222 Landscape Gardening 



alternately smiling and looking serious, in the play of sun- 

 shine and shade that rests upon it. If it is small - - a 

 mere bit of green turf before your door- -then it forms the 

 best and most becoming setting to the small beds and 

 masses of ever-blooming roses, verbenas, and gay annuals 

 with which you embroider it like a carpet. 



Lawn there must be, to give any refreshment to the spirit 

 of 'man in our country places; for nothing is so intolerable 

 to the eye as great ilower-gardens of parched earth, lying 

 half (baked in the meridian sun of an American summer. 

 And though no nation under the sun may have such lawns 

 as the British, because Britain lies in the lap of the sea, 

 with a climate always more or less humid, yet green and 

 pleasant lawns most persons may have in the northern 

 states, who will make the soil deep and keep the grass well 

 mown. 



To mow a large surface of lawn - - that is to say, many 

 acres - - is a thing attempted in but few places in America, 

 from the high price of labor. But a happy expedient comes 

 in to our aid to save labor and trouble and produce all the 

 good effect of a well-mown lawn. We mean sheep and 

 wdre fences. Our neighbor and correspondent, Mr. Sargent, 

 of Wodenethe, on the Hudson, who passed a couple of 

 years abroad curiously gleaning all clever foreign notions 

 that were really worth naturalizing at home, has already 

 told our readers how wire fences may be constructed round 

 lawns or portions of the pleasure grounds so that only a 

 strip round the house need be mown while the extent of 

 the lawn is kept short by sheep. This fence, which costs 

 less than any tolerable looking fence of other materials, is 

 abundantly strong to turn both sheep and cattle and is 

 invisible at the distance of 40 or 50 rods. Mr. Sargent is not 

 a theorist, but has actually inclosed his own lawn of several 

 acres in this way, and those who have examined the plan 

 are struck with the usefulness and economy of the thing in 

 all ornamental country places of considerable extent. 



We have said nothing as yet of the most important feature 

 of all country places - - trees. A country place without 



