Making a Lawn

It is the intention of the publishers to make this series of little volumes, of which Making a Lawn is one, a complete library of authoritative and well illustrated handbooks dealing with the activities of the home-maker and amateur gardener. Text, pictures and diagrams will, in each respective book, aim to make perfectly clear the possibility of having, and the means of having, some of the more important features of a modern country or suburban home. Among the titles already issued or planned for early publication are the following: Making a Rose Garden ; Making a Tennis Court ; Making a Garden Bloom This Year ; Making a Fireplace ; Making Roads and Paths ; Making a Poultry House ; Making a Hotbed and Coldframe ; Making Built-in Bookcases, Shelves and Seats ; Making a Rock Garden ; Making a Water Garden ; Making a Perennial Border ; Making a Shrubbery Group ; Making a Naturalized Bulb Garden ; with others to be announced later.

Lawn is probably the most important element in the setting for most country houses, yet all too frequently it is expected to make and take care of itself
Copyright, 1912, by McBRIDE, NAST & CO.
Published March, 1912

TO the thousands of anxious inquirers, seeking solution of lawn difficulties, it would be more than delightful to say that a fine lawn could be had by very hard wishing, but honesty compels one to change the words hard wishing to hard work, in order to keep strictly within the truth. A well-made lawn is a testimonial to a hustler, whether the area is small or large.
The majority of inquiries about lawn needs come from people having small places, from a few hundred to a few thousand feet, and the symptoms described
can be divided into two classes: one where they want to make grass grow where it has never grown before, and the other where the call is for information to assist in restoring old lawns that have petered out. Let us take up the last condition first.
Where grass has grown for some years it is conclusive evidence that there must be soil beneath, which, perhaps because of neglect, has ceased to supply the nourishment necessary to maintain the vigor of the sod growing upon it. As a consequence, weeds gradually creep in and finally crowd out every blade of grass.