A MATTER OF TIME
CONDITION OF THE LAWN AN AMERICAN IN ENGLAND. Americans who have been seeing England for the first time in this Coronation year have admired the lawns round some of its stately homes. Perhaps there are many who have not heard the old story of the millionaire who came upon a gardener at Oxford, and said to the gardener: “I’d sure like a lawn like this way back in Chicago. How do I get agoin’?”
The old English gardener looked at him with smiling eyes. “You will need some of our native soil,” he said.
“Oh, that’s all right,” the hustler declared. “We’ll soon have a few hundred tons of that shipped over.”
“And some grass seed,” said the gardener. “0.K.” the American agreed.
“And you must be sure the ground is levelled up to begin with,” the gardener explained, “and you need the English soil for a top dressing. The seed should be sown in the autumn, and the grass wants rolling and cutting in the spring, and then rolling and cutting again.”
“I get you. And how long do we have it rolled and cut?”
“Well,” said the English gardener, thinking it out slowly, “if you want to get it into really fine condition I should say two hundred years would do it.”
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/HPGAZ19370906.2.35
Bibliographic details
Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 47, Issue 2666, 6 September 1937, Page 5
Word Count
218A MATTER OF TIME Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 47, Issue 2666, 6 September 1937, Page 5
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