I believe I write for all of us at Masterpiece that this landscape season we have had a wonderul group of new clients to add to our company's family of beautiful grounds. At a group of over 75 clients who gathered at our home grounds last Thursday I asked our clients how many were offered a plan by Masterpiece as we began our landscape projects at their homes. I knew the answer, of course. I...
Read More >>We learn these days from university that certain plants are evil. Their school room instructors demand the public help the sainted to rid our pristine world of certain things foul. Many of us humans are not quite yet actually on their lists, but a lot of plants are. We learn which ones both from people in politics and from neighbors with public enthusiasm who seek purpose in life. For twenty years now university disciples, people...
Read More >>I remember well the summer of 1988. I was working for a grounds maintenance company, some place out of Bloomington. Clients were a number of big corporations which occupied large pieces of property. I got $8 an hour, but was called 'the Professor', because I knew something about plants. The hired, including me, were hired to be laborers, were expected to be laborers, and confined to be laborers. Few holes were dug.....nearly nothing was planted....
Read More >>Mine is a landscape garden grounds. Most rooms differ one from another. Most of the structure is managed by conifers.....after all, the winter landscape in Minnesota is as long as Spring, Summer, and Autum put together.......six months if you really want to know.; Color is very important and is highly valued in my grounds. But it is only equal to texture and secondary to form, both shape and size. I control color in a number of...
Read More >>Whether in the Landscape Garden or in the standard Minnesota city and suburban Yard, the answer to the question "What is a Weed" should be the same: .....A PLANT OUT OF PLACE..... That is the answer, the whole answer, and nothing but the answer! We are familiar with landscapes covered almost entirely with lawn. Until the population began moving to the suburbs in the 1950s, the only landscape generally seen was a copy of the neighbor's.........
Read More >>SUNKIST ARBORVITAE: Probably the most stunning plant on my grounds is the 20 foot Sunkist Arborvitae in my front grounds. Its form, bright gold color, and size dominate the scene as I or anyone drives to my house located at the end of a cul-de-sac. Although its size impresses the viewer in winter, from late February to December it is brilliant yellow of the new foliage which makes this huge form so noticed and so beautiful. Its size...
Read More >>"Beethovem is to the EAR what a Beautiful Landscape Garden is to the EYE. If they are to be enjoyed to their fullest, they must be allowed to enter the privacy of your thoughts and emotions to allow reflections of life and its beauty to enter your soul. One of my very favorite, indeed, perhaps my favorite mood piece to perceive aurally to blend into my visual landscape garden inspiration, is Beethoven's adagio movement to his Spring...
Read More >>I began my drive to create a landscape garden 38 years ago this past Spring. I had just been appointed to become Executive Secretary of the Minnesota State Horticultural Society and was winding up my graduate "studies" program and the University of Minnesota Horticultural Department. But the useable part of my education never came from those post graduate studies. The two year effort was like being in the military service paying duty as a part...
Read More >>A people's culture is imprisoned by the habits of the day. It is designed by religion, politics, and education or the lack of it whereever people collect and settle. We live in an America that has been reduced to the indoors. Perhaps the majority of its population now believe that the tomato is manufactured at the local super market or factory. We live in an America whose indoor college graduates in the social sciences believe that...
Read More >>That age old saying, "One is closest to God in the garden" does not refer to a vegetable garden or flower bed.....or a home orchard. It refers to a landscape garden. What is a landscape garden, then?.......to be basic, it is a piece of land that is landscaped. It is a piece of land to be entered as one enters a cathedral or a cemetery park, classically to inspire the visitor by the most revered...
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