itisan 
_ easy thing to do, to make a lawn. Prepare the ground as you would for a crop 
of corn, by which you will understand it must be thoroughly pulverized and en- 
riched. If it has been graded to the desired profile, with the earth dug from 
the cellar, as is often the case, this gravelly soil must be covered with at least 
six inches of good soil. Do not attempt expensive grading unless youcan afford 
it. See that the ground has good surface drainage, a fairly rounded surface and 
above all, no low spots where water will stand, as it would be fatal to any at- 
tempt to grow grass there. 
In selecting the grass seeds to sew, care should be taken to select such as are 
especially adapted to the purpose. Experience has demonstrated that if but one 
kind is sown, no matter how abundantly the seed is used or how favorable the 
conditions may be, there will be times in summer when the lawn will have rip- 
ened, or appear of a dead, dull color. It will also die out in patches, to be re- 
placed by weeds that are always ready to fill any gap in plant life. Timothy 
and Red Clover from their habits and nature are entirely unsuited to this use. — 
Kentucky Blue Grass and Red Top form the basis of all good Jawn mixtures. 
One bushel of Blue Grass, one-half bushel of Red Top, one-fourth bushel of Rye 
Grass, three pounds Sweet Vernal Grass and one pound White Clover, making 
in all twenty-eight pounds or two bushels, would be an excellent application for 
a half-acre lawn, Sow in early spring, harrow lightly and roll. Mow close as 
often as it grows to a height of four inches and by July you will have a compact 
growth, an even, velvety, green sward. In this manner you can secure a lawn 
at one tenth the cost of sodding and a better and more permanent one. The 
lawn grass known among seedsmen as the Central Park mixture is the best 
combination of grasses known for lawns m this country. It is composed of a 
mixture of ten of the best lawn grasses in the right proportion of close, compact 
