Thank you everyone. 
I will remember the cloth square tip, but I've got the ground plane to morph.

I cannot get the morph dots to appear, but TrekkieGrrrl says it will morph: TG's big toe knows more about this than I do, so......what am I doing wrong??......

.......previously I had the morph tool radius set to work on a couple of points at a time on Don's ear, trying this on the ground, like digging a hole with a cotton bud. 

When I raised the radius to 0.5 and the magnitude to 2.0, the dots appeared and the grid showed the slight pushed and pulled deformation I wanted. 

So easy really : if I used my brain to think with, I'd probably be dangerous.