Chapter XIV: The Home Yard

The yard, as well as the house, should be planned. It should be convenient, neat, handsome, restful. It will need planting with trees, shrubs, herbs and grass; but these things should not be scattered promiscuously over the place, for then they mean nothing. Every plant should have some relation to the general plan or design of the place.

The first thing to consider in the making of a fit setting for the house is to lay out the plan or design; the last thing is to select the particular kinds of plants to be used. The place should be a picture. It should be one thing, not many things. If the design is correct and the planting is well done, all parts will be in harmony and the place will appeal to one as a whole. If the bushes and trees are scattered promiscuously over the yard, then there is no central idea and the attention is fixed upon the details rather than upon the place. Figs. 88 and 89 illustrate these contrasts.

The one central thought or idea in home grounds is the house. Therefore, make the house emphatic. Let it stand out boldly, as in Fig. 89. Keep the center of the place open. Do not clutter it with trees, flower beds and other distracting things.

If the house is to be made emphatic, give it a flanking. Plant trees or bushes, or both, on the sides. Back it up, also, with trees. If it sets in front of a natural wood or an orchard, the effect is better. If the country is bare and bald behind it, plant tall trees there.

Make as few walks and drives as possible. They are always unsightly and expensive. Let them lead to their destination by the most direct curves. Do not make them crooked; for crooked walks and drives are expensive. Gentle curves are more retired and modest than awkward and laborious ones. Fig. 90 shows a good, easy curve. If possible, place the walk or drive at the side, rather than in the center: avoid cutting up the lawn.

Most of the planting should be in masses. Plants present a bolder front when standing together. A group is one thing; scattered shrubs are many things, and they divert and distract the attention. By massing, one secures endless combinations of light and shade, of color, and of form. Against the mass-planting, flowers show off best; they have a background, as a picture has when it hangs on a wall. One canna or geranium standing just in front of heavy foliage makes more show than do a dozen plants when standing in the middle of the lawn; it is more easily cared for, and it does not spoil the lawn. A flower bed in the middle of the sward spoils a lawn, as a spot soils the table-cloth. Flowers at the side, or joined to the other planting, are a part of the picture; in the middle of the lawn they are only a spot of color and mean nothing except that the grower did not know where to put them.

Take these suggestions to heart. Consider which you like the better, Fig. 91 or 92. Consider, also, how Fig. 92 would look if plants were scattered all over the yard.

Plants are difficult to grow in little holes in the sod. The grass takes the moisture. They are always in the way. The yard in Fig. 92 can be mown with a field mower. The bushes take care of themselves. If one dies, it matters little: others fill the gaps. If pigweeds come up amongst them, little or no harm is done. They add to the variety of foliage effect. One does not feel that he must stop his cultivating or sheep-shearing to dig them out. In the fall, the leaves blow off the open lawn and are held in the bushes; there they make an ideal mulch, and they need not be removed in the spring. In front of this shrubbery a space two or three feet wide may be left for flowers. Here sow and plant with a free hand. Have sufficient poppies and hollyhocks and pinks and lilies and petunias to supply every member of the family and every neighbor. Against the background they glow like coals or lie as soft as the snow.

Fill in the corners of the place. Round off the angularities. Throw a mass of herbage into the corner by the steps (Fig. 93): then you will not need to saw off the grass with a butcher knife. Plant a vine and some low plants along the foundations.

When these main or fundamental things are considered, then some of the incidental things may be considered. If you are fond of some particular plant, as the hydrangea, plant it in some prominent place in front of the shrub border. You may want a tree to shade a window or a porch: plant it. You may want a pile of odd stones and relics: put them in the back yard, or at the side, where you may enjoy them unmolested. You may have any kind of plant you want, only put it in the right place.

Have an eye to the views. Build your house with reference to them, if you can. Do not plant so as to hide the good ones. Plant heavily in the direction of offensive views. Plant so as to obscure the barnyard; or else move the barnyard back of the barn, or clean it up. Leave the front of the barn open: you want to see it from the house.

HOW TO DO THE WORK

The lawn, then, is the first consideration. It is the canvas on which we are to paint a picture of home and comfort. In many cases the yard is already level or well graded and has a good sod, and it is not necessary to plow and re-seed. It should be said that the sod on old lawns can be renewed without plowing it up. In the bare or thin places, scratch up the ground with an iron-toothed rake, apply a little fertilizer, and sow more seed. Weedy lawns are those in which the sod is poor. It may be necessary to pull out the weeds; but after they are out the land should be quickly covered with sod or they will come in again. Annual weeds, as pigweeds and ragweed, can usually be crowded out by merely securing a heavier sod. A little clover seed will often be a good addition, for it supplies nitrogen and has an excellent mechanical effect on the soil.

