CHAPTER LXX. ORNAMENTAL GROUNDS. I SHALL not enter into details with regard to making a proper plan for the improvement of your place, for as I have said, this is properly the work of the landscape gardener. Justice cannot be done to the subject in the limits of this book, and were it to be written out with all possible minuteness, there would be left unsaid much that can only be learned from experience. Before making a plan, the landscape gardener will require a careful topographical survey of your place, which shall show exactly the boundaries, the situation of the buildings, of all prominent single trees, of all groups of trees, hills, valleys and the general changes of surface, the water-courses, springs, and ponds; and which shall give the levels of so much of the land as it may be necessary to operate on. And before this is made, he should himself walk over the place with you, and say what he thinks it well to do; and if he does not make his own survey, should carefully point out to the surveyor what he wants included in the survey. An accurate survey and a large amount of levelling are as important to the value of your plan, as for the plan of a railroad. If your house is standing on your place, your adviser should go in and acquaint himself with the views from the windows, in order to know what objects it is desirable to show and what to conceal. This preliminary survey will be expensive, but yet the cheapest thing for which you spend money in beautifying your place. On the plan, or a copy of it, the artist will lay down the improvements proposed; the plan of improvements will be made to a scale, and when carried into effect, the plan will fit the grounds, and mean what it appears to mean on paper. The important features in your improvements are: 1st. The point of entrance and the management of the approach. 2nd. The location and treatment of water, artificial or natural and the proper amount of drainage. 3rd. The location of flower-beds or flower-gardens. 5th. The location of greenhouse, conservatory, grapery, and garden structures. 6th. The drive or walk. By this name I designate a road or path which may carry one naturally and easily about the whole place in such a way as to display its beauty and open that of the surrounding country. If the place is large enough I should always make this path at least 12 feet wide, and 15 is better, to allow the passage of a large carriage. But if the limits do not allow of a carriage road, carry a footpath about so much of the place as it is desirable to visit, taking care not to cut up the surface more than is necessary, but to leave the land in as large masses as possible. Never curve or distort it merely to gain length, never curve it where it would be better straight, and never make it straight where a curve would have more beauty, or would display the surface to better advantage. But I have already said enough about paths and avenues. The situations of the various comforts and ornaments mentioned will depend on circumstances, which cannot be readily foreseen. In our selection of sites we must be guided by the general principles already laid down. LAWNS. In the fall I spoke of the necessity of thorough cultivation to a good lawn; but I do not consider that it is necessary to cultivate a lawn for a year or two in a hoed crop in order to reduce the soil to the fine condition best appreciated by grass. A beautiful and permanently satisfactory lawn may be made in a single season and economically, however rough the surface. If you wish for a lawn this summer it will be necessary to grub and trench the surface, carefully throwing out all roots and stones, and mixing the manure as described in September. I think it unquestionable that a lawn well made and manured from the rough sod, from a bushy pasture or a forest, if well drained would be better than when first cultivated, for the crop we take off generally removes quite as much as it adds, if not more, whilst the after culture is the same in both cases. Suppose a beginning to be made with a rough bush pasture, a piece of forest or a grass field. If you wish to kill the trees and bushes before you remove them, it is best to cut them in June or August, and burn them. Open a trench as before, and as you trench leave on the surface every rock and root. By trenching deep you can get under and around the roots, and take them out more easily. Before this or at the same time, cut the proper drains. If you begin with a good force of men as soon as the frost is out of the ground, the work may be done by the middle of May. Cart the manure on to the field as the work goes on, and pile it, so that you can spread and dig it into the trenches. When the land is all ready, harrow or rake in a couple of hundred pounds of super-phosphate or guano and gypsum, with the Grass seed, and either three-fourths of a bushel of Spring Rye, a bushel of Oats, or three-fourths of a bushel of Barley to the acre. If the land is light, roll it. The Grain will be very thinly spread, and will germinate about the same time as the grass. When it is 2 inches