CHAPTER II. 



THE TREATMENT OF SLOPING GROUNDS. 



AM convinced that the reader will 

 find this subject a novel one. The 

 principles governing it are not, so 

 far as I am aware, laid down in 

 the books, and yet some of the most 

 charming effects of our best park 

 lawns come from an accidental or 

 intentional arrangement of the kind I am about to describe. 

 There are certain primary conditions or divisions that 

 make up all parks or home-grounds. Walks, drives, green- 

 sward or lawns, plantations, whether trees, shrubs, or 

 flowers, and the intermediate spaces that may be called 

 " sloping grounds," make up characteristic landscape-garden- 

 ing effects. These sloping grounds may come down to the 

 drives or walks or they may slope upward, in steps as it 

 were, to higher lawns or plateaus. They may be made of 

 turf, rocks, vines or trees, shrubs or perennial plants, of 

 each alone, or of all, or of only part mingled together. The 

 lawn itself we have decided to consider for the purpose of 



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