A simple and gradually sloping bank can nearly always be made to take
the place of a terrace. For example, let the operator make a terrace,
with sharp angles above and below, in the fall of the year; in the
spring, he will find (if he has not sodded it heavily) that nature has
taken the matter in hand and the upper angle of the terrace has been
washed away and deposited in the lower angle, and the result is the
beginning of a good series of curves. Figure 59 shows an ideal slope,
with its double curve, comprising a convex curve on the top of the bank,
and a concave curve at the lower part. This is a slope that would
ordinarily be terraced, but in its present condition it is a part of the
landscape picture. It may be mown as readily as any other part of the
lawn, and it takes care of itself.

[Illustration: Fig. 60. Treatment of a sloping lawn.]

[Illustration: Fig. 61. Treatment of a very steep bank.]

The diagrams in Fig. 60 indicate poor and good treatment of a lawn. The
terraces are not needed in this case; or if they are, they should never
be made as at 1. The same dip could be taken up in a single curved bank,
as at 3, but the better way, in general, is to give the treatment shown
in 2. Figure 61 shows how a very high terrace, 4, can be supplaced by a
sloping bank 5. Figure 62 shows a terrace that falls away too suddenly
from the house.

_The bounding lines._

In grading to the borders of the place, it is not always necessary, nor
even desirable, that a continuous contour should be maintained,