Winter Twin Cities, Minnesota, 2011 has not yet arrived. The joy is mixed with sorrow at Masterpiece Landscaping, at least from this writer’s perspective.
The Joy:
For most of this past month, December, there has been little precipitation, meaning no snow. For this past month I have been able to stroll along my garden paths and pretend I am working. I always enjoy its beauty.
Yes, the ground is frozen which eliminates planting or transplanting/ That suits me fine. I can resume the habit in due time when Spring truly returns. Mine is predominantly a conifer landscape garden supported by perennials and ground covers. It is most beautiful in winter for several reasons.
Conifer landscape gardens are most beautiful at this time of the year either without snow or with a reasonable amount of snowfall…..unlike the November 13th deluge of snowfall of last year, 32 inches worth at my grounds, which buried nearly everything in sight but the mature pines and spruce. This winter with no snow, the browns, golds, and greens of the ground cover regions replace the white and add to the variety of textures, colors and forms created by those conifers of the higher tiers of plant growth. One still sees the greens of the Alberta Spruce, bluish greens of the Holger’s juniper, the maroons of the Heatherbun Chamaecyparis, and golds of most of the yellow folliaged Chamaecyparis pisiferas. My Rhinegold arborvitaes vary in color from a gold rust, to powdery green, depending upon the amount of exposure to sunlight. The blues of the dwarf Colorado Blue spruce are bluer thus far this winter. Among the dominant trees, the green of the Eastern White pine is as pure a green it always is.
The Sunkist Arborvitaes are often moody about their color changing in winter. This winter the one I prune to maintain as a shrub is still as yellow as a Sunkist could ever be. My major Sunkist, twenty five feet East of this ‘shrub’ Sunkist is now over twenty feet tall. It was artistically pruned early last Spring and is still bright yellow from growth after its last year’s hair cut. The five or six others I’ve planted on the property vary from yellowish to decidedly greenish. All will yellow brightly starting about the first of March.
The most blue of my Dwarf Colorado Blue Spruce every winter is the Seven Sisters weeper. Most of the others, regardless of the kind of winter, turn to a gray for winter display.
The creation or preservation of plant forms is very important in the ideal landscape garden. It is hard to beat the form of so many conifers, either displayed as individuals or in groupings for harmony. A winter without much snow is an excellent time to evaluate garden harmony. Never will there be a time in your landscape garden when negative space will become so widespread, and if you have planned, planted and pruned well, so appreciated.
I and our Masterpiece garden here at my home, were severely criticised during the growing seasons last year, by my colleagues, son Chris Ray and Josh Perlich. I happened to allow one of my favorite garden flowers, Angelica gigas….normally a six to ten footer each in height multiply from its seed production the year earlier. Finally, after the spectacular candelabra of floral form in August and September hiding nearly every plant in sight, I began culling and began once again to appreciate the duty of negative space separating the beauty of plant forms.
In all, I discarded around 230 “Gigas”. A couple dozen of this biennial, attractive in foliage, flower and form, still remain in today’s winter setting displaying their seed clusters. They are still attractive. I shall have to do some better old fashioned hoeing next year….all garden season long, to control ‘gigas’s’ love to live and reproduce.
The Sorrow of a winter without snow.
If a vital part of ones income in Winter comes from plowing snow, what then if there is no snow? I’ll let your imagination take to answer the question.