high, as it will be in a fortnight, the whole lawn will be a rich green color. In a month it will be a foot high, and the young Grass among it fairly green. Send a mower over it, and cut the Grain rather high above the surface, say 2 to 3 inches. It will then start again, and although it will not grow so fast as before, in another month it will be fit to cut again. And though it is then July, the Grass will be strong and green, and in August or September the whole may be cut a third time. Or, instead of sowing Grass when you plant Grain, sow the Grain more thickly (2 to 3 bushels per acre), and let it grow till it is 2 to 3 feet high; then roll it down and plough it well under with a deep tiller plough. The ground will then have been green from within a week of the sowing till the time of ploughing under. In either case, after rolling, and before ploughing, spread 20 bushels of lime to the acre on argillaceous, loamy, or sandy land, which will both enrich the land and hasten the decay of the green crop; harrow the land immediately, and either sow the Grass seed alone, or with Millet, 10 to 15 quarts to the acre; the Millet will be up in a week, and make the field green again; cut it for fodder as soon as it is high enough, or leave it for Hay. It will not cure properly unless cut by the middle of August or the very first of September, on account of its great succulence. Very few fodder crops give as good return as Millet. It may be sowed as late as the middle of July, and will throw up a fodder crop in August or September, of 3 or 4 tons of dry Hay. But remember that if you take this crop, you exhaust the land in proportion. In either of these ways you may have a green lawn during the whole season, with the exception of an interval of two or three weeks, and I think either of them better than the Corn and Potato system. When land is poor, and good manure is scarce, a different system should prevail. Dig and trench thoroughly as soon as the frost is gone, and sow Spring Grain of any kind very thickly. As soon as the Grain is in blossom, dig or plough it in together with lime (5 to 150 bushels lime to the acre; the larger amount if the land needs it, and has had none for years; oyster-shell lime is best); sow Grain again, Buckwheat, Oats, or Millet, and when that is well grown and presents a fair sward, plough it in; and manure each time with 300 to 500 lbs. guano to the acre; after the second time sow for a permanent lawn. These methods of making a lawn are more expensive than Corn and Potatoes, but quicker and thorough; you are not laying down a Grass field; and remember always that no permanent evergreen, summer, and satisfactory lawn can be made unless the work is done thoroughly and deeply, and with a liberal expenditure. Made in this complete manner, a lawn will defy all ordinary vicissitudes for 10 or 15 years. It should be top-dressed spring and fall, with well-rotted stable manure, guano, ground bones, super-phosphate, or wood ashes. Two divisions of the ornamental treatment of our place have been untouched, or barely referred to: Water and Plantations. They will be spoken of in the two months which yet remain. During June our grounds will need some attention. All the permanent lawn should be mowed once or twice during the month. The walks must be constantly examined, to free them from weeds, and repair the damages from storms. Watch the growth of the vines on the arbors and trellises, and train every shoot before it gets the wrong direction, or is too long to be bent. It is not too late to set out Madeira vines and Maurandia, which have been started in hotbeds, to cover naked spots. Much variety may be produced in prominent situations, by setting down wire baskets on to the turf, cutting out the sward inside the basket, and planting there greenhouse or bedding plants, Roses, etc. In the same way portable trellises of wire, of low dwarf, fantastic shapes, may be set about in appropriate spots, for Madeira, Maurandia, Ipomea, and the other vines which have been started before. When these vines are used in wire baskets they both screen and ornament them by twining in and out. June is the month for the purest delight in nature, and, busy as the farmer is, he may have ample time for enjoyment. No month is so rich in Nature's bounties. The fields are so yellow with Buttercups, that they seem to reflect the sun, whilst the air is vocal with the song of birds; now the days are at their longest, as though it were intended that there should be time for all men to do their fair share of work, and yet enjoy the beauty about them. Whoever is deaf to June, insensible to her promises and delights, is to be pitied, and it is in vain to appeal to him to become either the best farmer, or the best man. The generous promises and opportunities of this beautiful month are more worthily expressed in the following lines, by James Russell Lowell, in the "Vision of Sir Lanufal," than in any other words in verse or prose:· "There is no price set on the lavish summer, "And what is so rare as a day in June? Then, if ever, come perfect days; |