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. Editors of howto publications, such as Popular Mechanics, Page 343check potential howto articles by building the furniture or equipment or by testing repair hints in labs or workshops before articles are published.There are thousands of howto articles published each year. Some publications exist for the sole purpose of publishing howto service articles. Students can write them for other students. These are good "training ground" features, in fact. An example: A major university's student employment office newsletter recently published a helpful article that focused on controlling stress. Written and edited by undergraduates, the newsletter often uses articles of this type to help student employees cope with life on campus a little more easily. A recent article discussed stress caused by exams, term papers, campus jobs, and other conflicts. The article gave "helpful hints" from experts about coping at the end of a semester.Columnist Heloise daughter of the original Heloise offers an entire column based on helpful hints for housekeeping and home life subjects. Heloise is a contributing editorcolumnist for Good Housekeeping and her longrunning national King Features column appears in 500 newspapers. The column is a Q & A format feature that solicits questions and suggestions or tips from readers. There are numerous other similar columns written at the local and regional and national levels that have been popular with newspaper and magazine readers for generations.ScrippsHoward News Service writer Lindsay Bond Totten recently wrote a gardening feature that was published in newspapers around the country that told readers how to add berms to their landscaped yards. The article explains berms and how to develop them:Berms are the height of landscape fashion. When well done, they can add interest and relief to an otherwise flat yard. Many gardeners build them for privacy.Berms are like any other landscape feature: in context and in scale, they fit the landscape like a glove. Everywhere else, they look a little silly.To get a feel for artistic berming, study a golf course. There are few abrupt bumps or artificiallooking hills. Notice how the land undulates, as if the contours had always been there.They weren't. When a golf course is built, the land is sculpted with a machine, gently rising in some areas, dipping in others, to make the berms look natural. Gradual changes are the key to blending berms into the existing topography. Page 344For gardeners with sloping properties or gentle hills, berms are a natural land form. Dirt can often be regraded to accent existing slopes, following the curves of the land.Gardeners with flat land face greater challenges. It's very difficult to make berms look natural when the surrounding landscape is completely flat.A landscape architect or landscape designer could be enlisted to help with the grading.If space permits, try to vary the height of the berm. Seldom are hills without some changes in height or width. The sheer symmetry of a berm can give it away by making it look contrived.Round off the crest of a berm to avoid sharp points or peaks.Gradually feather the soil into the existing grade. It should be hard to tell at which point a berm begins and the original grade ends.Use landscaping to further blur the line. A lawn that exactly follows the toe of the slope (the point at the bottom of a berm that meets the original soil) is a dead giveaway. Allow the lawn to cross the line in natural "mowable" curves.Berms can be anywhere from several inches to several feet in height. The size of the property and the purpose of the berm will help establish the appropriate scale.In small gardens, keep berms generally to 18 inches high or less. Build the berm entirely of topsoil 18 inches isn't all that deep and amend the surface for planting.Higher berms often contain a core of fill dirt or rubble, covered with 18 inches of good soil. Expect some settling as the topsoil compacts and fills the cracks between the chunks of rubble.Planting the berm should be fun. Some helpful hints:For privacy screening, mix fastgrowing shrubs with slowergrowing trees. As the screen fills in, consider thinning or removing some of the plants. A tight planting will someday require frequent pruning.Avoid planting a row of trees or shrubs precisely at the crest of the berm. Work on either side of the berm, just below the crest, to make the design appear more natural. Plant in groupings rather than in rows. Page 345Select plants that are relatively drought tolerant. Berms usually drain well and dry out quickly. Or, fit the mound with a drip irrigation system
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