-\o 



THE CANADIAN HORTICULTURIST. 



rule. Three or four bushels per acre is none 

 too much for seeding down a lawn. In fact, the 

 grass should come up as thick as the hair on a 

 dog's back. After the seed is sown it should 

 be lightly raked in, and if the weather is dry i1 

 is well to go over the ground with a hand roller. 

 The work of making a lawn may be done at al- 

 most any time of the year, but where much 

 levelling and filling is necessary it is well to do 

 the grading in the fall, so that the ground will 

 have finished settling by the spring, and then 

 the surface may be raked over as soon as it is 

 dry enough to work, and the seeds sown as 

 early as possible. A lawn sown early in the 

 spring should be nice and green by the middle 

 of the summer, or seed sown early in the fall 

 should give a good grassy carpet early next 

 spring. 



Keeping a Lawn. — To keep a lawn in prime 

 velvety condition it should be mowed frequently, 

 particularly during the season of rapid growth. 

 The mowings should be so frequent that none of 

 the grass should have to be raked off. This is 

 the practice followed on well kept city lawns 

 where men, money and mowers are available. 

 On the farm, where these articles are not so plenti- 

 ful, and where the area to be gone over is usual- 

 ly greater, it may be kept in very respectable 

 condition with the ordinary farm mower, the 

 cutter bar of which should be set low and the 

 knives kept sharp. On the farm the front yard 

 and back yard, the lanes and the roadsides 

 should all be levelled, seeded and put in such 

 condition that they can all be gone over with the 

 farm mower, and if the mowing is done as often 

 as the grass is high enough for the knives to 

 catch nicely the improvement made in the ap- 

 pearance of a place would in many cases add 

 nearly 50 per cent, to the value of the property. 



To maintain a luxuriant growth and a rich 

 dark green in the color of the grass, the lawn 

 should occasionally receive a top dressing of 

 stable manure in the fall. The soluble portion 

 of this is washed into the ground by the fall and 

 spring rains, and early in the spring the coars- 

 est portion of the manure should be raked off. 



Trees and Shrubs. — In the treA and shrubs 

 we have some of the finest forms of natural 

 beauty. They present a great variety of orna- 

 mental qualities, in habit of growth, in size, in 

 color of bark and foliage, and in their flowers. 



Taking the trees first, they may naturally be 

 divided into two classes, the deciduous and the 

 evergreen trees. If space permitted we could 

 give a lengthy list and mention the special claim 

 of each to a place on the lawn, but we must be 

 content with mentioning only a few of the most 

 desirable. Among the maples we have the 

 sugar maples, the soft maples, and Weir's cut- 

 leaved variety of the same, the Sycamore maple, 

 and the Box elder, sometimes called the Mani- 

 toba maple, which is particularly valuable on 

 new places on account of its rapid growth, but 

 along with it should be planted some of the 

 more durable trees, which will come in and last 

 long after the Box elder has served its purpose. 

 As a successor to it we know of none better than 



our native American elm.. In its finest form, 

 with feathered trunk, high spreading arms and 

 long, pendulous branches, this is, in our opin- 

 ion, the most stately and graceful of our native 

 trees. On large grounds, where there is room 

 for variety, some of the rugged oaks and fra- 

 grant lindens add a charm to the scene. The 

 cut-leaf weeping white birch is very ornamental 

 in both summer and winter, and shows a strik- 

 ing color contrast, particularly when placed so 

 as to have for a background a group of ever- 

 greens or a dark colored building. 



Among the evergreens the pines and spruces 

 occupy a first rank. The Austrian and Scotch 

 pines make handsome specimens, although when 

 young our native white pine is equal to, if not 

 superior to, any of the foreigners. The same 

 might also be said of our notive white spruce, 

 as compared with its more vigouous relative 

 from Norway. But for a handsome specimen of 

 nature's coloring let us have the dainty little 

 blue spruce of Colorado. Among the arbor 

 vitaes, junipers and retinosperas there are some 

 very beautiful forms, such as the pyramidal and 

 globose arbor vitae, the tall Irish juniper, and 

 the plumose retinospera, but those last men- 

 tioned are less hardy than the arbor vitaes and 

 require protection for a few years in the colder 

 sections of Ontario. 



Ornamental Shrubs. — For a list of some of the 

 most desirable and hardy ornamental shrubs 

 adapted to our northern section, I cannot do 

 better than refer intending planters to the valu- 

 able list given in Mr. Macoun's report in the 

 Central Experimental Farm Report for 1897. 

 One hundred species and varieties are there 

 mentioned, with twenty-five of the most desir- 

 able marked. If we were compelled to reduce 

 the list to half of that number, we would from 

 our own experience select the following : The 

 Caragana or Siberian pea-tree, Hydrangea pani- 

 culata, the Tartarian bush honeysuckle, the 

 mock orange or Philadelphus, the golden cur- 

 rant, Spirea Van Houtii, the Weigelia, the Pur- 

 ple fringe, the oldfashioned lilacs in variety, the 

 snowball or viburnum, and last but not least, 

 roses in variety. 



The Arrangement of Trees and Shrubs. — To 

 artistically arrange and distribute a collection 

 of trees and shrubs on the lawn requires much 

 more skill and judgment than to set out trees in 

 a straight line in an orchard. The following 

 rules should be observed in lawn planting : 



1. Follow as nearly as possible the natural 

 order of arrangement. Nature does not plant 

 in stiff and formal geometrical lines, but rather 

 in irregular profusion, in too much profusion. If is 

 often necessary, therefore, to modify the natural 

 arrangement to meet the needs of the case. One 

 has said that " the aim should be to exhibit na- 

 ture idealized rather than nature real." A pro- 

 minent American landscape gardener tells us 

 that for his first lesson in arranging trees on 

 the lawn he was told to take in his hand as 

 many stones as he had trees to plant; to stand 

 by the house and throw them in the direction 

 he wished the trees to stand, then plant >vher- 



