Lawn

“ WHEN it rains, I sit in my little sandy burrow and shell corn and seeds from my Autumn store. I peep out at the throstles and blackbirds on the lawn, and my friend Cock Robin. And when the sun comes out again, you should see my garden and the flowers—roses and pinks and pansies—no noise except the birds and bees, and the lambs in the meadows. ”

“ The lawn here was prettily embayed, like a lake, among little eminences covered with dwarf trees, aged or blighted; thence, onward to another open space, where was an encampment of cattle sheds, the large plain spotted with heaps of stones at irregular distances, as we see lime, or manure, or hay-cocks in our cultivated fields. Those heaps had been gathered together by the industrious peasants to make room for a scanty herbage for their cattle. The turf was very poor, yet so lavishly overspread with close-growing flowers it reminded us of a Persian carpet. ”

“ On the other hand, I hope my acre, despite all its unconscious or unconfessed mistakes, shows pleasantly that the best openness of a lawn is not to be got between unclothed, right-angled and parallel bounds. The more its verdure-clad borders swing in and out the longer they look, not merely because they are longer but also because they interest and lure the eye. ”

“ I don't dare rake our lawn, because the minute I start, out will come a lot of bolders, leaving terrific yawns in the sod. I'm sure the Duke will forgive me for getting peeved about that lawn, when he understands that there are callouses in my hands and knots in my lawn mower. Also, why on earth, after throwing on the grass seed, do the men drive wagons over it and make ruts and jam their heels into it and make holes, where my vagrant sprinklings with the hose create lakes and puddles and produce never a single grass? ”

“ On the dry, smooth-shaven lawn, outside, the shadows are lengthening, stretching themselves indolently as though weary from all the hide-and-seek they have been playing, since early dawn, in the nooks and corners of the quaint old garden. ”

“ Here we behold the beautiful lawn enriched with flowers, and studded with trees, which are so dispersed about as not to intercept the prospect, standing singly, so as not to shade the ground, and occasionally collected in clusters, while now and then the shade deepens into the gloom of the forest, or opens into long vistas and spacious plains, destitute of tree or shrub.
When the eye roves off from the green plain, to the groves, or points of timber, these also are found ... robed in the most attractive hues. The rich undergrowth is in full bloom. ”

“ The sunshine is beating fiercely down upon the groups scattered over the center of the lawn; but here under the trees the grass is flecked with cool shadows, and the two catch the breeze—such as it is—that comes from the river. ”

“ If you parted the soft grass, an undergrowth of the finest moss met your view like velvet beneath a wealth of embroidery. Clumps of trees shaded the lawn here and there, and on either hand, so far as the eye could reach, a park of magnificent old chestnuts, with a fine variety of oaks, filled the eye with the vast wealth of their foliage. ”

“ The corn-stalks lean in pointed sheaves,
Bare branches sing against the blue;
The lawn ’s a sea of withered leaves
That shizzle as my feet go through.
And Mike ahead and I behind
Are raking hard as hard can be. ”

“ The lawn, which once had spread its beautiful carpet of flowers and shrubbery in wide acres here in the heart of the ancient woods, had grown up in ugly broom straw and young pines, which were slowly strangling to death the more delicate forms of life. ”

“ They ascended the rising ground, passing along the edge of the orchard, till, upon gaining the height of land, they entered upon a broad, level field of twenty-five acres, smooth as a lawn, green in all the verdure of spring, and giving promise of an abundant yield of grass. ”

“ A lawn is a plant society. It may contain only grass, or it may contain weeds hidden away in the sward. What weeds remain in the lawn? Only those which can withstand the mowing. What are they? Let a bit of lawn grow as it will for a month, and see what there is in it. A swale, a dry hillside, a forest of beech, a forest of oak, a forest of hemlock or pine, a weedy yard, a tangled fence-row, a brook-side, a deep quiet swamp, a lake shore, a railroad, a river bank, a meadow, a pasture, a dusty roadway,—each has its characteristic plants. ”

