LAWNS, GLADES AND GARDEN WALKS. 



Croquet 

 lawns. 



Bowling 

 greens. 



The making of formal lawns has been already more than incidentally mentioned Tennis 

 in speaking of terraces and terrace gardens, and the remarks then made with regard to lawns. 

 obtaining the correct levels for terrace gardens apply equally to the levelling of other 

 areas for games. Lawns for single tennis courts should, where possible, have a seven- 

 foot walk all round, thus adding fourteen feet to both the length and breadth of the 

 playing green, the area of which should be at least one hundred feet by fifty. For use 

 in the afternoon the lawn should preferably be so placed that the net runs from 

 North-east to South-west, while for play earlier in the day it should stretch from North- 

 west to South-east, thus ensuring that neither players shall have the sun directly in their 

 eyes. A most useful size is one hundred and twenty feet square, which allows of two 

 courts side by side with the nets placed either way according to the times of the day 

 at which they are to be used. 



For croquet the tournament size is one hundred and five by eighty-four feet, but 

 an excellent game can be played on lawns much smaller than this. It is, in fact, 

 to its adaptability to lawns of various sizes that croquet owes much of its favour. 



Another lawn for a game which may most 

 fittingly form a part of the formal garden, 

 and which is increasing in popularity, is the 

 bowling alley. The old examples, which appeal 

 so powerfully to the sentiment of all lovers of 

 ancient gardens (111. No. 150), were general!}/ 

 long and narrow and protected on either side 

 by a stout hedge or wall, while, in other 

 instances, the lawns are circular, or oblong with 

 semicircular ends, with niched seats and some- 

 times adorned by lead figures, the main features 

 of which class have been reproduced in the 

 bowling green at Foot's Cray Place, shown in 



illustrations Nos. 152 and 153. The popular form to-day is a square of about forty yards 

 long and broad, sunk some two and a half feet below the surrounding ground, the playing 

 green having a rise of about six inches from the sides to the centre. The raised platform 

 which thus surrounds the lawn forms a splendid vantage ground from which to 

 watch the game. 



This platform should be screened by a hedge or plantation, and if in the hedge, 

 recesses are cut for seats, and an arch of greenery is formed over the entrance gates, 

 the effect will be considerably heightened. Old walled-in gardens which are no longer 

 required for vegetable or fruit growing, make the most charming bowling greens, having 

 a quaint old-world air otherwise unattainable, especially if, as in one instance in the writer's 

 experience, there is an old, solidly built, flag-roofed, and moss-grown fruit room, which 

 with very little internal alteration provides a cool and shady tea-house. 



The formation of lawns for games of any kind where the turf must necessarily 

 be subjected to much trampling on, demands very careful consideration of the 

 question of drainage. It is impossible to lay down any rules as to the amount or Drainage 

 distance apart of the rows of pipes, for, while some soils are so light as to require of grass 

 practically no artificial draining, others low-lying and waterlogged would be most difficult banks. 

 to drain by any means. 



There is, however, one part of nearly every lawn which will need extra care to keep it 

 from becoming waterlogged, and that is where it has been excavated out of the hillside, 

 and consequently a bank or retaining wall has to be made, connecting the old level 

 with the new. The old level being the higher, water will always tend to drain away from 

 it to the lower, and so the part of the lawn at the foot of the bank or wall will, unless 



DfWIM 



FIG. 151. 



123 



