Photo 134. 



and stiff. The lawn is not &JJat, dead level, but slightly rolling, as in photo 135 (a model 

 "open lawn center," the home of Ira Herriff, the popular undertaker of Portage County, 

 Ohio.) Look at photo 136. If you were standing on the front porch that is how you 

 would see the lawn to your left. You will notice the ornamental grasses and other 

 shrubbery are forced back to the side. This is in accord with the excellent taste of S. T. 

 Williams, the former owner. Photo 137 presents to you a glimpse of the neat little 

 property of Dr. W. W. Reed, of Kent, Ohio. There was almost a dead level from the 

 sidewalk to the bottom of the third tier of underpinning, or "ashler," as it is called (the 

 point from which the grade starts). This was very objectionable. The remedy was to 

 excavate about 8 inches inside the sidewalk, gliding dow^n from the walk to a point about 

 12 feet in from the walk and then gradually raising the grade up to the house. As the 

 eye now catches the grade it runs up to the house, making it look elevated, though it is 

 still on a level with the sidewalk. The real art of landscaping consists, very largely, in 

 producing those illusions. The real landscape artist, like the poet, is born, not made. 

 He has not an imitative, but a creative mind. No one can ever imitate nature, because 

 she has no duplicates. I know a gentleman who has spent over thirty-five years in the 

 art of landscaping and never executed two pieces of work alike. It cannot be done with 

 success any more than one suit of clothes will exactly suit two persons. The similarity 

 may be so near that there is no serious objections, yet variety is desirable, because, as we 

 have said, the eye tires of sameness. 



Glance again to photo 134. This is a beautiful house, highly elevated and everything 

 in favor of bringing out the most charming results. Look at the house; straight lines 

 and angles. Now look at the terrace; straight, level line with angles at the ends, as if a 

 level had been used, and the whole job finished with a jack-plane. The want of attrac- 

 tiveness in this property grows entirely out of the want of variety. Look at the planting. 

 There are two cut-leaved birch, two arbor-vitas, tu<o Irish junipers, two weigelias, two 

 roses, etc. The job was probably "bossed" by some boy who had just been learning his 

 "two times" table. Two hundred dollars' expenditure on the grade of that property and 

 judicious planting would have added two thousand dollars to its selling value. By a con- 

 servative estimate on the increase of value of property by the application of the landscape 

 art puts it somewhere from two to ten dollars for every dollar expended. In building, if 

 funds are short, it is sensible and profitable to put less into the house and have the 