“ Grass is a product that can be cultivated as truly as the most delicate and fastidious of fruits, and I had the lawn is mind when I urged the generous initial deep plowing and enriching. Nothing that grows responds more promptly to good treatment than grass; but a fine lawn cannot be created in a season, any more than a fine tree.
We will suppose that the spring plantings of trees have been made with open spaces reserved for the favorite games. Now the ground can be prepared for grass-seed, for it need not be trampled over any more. ”

“ I ardently love pushing the lawn mower, and if, occasionally, I allowed the grass to grow rather long, it was only because I was saving the pleasure of cutting it, as a child saves the icing of its cake for the last sweet bite. ”

“ Then a single glance in the other direction revealed another picture,—the dazzling midday sky, the close-cropped lawn, lying almost black in its light, and the patient, round-backed gardener, in white shirt-sleeves, clipping the hedge or rolling the gravel. ”

“ Woods, lakes, pools, fountains, clumps of trees, single trees, masses of shrubs, all have to be duly arranged for, and, as it were, made to fall into their respective positions in the landscape; and no slight experience or imperfect knowledge of the harmonies of colours could lay out an upland undulating lawn of fifty or a hundred acres, so that the wood and water should be made to assume their most picturesque forms, and a million bright blossoms of every hue be gathered into their proper places. ”

“ The paths are only one or two and they never turn abruptly and ask you to keep off their corners; they have none. Neither have the flower-beds. They flow wideningly around the hard turnings of the house with the grace of a rivulet. Out on the two wider sides of the lawn nothing breaks the smooth green but a well-situated tree or two until the limits of the premises are reached, and there, in lines that widen and narrow and widen again and hide the surveyor's angles, the flowers rise once more in a final burst of innumerable blossoms and splendid hues—a kind of sunset of the garden's own. ”

“ If, at times, I dream behind all this a grove, with now and then one of its broad, steepling or columnar trees pushed forward upon the lawn, it is only there that I see anything so stalwart as a pine or so rigid as a spruce. ”

“ When the object is to make a lawn where there never has been one, the plow or the spade is the most effective weapon.
It must be kept in mind that grass on a lawn is a great feeder, and no soil can be made too rich to supply its food requirements. A lawn is a permanent planting, not something that is to last merely for a season. ”

“ There is an artificial water, fifty toises across and a quarter of a league long—the lawn sloping down to it from the house, with the uplands on the other side, and the fine woody hill form the prettiest scene. ”

“ SOWING THE SEED
THE nearest thing, by way of comparison, to a lawn is a bed of plants that you set out in your garden every spring. When you think it is planting time you go to this bed with spade or fork and turn the earth up from the deep bottom, putting in plenty of well-rotted manure, thus ministering to the soil according to its needs. Then you set out the plants, and if weeds grow up you dig them out, after which you water the spot intelligently. ”

“ Just as truly is a lawn a bed of plants needing an equal amount of treatment. Grass is nothing but a collection of thou [Pg 25] sands of little plants crowded together, which must have nourishment, and from which the weeds must be taken. Likewise the soil must be given water as it is needed and the earth must be made mellow for the roots, to a good depth. It makes no difference how much you pay for your grass seed, how good or bad it is, or what kind of fertilizers you use, if the bed is not properly prepared in the first place. ”

“ The lawn still slopes deviously, and every day that I see it I am thankful for it. Nobody can possibly play lawn-tennis on it. I hate white rectilineal lines on grass almost more than I hate underdone mutton or "The Lost Chord". Therefore it is a perpetual joy to me that my lawn slopes.
I asked the jobbing gardener what the roses were, planted in odd corners of the lawn.
"Roses!" he said scornfully. "They ain't roses. It's just some common sort of brier. ”

“ The next thing to be considered is the kind of grasses most suitable for sowing on a lawn; and to ascertain this, it must be remembered that the proprietor of a lawn does not want a crop of hay, but a fine smooth level turf, the grass in which shall entirely conceal the earth. ”

“ Growing the majority of my family's food absorbs all of the energy I care to put into gardening. So my yard is neat but shaggy. Motivated by what I consider total rationality, my lawn is cut only when it threatens to overwhelm the lawnmower, and the lawn is not irrigated, so it browns off and stops growing in summer. ”

