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16 May 2017
May 16, 2017 0 Comments By masterpiecelandscapingadmin battling the Minnesota climate, garden seasons, Plant health, The Art of Landscaping

Redbuds and Spring, 2017 in Twin City Land

Nearly no one gardens anymore......whether the vegetable or the flower one.....even in Minnesota. Seventy years ago, even during World War II and its previous Depression years, most city folk did manage to garden for food and flower .....as did our local  farmers who hadn't lost  their land. "Working" the land was still common regardless of 'plot' size.    People knew what  kohlrabi and  bleeding heart were. Redbuds were understory trees, weeding throughout  eastern forest openings incapable...

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08 May 2017
May 8, 2017 0 Comments By masterpiecelandscapingadmin garden seasons, perennials, The Art of Landscaping

Spring is an A Plus for the Home Landscape This Year

NOT ALL SPRINGS ARE EQUAL There is no doubt from my life's experience  especially in the  landscape garden arts  that winters were colder, more brutal,  and longer during my outdoor life as a child  compared to the last five decades of Twin City, Minnesota existence.    I was raised in a five room bungalow house in St. Paul, Minnesota.  My outdoor winter life began "in earnest" around 1940 when I was six.   Despite being...

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09 Apr 2017
April 9, 2017 0 Comments By masterpiecelandscapingadmin Bulbs, garden seasons, Ground Covers, The Art of Landscaping

Twin City Spring…2017 in Our Northland

It's been very dry this Spring of our Minnesota northland.   It also has been warmer than usual, thank God!   Yes, Winter in Gopherland....which  should be called Rabbitland,  was colder and longer when I was four years old back in 1938, the first year  I discovered "garden". Minnesotans, at least we urban ones, had tons of close  friends and relatives who had to be visited including many owning a family farm.  I loved visiting...

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07 Apr 2017
April 7, 2017 0 Comments By masterpiecelandscapingadmin About Masterpiece, perennials, shrubs and trees, The Art of Landscaping

Today’s “Garden” Conditions AD 2017 and the Landscaped Garden

Most folks who own 'grounds' are not landscape garden gardeners.  Especially these days of cultures of different drives and habits. Beauty has disappeared from today's American cultural experience and has been absent for more than two generations.   Yes, this is a matter of opinion, but most of you readers and "non-readers" aren't old enough to remember the late 1930s through the 1950s when Americans of the Great Depression became dedicated to win a World...

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03 Apr 2017
April 3, 2017 0 Comments By masterpiecelandscapingadmin Gardening, Landscaping ,

My first “employment” in The Garden

I am Glenn Ray, the old timer of Masterpiece Landscaping, Ltd.   It was 75 years ago this very May, I began my first venture in ‘managing’ a gardened piece of land.  It was the Spring following Pearl Harbor.  Our America was at World War.   I lived in a very modest, but newer part of St. Paul, Minnesota at that time, a neighborhood where there were a number of empty lots, all sized at...

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20 Mar 2017
March 20, 2017 0 Comments By masterpiecelandscapingadmin General, Landscaping

The Rabbit Problem

I have made myself wander through our gardened grounds here in Minnetonka where I have lived since January 1, 1974.   Walking through and cleaning up the grounds isn’t as easy as it used to be.  I had knee replacement surgery on my right leg late last November.   That plus my elderly condition in general has delayed service in my keeping the grounds beautiful….. ……especially when I wasn’t around to keep deer and rabbits “in...

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03 Feb 2017
February 3, 2017 0 Comments By masterpiecelandscapingadmin battling the Minnesota climate, garden maintenance, Plant health, Rodent Control

The Beauty of the Fragrance of Human Manure In the Landscape Garden

Winter is rarely  a kind season for most of our landscape gardens and their gardeners  here in Minnesota.   Winds,  killer  evening temperatures,  crushing snow layers, sunburns on bark, deer, dogs,  and then there are the rabbits. Sixty years of rumor have told me   rabbits are hit with a vicious virus or two about every seven years which wipes out the vast majority of a settled rabbit population...,.I used to believe the rumor....until reviewing...

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17 Nov 2016
November 17, 2016 0 Comments By masterpiecelandscapingadmin battling the Minnesota climate, Plant health, shrubs and trees

2016….The Most Beautiful Autumn of My Conscious Life

About six weeks ago I had planned in mind, but not on paper or computer, what a landscape garden expert...me....should share to you, the vast landscape garden  unaware of the great outdoors around you before snowfall. I had in mind a written lecture NEVER to almost  never, mine the grounds you own by throwing away its leaves, for leaves should be recycled rather than burned or sent to garbage.....I planned to suggest tricks of my...

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26 Oct 2016
October 26, 2016 0 Comments By masterpiecelandscapingadmin Gardening, Weeding ,

The Wisp of Winter without an Attracting Setting is Often Very Gray……and Very, Very Cold

Temperature doesn’t measure the arrival of Winter in Minnesota.   Our landscapes usually do. If one bothers to look,  Winter in Minnesota is equal to Spring and Fall in the quality of its beauty  offered by sight.   Outdoor viewing during and immediately after snowfall creates a landscape garden aura of its own…..if there is a landscape garden in site, that is. And, let us thank God, this garden “aura” doesn’t occur in summer as...

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26 Oct 2016
October 26, 2016 0 Comments By masterpiecelandscapingadmin shrubs and trees, The Art of Landscaping

Without Decay, There Is No Life…Especially in the Landscaped Garden

Dear Minnesota  Homeowner....It's late October in the Twin Cities.   What are you planning to do with all of those falling leaves now swirling around your grounds? Most likely you'll do what you've done as long as you have lived in your Twin City house...either rake the leaves up,  or  very loudly power blow them into a pile, bag them up and have them  driven  someplace  to make them disappear. I have lived on my...

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