The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California
Art Of Landscape Architecture
All the little corners and nooks of greensward are included, the glades edged with flowers and planted with trees and shrubs, the grass walks in the gardens and along the boundaries of plantations, the rides through woodland ways where saddle horse and carriage may find pleasant passage. These grass spaces are the choice spots of the place. It is there that the clouds play with their lights and shadows and the showers make diamond and silver nettings. No building that can be avoided,or that can be placed elsewhere, should usurp any part of this stretch of green.
. If the ancients worshipped trees and groves, surely, in the landscape scheme, it should be considered desecration, a treading on holy ground, to unnecessarily destroy greensward that flourishes in a favoured and fitting spot.
The illustration is taken from Central Park and its value lies in its open character. The eye revels in the rich green turf, passes with pleasure over the hill into the unknown with few trees, some of them just peering over the hill and thus disclosing a considerable declivity on the other side. To make these grass spaces illustrations of excellence the art of the skilful gardener needs employment for grading, and the principles of this art will be considered later. But for the benefit of those who may wish some general instructions concerning the establishment of a lawn it should be said that high culture is as necessary for grass space as for any other kind of vegetation natural to this climate. It is the fine pulverizing of the first two or three inches of the soil intended for a lawn that counts most. Deep ploughing or trenching and drainage are indispensable, but the aim should be to treat the cultivation of the top surface of the lawn very much as an onion patch.
Next comes the establishment of the proper mechanical condition and the fertility of the soil, possibly the most important of all in the attainment of final success. It is not necessary in a book of this character to indicate in detail peculiarities of soil, but only to point out that grass spaces need for their most perfect development nitrogenous fertilizers from natural sources, organic products like humus, stable or cow or sheep manure, as distinguished from superphosphates of lime, potash, and bone meal: these latter fertilizers are best suited to orchards, and for vegetables that grow quickly in one season.
