116 CALIFORNIA GARDEN FLOWERS 



casionally with scythe or mower during the growing season: or it may 

 be pastured lightly when the ground is firm, by roping old Brindle or 

 Dobbin on it. The effect will also be heightened both summer and 

 winter by an occasional manuring. When the growth has matured 

 and you have sufficiently enjoyed the aspen-like effect of the quivering 

 seed stems and all that, run a roller over it to crush down the dry 

 growth or go over it with a mower, if you prefer, and gather up the 

 dry stuff with a horse rake. This will rattle out the ripe seed and 

 gather up enough of the coarse stuff to preclude danger of summer 

 fires. Then you can enjoy the yellows and browns of your trim sum- 

 mer lawn and be sure your trap is duly set for a good display of autumn 

 verdure, if the rains are early, and of winter verdure, if they are 

 delayed. If one will do these things he is justified in the claim that he 

 prefers the natural summer hues: if he does not do them, he is not 

 gardening at all, but shirking the work which is essential to the full 

 enjoyment of what 'he claims to admire. Meantime he must keep 

 wide cultivated borders between his unstirred, unwatered spaces and 

 his trees and shrubs or they will not hold the verdure which is needed 

 for the contrast between greens and browns, which is usually a part 

 of the philosophy of our advocates of natural lawns and their 

 environment. 



The Superiority of Verdure. There is however in the mind of the 

 writer no question of the superiority of perpetual verdure on the open 

 spaces of the garden. He can get all the browns and yellows he needs 

 either from the wallflowers and other cultivated bloom, or he can find 

 it covering the vast expanses of wild pastures or of grain fields which 

 are not wholly banished from the surroundings of even our most highly 

 developed horticultural districts. Therefore his exhortation must be 

 to provide a lawn, or the semblance thereof, for the open spaces im- 

 mediately enclosing the home no matter what the adjacent fields 

 may carry as commercial crops. 



And the writer will proceed further, even to this horrible horti- 

 cultural heterodoxy that a rather poor lawn is better than none. He 

 has never had what, by professional standards, could be called a good 

 lawn. His lawns have always been of the character which requires 

 observation from the west at sunrise and from the east at sunset. They 

 never could endure being looked at from above. And yet they have 

 always been beautiful in perspective and have afforded a carpet of 

 verdure able to carry the eye from point to point, among the higher 

 growths around the open spaces, quite acceptably. But a lawn must, 

 of course, not be unreasonably bad. Good gardening could have 

 nothing to do with such a one but good gardening can make a reason- 

 ably bad one respectable. Considerably less than the ideal amount 

 of water and fertilizer will keep the grass green even if it is not able 



