PLANNING AND PLANTING THE HOME GROUNDS. 315 



301. Grading and Enriching the Lawn. After the 

 building is completed and the first rough shaping of the 

 grounds is finished, care should be taken in the final 

 smoothing of the front ]awn to enrich the soil with fine, 

 well-rotted manure. While grass will grow on thin soil, 

 the carpet of grass that makes a picture, when it has a 

 frame of green foliage in the background angles and- 

 corners, can only be secured on a rich soil, with an abundant 

 supply of fresh vegetable humus. The ordinary subsoil 

 from cellar and well with only a thin covering of black soil 

 will not give the needed thick carpet of grass. Before 

 sowing the grass-seed, the trees and shrubs should be 

 planted and the flower-beds made ready for planting. 

 This gives a regular and smooth surface on which to start 

 the grass. Prior to sowing the seed, it is also desirable to 

 border the v/alks, tree groups, and shrub groups with a 

 belting of sod pressed down low in the soft soil. This 

 defines the borders, and grass-seed should not be sown 

 inside the space allotted to groups or over the surface of 

 flower-beds. In practice these outlining strips of sod are 

 useful in fixing boundaries and in the way of securing 

 established grass for clipping along roads and borders from 

 the start. Until the sod is strong enough to support the 

 mower in turning, the clipping should be done with the 

 scythe. 



302. Where to Plant Trees and Shrubs. The location 

 of tree and shrub groups depends largely upon the shape 

 of the grounds, and no two places may be exactly the same 

 in expression when the work is finished. As stated, the 

 first essential is a spacious lawn. Keep the centre of the 

 place open, planting only the borders. This principle 

 applies to the front lawn on all places, large and small. 

 On small places, the simple plan shown at Fig. 83 will 

 illustrate some of the general principles suitable for those 



