absolutely no other road to first-rate results than by the process 

 of slow natural growth under the selective control, protection and 

 guidance of suitable methods of maintenance year after year. 



The kind, amount and cost of maintenance of grounds necessary 

 to keep on the safe side of the border which separates cumulative 

 advance in values from progressive deterioration depend mainly 

 on three sets of factors. One obviously is the efficiency and cost 

 of labor and the skill with which it is directed. A second includes 

 the inherent advantages and disadvantages of the site and of 

 external or otherwise largely uncontrollable conditions — such 

 factors as soil, climate, atmospheric impurities, and the habits 

 of the people who resort to the grounds. But normally it is the 

 third set which accounts for the greatest variations in the cost of 

 adequate maintenance. These are the variations in what might 

 be called types of landscape treatment, such as: 



(a) Established native woodlands, where there is an approach 

 toward the self-maintaining equilibrium of a mature natural 

 forest. 



(b) Areas in which mixed ground-covers of herbaceous or woody 

 plants, or both, while never quite attaining a permanent natural 

 equilibrium, such as characterizes many forest floors and many 

 marshes, can be kept in satisfactory condition by wholesale 

 methods, as, for example, by infrequent scything and a limited 

 amount of hand weeding. 



(c) Broad areas of simple lawn or meadow, little interrupted 

 by trees or other obstacles, where the main item of maintenance 

 cost is periodic wholesale cutting by horse or power mowers. 



(d) Intricate combinations of turf with plantations and other 

 obstacles, requiring frequent hand mowing under difficult condi- 

 tions and involving hand cultivation, weeding, and other control 

 of the interspersed plantations. 



(e) Areas of a sort requiring still more intensive gardening 

 operations to secure and maintain the results at which they are 

 aimed. 



Other things being equal, the above indicated variations in 

 type of grounds ordinarily account for a range in the amount of 

 labor required for suitable maintenance, varying from a maximum 

 of about one man per year for each acre or less in type "e, " to a 

 minimum of one man for each twenty acres or more, type "b;" 

 with the possibility of an almost indefinite reduction of mainte- 

 nance labor in type "a," in those cases zvhere intensive human use 

 does not enter in to upset the balance and require special counter- 

 active measures. 



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