8 



their details. It should be remembered, also, that the house is the center of the 

 picture. The lawns serve merely as a carpeted floor, or groundwork, on which 

 the trees and the shrubs are so arranged as to best set off the house. Borders 

 furnish the frame to the picture. They should therefore be simple and dignified, 

 and will look best if composed mostly of green foliage. This proscenium of green, 

 when it opens to a pleasant outlook over the fields, is also the best frame to the 

 distant picture, and may likewise serve as a background to set off the beauty of 

 clumps of flowering shrubs along the edge of the border itself. The outlooks 

 from the house should be so planned as to avoid any confusion of interests; in 

 one direction one should see only unbroken lawn and distant border; in another, 

 some shrubs, showy with flowers or berries ; in another, an open view over the mead- 

 ows; and perhaps, in still another, the suggestion of a garden or, what is fully as 

 beautiful, a vista through the rows of an orchard. By these simple means and 

 these unified effects may the yard about a farmhouse be made more livable, and 

 homelike, and the country of which the yard is a part, may be more enjoyed and 

 appreciated as an ideal setting for a home. 



