IV. 

 GRADING. 



WT/^r HADING is one of the most important operations 

 connected with landscape-gardening. It is the 



plastic side of the art, just as planting is the 

 pictorial side, one supplying form, the other 

 color. Bv grading, a rough or broken surface 

 may be made into softly undulating ground ; if flat and 

 characterless, it can be altered and hollowed out into shal- 

 low dells, or raised into low mounds, rounded slopes, and 

 picturesque knolls. Grading means the creation of all the 

 variety of the surface and the general improvement of the 

 ground in both an artistic and practical sense. In small 

 places there is, as a rule, but little grading to do, and that 

 of the most simple kind, such as filling low ground, level- 

 lin" - the surface near the residence, and making terraces 

 and lawns. In larger grounds it is often necessary to make 

 quite important changes, as to alter the course of a stream, 

 or to make the outlines of a symmetrical pond or lake sinu- 

 ous and picturesque. If intelligently done, comparatively 

 little work will produce good results. A slightly undulat- 

 ing surface may be made simply by using the soil excavated 



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