House and Garden 
whole, was lost sight of, or considered as “wholly 
secondary.” Each park was treated as an entity, 
as though the plan for a unified system had never 
been under consideration. The location for one 
park as a distinct proposition as exemplified in the East 
Side Park in Newark, had accentuated the pressure 
brought to bear upon the commission to locate others. 
The suggestion of the court as to local “represen¬ 
tation,” and the two new commissioners appointed 
to carry out that principle, had borne fruit, and, 
before the close of 1895, the sectional policy for 
the Essex County parks was well established and 
became the controlling principle, as it has, subject 
to minor modifications, since remained. 
The First ^1,000,000. With the great mass of 
people, to whom the matter of income vs. expense 
is a present and ever-recurring problem, there are, 
perhaps, few characters in fiction more interesting 
or that have attracted wider attention than Wil¬ 
kins Micawber. His object lesson in correct finance, 
showing the happiness that may follow from an in¬ 
come of “twenty pounds a year” and expenses of 
“nineteen pounds, nineteen shillings and sixpence,” 
when compared with the misery resulting from a 
like income and the expenditure of “twenty pounds. 
one,” illustrates in a few words a principle of 
very general application. 
Thus, in the park enterprise, each of the com¬ 
missioners, favoring the policy of being pecuniarily 
forehanded in public matters as in private affairs, 
was of one mind as to the desirability of providing 
ample funds before incurring liability for land 
purchases or other financial obligations. 
The meeting when the bids were opened was, 
as usual, in executive session. There was, in this 
unofficial and unbusiness-like procedure, no dis¬ 
courtesy to any of the bidders; none was thought of 
or intended. Nor, so far as I can now recall, would 
any of the commissioners at that time have been likely 
to have objected to the presence of the public. The 
bids were called for in the regular course of business 
and no occasion for secrecy could or did exist. 
The fact was that, owing to the topography and 
peculiar situation of that property, it was a most 
difficult matter to draw any specifications for con¬ 
tract work, as a whole, that would give the com¬ 
mission, through the architects and engineers, the 
necessary reservation for directing the work—a 
matter so vitally important in park improvements 
of that character. 
GARDEN WORK IN AUGUST 
By Ernest Hemming 
OW to counteract the effects of the heat and the 
usual accompanying drouth on plants, is 
perhaps the question that is uppermost in the mind 
of the gardener during this month. 
The trying conditions, that are usually met with 
during this season of the year, will be the real test as 
to whether work was thoroughly done or not earlier 
in the year. 
Where the ground was deeply worked and properly 
prepared the crops will come through the trying 
times much better than where the work was not so 
well done. This is equally true of planting a garden 
or making a lawn. Usually in making a lawn the 
chief object is to get the ground graded and a sod 
formed as quickly as possible with the result that the 
sod is often growing right on the top of hard pan or 
ground that has never been broken up. Where such 
is the case these places are always the first to suffer 
in dry weather. 
It is equally important to look at the lawn as a 
growing crop; any labor expended to bring the soil 
into good tilth before seeding or sodding will pay for 
itself in the long run. 
The various kinds of grasses composing a lawn 
grow better under some conditions than they do 
under others, and if these conditions can be produced 
and a good sod formed the less likelihood there will 
be for the objectionable fall grass getting a foot¬ 
hold. This pest is now putting in its appearance, 
and is very difficult to eradicate. The grass itself 
is an annual but such a rank grower that it often 
kills out the lawn grass and leaves a crop of seed to 
perpetuate itself the following year. 
If it was of an upright habit there would be little 
trouble in keeping it in check with the mowing ma¬ 
chine, but the stems or stolons lie flat on the ground 
throwing out roots at every joint so that the machine 
passes over them. Where there is only a little, 
hand weeding should be resorted to to hold it in 
check but this is impossible where the lawns are 
very extensive or the grass very bad; such being the 
case, after mowing, the patches of fall grass should 
be gone over with an iron-tooth rake pulling up the 
prostrate stems so that the machine will catch them 
and mow them oft’; this will do much to keep it in 
check. 
There is little to do among the shrubs at this time 
of year, and if it were not for the Flydrangea pan- 
iculata, var. gra 7 idiflora with its pendulous blooms 
and the different varieties of althaea or Hibiscus 
Syriacus, the shrubbery borders would look very 
uninteresting. The hydrangea owing to its heavy 
96 
