Snowfalls are great for Landscape Companies in cold climes like Minnesota who have a snowplowing business in Winter. We, at Masterpiece are one of them.
Winter is a good time for certain kinds of pruning, but most gardens in these parts are in deep sleep this time of year. Thank God for plowing driveways.
I have just spent a couple hours prowling through my own gardened grounds to do some pruning and prepare some conifers for a ten inch snowfall forecasted by the local weather people this morning. The deluge is expected to begin tomorrow in the early afternoon.
It will be the wet stuff….which might cause probems with some evergreens, especially if the snowfall exceed four inches. Last week’s four-inch drop was very wet. And so with another snowstorm, a heavier one scheduled to be on its way, I went out onto my grounds to prepare for the return of winter.
Some conifers are more troubled by heavy wet snow than others, even some within the same species…..arborvitaes (Thuja), for example. Rheingold, Bowling Ball, born to become floppy if needed, usually collapse out of sight under the weight of snow. Even my 7 foot Siberian Arborvitae and a couple of teenage deGroot’s gradually disappeared from view in the 12 hour 30 inch snowfall on November 13, 2010 at my home.
I highly recommend homeowners don’t depend on such good fortune. Not all wet snowfalls are the same. Many of my gardens’ conifers still were covered with heavy blobs of small boulder sized crusty and icy snow clumps from last week’s dump. I brushed them off from the arborvitaes and upright junipers, all of the chamaecyparis, and a few spruce. Hemlocks, pines, and yews don’t seem to be bother much by heavy snowfalls. Colorado Spruce foliage and branchings are very strong and stiff. Even with the 32 inches of snow that hit my property that November didn’t phase the Blue Spruce I have. But, to be safe, I brushed off the snow blobs on them as well.
Pruning this time of year should be wisely limited to only a few plants. Experience is always a good teacher regarding what the landscaper can get by with successfully.
One notices visual artistic errors better in Winter. Abundance of foliage hides such scars the rest of the year. Cross branchings, ugly branches, plants with ugly forms, weedy woodies, unexpected woodies, failing woodies are better seen in Winter. One can view the unpleasantness more clearly and more often through windows as well as along walkways.
The winter landscape garden, all six months of it each year, should be as beautiful as any garden any other time of the year.
If it isn’t, be sure to call us at Masterpiece to create a beautiful winter garden or setting for you this Spring or Summer. Call us at 952-933-5777.