In the first place, the subsoil of a good 
lawn soil should not be too near the sur- 
face; that is, the soil itself should be a 
deep soil, never less than 6 inches and 
preferably as deep as 12 inches or more, 
for it must be remembered that a good 
subsoil, even when good as a subsoil, is 
nevertheless a poor substitute for a surface 
soil. 
These is no doubt that in certain sections 
of the country some subsoils are harmful 
when incorporated in a soil, and that while 
deep plowing is desirable, it is unsafe, after 
shallow plowing has been carried on for 
years, to run the plow down and turn up a 
great mass of subsoil and incorporate this 
with* the soil. In a great many cases it 
has taken several years to restore the orig- 
inal fertility of the soil. A subsoil should 
never be used in lawn building without be- 
ing covered 6 to 12 inches with a good 
surface soil. The subsoil should resemble 
the surface soil in its general character. 
It should be heavier in texture when un- 
derlying sandy soils. The subsoil should 
be moist at all times, yet permit of good 
drainage. It should contain considerable 
amounts of water during the wet season, 
and later, during dry spells, be able to give 
it up to the surface soil and roots therein. 
By virtue of a close and firm texture it 
can draw moisture from a considerable 
depth. If the subsoil is of bad texture, 
such as impervious clay, the drainage is 
bad and the soil consequently cold and 
wet, unmanageable and unproductive, or if 
it consists of a loose sandy material it will 
be too leachy and consequently too dry, 
especially during droughts, because no wa- 
ter will be stored in it or drawn up through 
it from greater depths. 
Other bad soil conditions, involving bad 
drainage, are various hardpan formations. 
These are usually layers of soil cemented 
together by lime or iron compounds and 
are found in some regions in large sheets 
or pockets, often immediately below the sur- 
face soil, thus acting as an effectual bar- 
rier to the movement of moisture, either 
downward or upward. Under such condi- 
tions, which are fortunately rare in soils 
to be used for lawns, grass cannot be 
grown any more than on a cement or other 
sidewalk buried a few inches under ground. 
Some of the principles of soil building 
applicable to such cases as involve the al- 
teration of soil already in place, the addi- 
tion of surface soil over soil already in 
place, and the filling in and leveling of un- 
sightly and unsuited places, for the estab- 
lishment of private grounds, city parks, and 
terraces of many kinds are noted in the 
following text. These principles govern 
all cases where soil is to be transported 
from one place to another, the object being 
to establish a greensward on the soil in its 
new environment. Specific advice or direc- 
tions applicable to all large civic improve- 
ments cannot be given on account of the 
PARK AND CEMETERY. 
necessarily local nature of the problem. 
General principles can, therefore, only be 
emphasized. 
The utmost care in supervision should be 
exercised in regard to the material used 
in the building of the soils of larger city 
parks where filling-in is often a necessary 
step. Had such simple precautions been 
followed in the past, poor public parks 
and lawns in public grounds surrounding 
public buildings of all kinds would not now 
be encountered. The remarks here made 
apply only to the last four feet or so of 
filling and not to cases where very deep 
fillings are made. Building debris, bricks 
and other coarse material should be abso- 
lutely barred from these last four feet. 
For the reasons already discussed, the 
soil material which is to serve as subsoil 
should be preferably of heavier texture 
than the surface soil available for the 
lawn, and never of a distinctly sandy na- 
ture, if good results are desired. The 
heaviest material of the subsoil should be 
filled in first and as near as practicable dis- 
tributed evenly over the entire area to be 
filled in. In large parks each lawn should 
be considered as a unit. It would seem 
needless to remark that old sidewalks, ce- 
ment cellars of former buildings, etc., 
should first be removed, or at least thor- 
oughly broken up, and yet experience has 
shown that this precaution is seldom com- 
plied with. The lighter material of the 
subsoil should then be hauled in on top of 
the first layer and spread out in an even 
layer. Where the material for the fill is 
all of the same kind and texture, this pre- 
caution is unnecessary, but wherever lay- 
ers are likely to be formed each should be 
uniformly distributed over the entire area. 
The heavier layer should be the lowest and 
all the layers should blend one into the 
other. Distinctive layering and patches of 
different cross section in different parts of 
the lawn should be rigorously avoided. In 
other words, the usual practice of dump- 
ing a load of clayey soil here and a load 
of sandy soil there, or of dumping a load 
of clay on top of a distinct sand, cannot 
but fail to bring about a lack of uniform- 
ity in the subsoil of the lawn, resulting in 
different soil conditions establishing them- 
selves in the course of time, giving patched 
lawns with poor and good sections or dif- 
ferent grasses growing over different soil 
conditions in the subsoil, even if the sur- 
face soil be uniform. The importance of 
the subsoil in the building of lawns can- 
not be overestimated and the greatest care 
should be exercised where this is built up 
by filling in. The proper procedure of fill- 
ing in for lawns costs little, if any, more 
than the haphazard way of dumping the 
material anywhere without due attention to 
texture and evenness of layering. In mak- 
ing the subsoil, the source of the material 
is, of course, not so vital a matter as with 
the surface soil, but the more nearly it is 
337 
like a good surface soil the more desirable. 
The surface soil of a lawn must have 
been a good surface soil in its previous 
situation. It should be especially selected 
with due regard to the texture of the soil 
already in place as subsoil and especially 
in regard to its natural productiveness. 
The surface soil should blend with the sub- 
soil ; that is, its texture should not be 
markedly different from the subsoil and it 
should be lighter and loamier than the sub- 
soil for the best results, unless the sub- 
soil provided is sandy and loose. It is 
preferably obtained from a cultivated field, 
as this insures the best soil condition with 
the least danger of importing weed seeds. 
Inasmuch as the soil is to be put into per- 
manent sod, it is, moreover, better to have 
had other crops immediately preceding its 
establishment. It should never be taken 
from clay or sand banks, cuts or excavat- 
tions, or similar situations, as no amount 
of doctoring with fertilizers, manures, or 
lime will make such soil immediately pro- 
ductive and suitable for a lawn without 
previous cultivation and the growing of 
cultivated crops. Only the very best soil 
obtainable should be used for such pur- 
poses, and it should be further improved 
as far as possible by the addition of or- 
ganic manures, such as stable manure and 
bone phosphates and in some cases by mod- 
erate liming. 
The surface soil should, be spread over 
the graded subsoil uniformly. The depth 
of surface soil to be hauled upon the sub- 
soil depends somewhat upon the nature and 
texture of the subsoil itself. If the latter 
is heavy and distinctly of a subsoil char- 
acter, being hauled in from clay banks or 
moderately deep excavations, the surface 
loam should be made quite deep, at least 
12 inches, but may in cases where the sub- 
soil is itself good in texture and loamy in 
character be made much shallower, but not 
less than six inches. The object should 
alw'ays be to offer a loamy substratum for 
the roots to an appreciable depth, so that 
they can penetrate deeply for their water 
supply. 
Loams are not developed with equal suc- 
cess on all soils. This is due to the nat- 
ural differences in soils as a result of their 
different formation, different texture, rela- 
tion to subsoil, and to climatic conditions 
under which they occur and which also af- 
fect directly the grasses themselves. Some 
grasses are suitable for lawns under cli- 
matic and soil conditions under which other 
grasses perish, or at best do not reach that 
development necessary for the formation 
of a good turf. Attention has already 
been called to the influence of the texture 
of the soil on lawn building and the above 
statement emphasizes that thorough consid- 
eration be given to the soil region or prov- 
ince in which a lawn is to be established, 
or the soil series from which the lawn soil 
