Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ra. LAWNS AND GEASS PLOTS. In the foregoing we have so constantly alluded to the importance of well-kept turf as an element of successful landscape gardening, and have incidentally discussed so many effects more or less dependent upon the form and extent of lawns and grass plots, that little more than instructions for preparing and maintaining good turf under various conditions remains to be stated. The paradoxical adage that the shortest road is the longest way round finds corroboration in the various methods of making lawns, of which the most generally practiced is that of cutting slabs of the best turf the neighboring waysides afford, preparing the ground, packing them down and watering them from time to time until the transplantation has taken root. This method is no doubt an expeditious one, but has few other advantages. We know of but one satisfactory way to produce a healthy and hardy turf, and but one of maintaining it. The process is comparatively a long one, though not more expensive than the almost universal method described above. There are few soils in which agood turf can not be made to grow in time if the necessary care is bestowed, and a soil in which we can not grow turf without enrichments will certainly fail to support transplanted turf. Whatever the nature of the soil, it should first be plowed and stones removed, then harrowed and sown with " red top." This should be done as early in the year as the season permits, and the crop should be allowed to grow till the seed is nearly ripe, when the whole, as it stands, should be plowed into the land, the harrowing repeated, and the best grass seed thickly sown, mixed with small white clover seed. This crop again should be allowed to run almost to seed before it is cut. The cutting should be done while the dew ...