E 



CHAPTER XI. 



HOW TO BEAUTIFY THE HOME GROUNDS. 



VERYONE wants to live in a beautiful home, but few 

 understand how to make the surroundings attractive 

 with very little expense. 



The object in planting shrubs and flowers is to bring 

 out by a living frame of shrubbery, the central feature of 

 the picture, the home. 



In order to get the desired effect in planting, three 

 simple rules of landscape gardening must be followed: — 



(a) Avoid straight lines and sharp angles. 



(b) Keep open centers. 



(c) Plant shrubbery in masses. 



Annual and herbaceous plants alone furnish a frame 

 for the picture for only two or three months a year and 

 have to be replanted often, while shrubs are permanent, 

 and in the end cheaper. 



In the following pages the writer endeavors to show 

 how persons unfamiliar with the subject may at little cost 

 make their homes picturesque and help to make the town 

 or city a City Beautiful. Cleaning back yards means not 

 only a more attractive community, but a more healthy 

 one. Cleaning a single yard and making it into a good 

 lawn or garden, especially if it be in a community where 

 the homes are not well kept, will do much to change the 

 entire neighborhood, not only from an aesthetic, but from 

 a moral and sanitary standpoint as well. As disease and 

 crime breed largely in filth and darkness, healthy, law- 

 abiding citizens develop amid well-kept homes. 



Small beginnings even in the poorly kept homes in a 

 city, in time transform barren yards of sand and weeds 

 into grassy lawns brightened with foliage and flowers. 

 The expense of carrying out the plans here suggested is 

 within the means of the day laborer. Owners of large 



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