“ Never forget that third rule before mentioned,—"Preserve open lawn centers." A beautiful lawn is as satisfying to the eye as flowers, so never spoil one by cutting it up with beds. They can be put along the sides, used for bordering walks, and nestled close to the house. ”

“ In the case of a place where lawn comes up to shrub plantation, which, again, is backed by woodland, the better way is to have, in just the right places, a bold planting of something fairly large, whose [Pg 258] flower shall endure for a good while, to let the large group of it come right through to the lawn, and also stretch away back into the woodland. ”

“ No ornamental gardener could make so lovely and charming a lawn, gently rolling, and sloping just enough to relieve the monotony of the flatness of the long stretches of prairie and openings we had passed through. Father told us that these great prairies would always be pasture-land for herds of cattle, as the farmers could not live where there was no timber. ”

“ There is rest in gazing at the sky: a sense that wisdom does exist and may be found, a hope returns that was taken away among the books. The green lawn is pleasant to look at, though it is mown so ruthlessly. ”

“ A neglected lawn involves an amount of labour in the semi-annual cleaning of spring and fall out of all proportion to the results, while a lawn well cut and raked is more easily cared for with each recurring year, the grass growing clean and straight, and the rake and mower passing freely and easily through it. ”

“ Sometimes skilled labor is not obtainable. The consequence is, in the majority of cases, the lawn,—or what, by courtesy, is called by that name,—is a sort of evolution which is an improvement on the original conditions surrounding the home, but which never reaches a satisfactory stage. We see such lawns everywhere—rough, uneven, bare in spots, anything but attractive in a general way, and but little better than the yard which has been given no attention, were it not for the shrubs and plants that have been set out in them. ”

“ One cannot expect much diversity of surface on a single acre. A large lawn will give the effect of greater flatness. If you find the hired gardener, bred in some noted school in Europe, setting out trees in straight lines, exhort him to penitence at once. If he remain obdurate, cut the trees down with your little hatchet and pitch them over the fence, but keep your temper as sweet as a June morning. ”

“ Flower beds may be here and there distributed over the lawn, but care should be taken that it be not too much broken up by them. A few trees may be introduced upon the lawn, but they must not be placed so close together as to prevent the growth of the grass by obstructing either light or air. ”

“ I got the rake, shovel, spade, hoe, hand cultivator, lawn mower, trowel, and a couple of things you lift young plants with and assembled myself on the lawn to put in a good day's work. With the rake I started to rake off the side yard, and got about halfway through when I discovered that the lawn needed mowing. Halfway through with the mowing job my eye spotted certain thick spots of weeds, and so I started weeding. ”

“ As we approach the farm we will probably see first the farm-house surrounded by shade trees, perhaps elms or maples, with the barns and other buildings grouped nearby. As we pass up the front walk we notice more or less lawn of neatly clipped grass, with flower beds bordering the walk, or we may find a number of chickens occupying the front yard, and the flower beds, placed in red half-barrels, set upon short posts. ”

“ Every one possessing a lawn of this description must be aware that its chief beauty consists in its smoothness, and in the firmness and closeness of its grasses. I say grasses, because strange as it may sound to unbotanical ears, from twenty to thirty different kinds of grasses sometimes enter into the composition of a square foot of fine turf. ”

“ The most recent complaint was the lawn grass. It grew so fast and shot up so tall that no mower was yet made that could plow through it. Norma did not add here that she had postponed mowing the lawns for more than a week, because she was so interested in landscaping the strip of ground beside the fence and making a water garden. ”

“ In the meantime I shall try to account for my treatment of my predecessor's lawn, which, as I have already mentioned, occupied all the flat space between the house and the mound with the cherries and mays and laburnums towered over by the sycamores and chestnuts.
It was all suggested to me by the offer which 1 had at breaking-up price of what I might call a “garden suite,” consisting of a fountain, with a wide basin, and the carved stone edging for eight beds—sufficient to transform the whole area of the lawn “into something rich and strange,”—as I thought. ”