Masterpiece Landscaping is a Twin City, Minnesota artistic landscaping company nearing its 30th birthday. We line up and plant garden trees, shrubs, annuals and perennials in rows only when artistically required to fit formal settings or for some other special artistic display to inspire visitors.
Landscape gardens, ideally, should inspire the designer, the builder, and above all, the home or business owners and their visitors whom we serve. It should never be forgotten, however, the installing the beautiful landscape garden is one art form, maintaining it is entirely another. We provide both services.
The Sunkist arborvitae, and its twin sister, the Yellow Ribbon, are recent visitors to the upper midWest landscape, both being ‘born’ and made available for only about 20 years. I’ve been growing Sunkist on my grounds for nearly twenty years. Yellow Ribbon is more a newbie, available for only the past ten years locally. The twins are identical to us commoners. The following growth and care information about these twins is what is typically advertised as the following:
SUNKIST ARBORVITAE: (Thuja occidentalis ‘Sunkist’ “Very bright golden tips. Semi-dwarf, broad globe-shaed or oval pyramid shape form. Compact growth habit. Bright yellow foliage turns dark yellow to orange in fall/winter. Evergreen shrub. Great for use in asian style gardens, rock gardens, as a border or edge plant, or as a specimen or accent plant.
HEIGHT: 4-6 FEET WIDTH: 4-6 FEET Exposure: Full sun Hardiness Zones: 3-8
The above information doesn’t provide fullness of truth, however. It is a carbon copy of the sales tag the Sunkist or Yellow Ribbon bears when displayed for sale at your local Midwestern nursery. But is it true and helpful to the garden caretaker? It depends upon their location, the amount and length of sunlight available, and the care you and/or Nature provide them, the quality and character of the soil in which they live, or try to, and the amount and reliability of water available to the plants each week.
I have probably seven or eight of these golden arborvitaes growing in my landscape gardens. The three oldest are all over twenty feet tall and seven or eight feet in width. Others I prune for shape or size control depending upon their location in the garden settings. However, I have outstanding soil to serve such plantings….both in tilth and depth…and have an artificial watering system which guarantees my plants water during season every other day. I also fertilize somewhat reliably…usually starting in February with Milorganite and standard 10-10-10 granulated once or twice early season until mid July.
All ‘golden’ arborvitaes including the global, are the same plant essentially. In contrast, on grounds without such amenities for ideal plant growth, these arborvitaes are quite different….In our neighborhood at a grounds a couple doors to the East, I planted a Sunkist arborvitae #10 pot about twelve years ago. It has received little care. It sat ‘ungrowing’ but alive at four feet for the first half of its new life and since has gathered character and beauty at about the six foot mark. It eventually most likely by living twenty or more years, it will reach the twenty foot height similar to my plantings, with or without extra fertilizing. If no fertilizing is added to its annual needs, the tree’s foliage often does start to look thin and somewhat unhappy, and begins to lose a bit of that bright Spring yellow the plant so well offers if treated right. There have been more ‘yellow’ and turquoise foliaged conifers made available over the past two decades adding new colors as well as shapes and sizes to improve our local landscape gardens. Unfortunately, our Twin City public seems immune to the outdoors surrounding the places where they live. Our schools no longer teach much about outdoor vegetative life these days. Have you ever heard of: Chamaecyparis? Microbiota? Gigas Angelica? Fernleaf Buckthorn? Purple or Amber Jubilee Smokebush? If you, or you and your neighbors or garden club members are interested in visiting our ‘home’ Masterpiece Landscape Garden. please all us at 952 933 5777.