The ideal time to prepare the land is in the fall, before the heavy rains come. Then sow in the fall, and again in early spring on a late snow. However, the work may be done in the spring, but the danger is that it will be put off so long that the young grass will not become established before the dry, hot weather comes.

The best lawn grass for New York is June-grass, or blue-grass. Seedsmen know it as _Poa pratensis_. It weighs but 14 pounds to the bushel. Not less than three bushels should be sown to the acre. We want many very small stems of grass, not a few large ones; for we are making a lawn, not a meadow.

Do not sow grain with the grass seed. The June-grass grows slowly at first, however, and therefore it is a good plan to sow timothy with it, at the rate of two or three quarts to the acre. The timothy comes up quickly and makes a green; and the June-grass will crowd it out in a year or two. If the land is hard and inclined to be too dry, some kind of clover will greatly assist the June-grass. Red clover is too large and coarse for the lawn. Crimson clover is excellent, for it is an annual, and it does not become unsightly in the lawn. White clover is perhaps best, since it not only helps the grass but looks well in the sod. One or two pounds of seed is generally sufficient for an acre.

At first the weeds will come up. Do not pull them. Mow the lawn as soon as there is any growth large enough to mow. Of course, the lawn-mower is best, but one can have a good place without it. Perhaps a hand lawn-mower (one with large wheels and not less than 16-inch cut) can be used to keep the sward close just about the house; then the field-mower may be used now and then for the remainder. Here is another advantage, as I have said, of the open-centered yard which I have recommended; it is easily mown. It would be a fussy matter to mow a yard planted after the fashion of Fig. 88; but one like Fig. 89 is easily managed.

The borders should be planted thickly. Plow up the strip. Never plant these trees and bushes in holes cut in the sod. Scatter the bushes and trees promiscuously in the narrow border. In home grounds, it is easy to run through these borders occasionally with a cultivator, for the first year or two. Make the edges of the border irregular. Plant the lowest bushes on the inner edge toward the house.

For all such things as lilacs, mock oranges, Japan quinces, and bushes that are found along the roadsides, two or three feet apart is about right. Some will die anyway. Cut them back one-half when they are planted. They will look thin and stiff for two or three years; but after that they will crowd the spaces full, lop over on the sod, and make a billow of green. Prepare the land well, plant carefully, and let the bushes alone.

We now come to the details,--the particular kinds of plants to use. One great principle will simplify the matter: the main planting should be for foliage effects. That is, think first of giving the place a heavy border-mass. Flowers are mere decorations.

Select those trees and shrubs which are the commonest, because they are cheapest, hardiest and most likely to grow. There is no farm so poor that enough plants cannot be secured, without money, for the home yard. You will find the plants in the woods, in old yards, along the fences. It is little matter if no one knows their names. What is handsomer than a tangled fence-row?

Scatter in a few trees along the fence and about the buildings, particularly if the place is large and bare. Maples, basswood, elms, ashes, buttonwood, pepperidge, oaks, beeches, birches, hickories, poplars, a few trees of pine or spruce or hemlock,--any of these are excellent. If the country is bleak, a rather heavy planting of evergreens about the border, in the place of so much shrubbery, is excellent.

For shrubs, use the common things to be found in the woods and swales, together with roots, which can be had in every old yard. Willows, osiers, witch-hazel, dogwood, wild roses, thorn apples, haws, elders, sumac, wild honeysuckles,--these and others can be found in abundance. From old yards can be secured snowballs, spireas, lilacs, forsythias, mock oranges, roses, snowberries, barberries, flowering currants, honeysuckles, and the like.

Vines can be used to excellent purpose on the outbuildings or on the porches. The common wild Virginia creeper is the most serviceable. On brick or stone houses the Boston ivy or Japanese ampelopsis may be used, unless the location is very bleak. This is not hardy in the northern parts of the country. Honeysuckles, clematis and bitter-sweet are also attractive. Bowers are always interesting to children; and actinidia and akebia (to be had at nurseries) are best for this purpose.

If a regular flower garden is wanted, place at the side or rear of the place, where a liberal piece of land can be devoted to it.

Into these native shrub borders, throw some color from nursery-grown bushes if you choose. Mix in spireas, weigelas, roses--anything you like. A rare or strange plant may be introduced now and then, if there is any money with which to buy such things. Plant it at some conspicuous point just in front of the border, where it will show off well, be out of the way, and have some relation to the rest of the planting. Two or three purple-leaved or variegated-leaved bushes will add much spirit and verve to the place; but too many of them make the place look fussy and overdone. You can have a botanic garden of your own, even though you do not know the name of a single plant; and your home will be a picture at the same time.