108 THE LA WN. 



borders of cultivated ground. Neatness and order are as essential 

 to the pleasing effect of ground furniture as of house furniture. 

 No matter how elegant or appropriate the latter may be, it will 

 never look well in the home of a slattern. And however choice 

 the variety of shrubs and flowers, if they occupy the ground so that 

 there is no pleasant expanse of close-cut grass to relieve them, they 

 cannot make a pretty place. The long grass allowed to grow in 

 town and suburban grounds, after the spring gardening fever is 

 over, neutralizes to a certain degree all attempts of the lady or 

 gentleman of the house to beautify them, though they spend ever 

 so much in obtaining the best shrubs, trees, or flowers the neigh- 

 bors or the nurseries can furnish. It is not necessary to have an 

 acre of pleasure ground to secure a charming lawn. Its extent 

 may always be proportioned to the size of the place ; and if the 

 selection of flowers and shrubs and their arrangement is properly 

 made, it is surprising how small a lawn will realize some of the 

 most pleasing effects of larger ones. A strip twenty feet wide and 

 a hundred feet long may be rendered, proportionally, as artistic as 

 the landscape vistas of a park. 



And it needs but little more to have room to realize by art, and 

 with shadowing trees, the sparkling picture that the poet, Alfred B. 

 Street, thus presents in his " Forest Walk." 



"A narrow vista, carpeted 

 With rich green grass, invites my tread: 

 Here showers the light in golden dots, 

 There sleeps the shade in ebon spots, 

 So blended that the very air 

 Seems net- work as I enter there." 



To secure a good lawn, a rich soil is as essential as for the 

 kitchen garden. On small grounds the quickest and best way 

 of making a lawn is by turfing. There are few neighborhoods 

 where good turf cannot be obtained in pastures or by road- 

 sides. No better varieties of grass for lawns can be found 

 than those that form the turf of old and closely fed pastures. 

 Blue-grass and white clover are the staple grasses in them, though 

 many other varieties are usually found with these, in smaller 

 proportions. 



