For those of you who have visited our Materpiece home grounds in Minnetonka you often comment how lush everything appears to be. I do too. First, by the luck of the 'home' draw where I live, the soil nearly throughout the grounds is loamy and deep. Second, I have only a nine minute lawn mowing reponsibility here leaving 90% of the land space, minus house, garage, and driveway, 'open' country for landscape gardening. I then have...
Read More >>It is cold today....for this Spring, that is.....windy and 40 degrees F. ......a normal Spring after a normal Winter, but not for a winter without a January and February, that is this past season of little precipitation and no traditional Minnesota wind and cold. Last year we wouldn't have noticed. Checking out our landscape grounds, I noticed last Saturday, March 24, 2012, that the following are now in bloom performance: Merrill Magnolia, Leonard Messell Magnolia, Weekend Forsythia,...
Read More >>I have never been to Japan, but have spent almost a year of my life roaming around the traditional landscape gardens of England, Scotland and Wales. I moved from one paradise on to another, again and again. The United Kingdom government is interested in accruing money for the National welfare, and know full well, the art of the Landscape Garden is the Kingdom's most cherished art form.....financially, in numbers of visitors to these Edens, and historically the...
Read More >>The most beautiful winter landscape garden in my thirty eight years of living here in Minnetonka occurred this winter, 2011-2o12. In this the first winter without a January or February in the Twin Cities to my knowledge, there was little snow, no rain, and no cold. The yellows of the golden chamaecyparis, sunkist and yellow ribbon arborvitaes, the plum of the Andorra junipers, blues of the Dwarf Colorado blue spruce and even the blue pfitzers...
Read More >>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...
Read More >>When is a weed a weed. When it is a dandelion? Well, maybe....usually yes, because dandelions makes a lovely lawn appear ugly, expecially when the seeds are produced. Because the seeds are produced in such numbers, dandelions become a more noticeable weed. In our Masterpiece Landscaping dictionary, a weed is defined as "a plant out of place". Our Masterpiece Landscape garden where I live doesn't have much lawn. If there are dandelions, they occur occasionally...
Read More >>My Mother was into punishment, that is, for me, being her only son. She was a driven energetic and creative human being who could give a doll to her only daughter to ensure the girl’s disappearance from my Mother’s tasks at hand…..which were many, including some not terribly necessary from an outsider’s point of view. I don’t think she ever experienced a bored thirty seconds in her lifetime even on her death bed. I have learned through these, my...
Read More >>What is a Landscape Garden? "The garden has long been perceived as the highest, most perfect form of all art creations, the one closest to God and bearing the imagery of paradise itself. Indeed, the timeless quote, "One is closest to God in the garden," has been the splendid pleasure driving countless generations to transform the land into garden. No matter how pleasurable, how physically and spiritually rewarding working the vegetable garden and nurturing the...
Read More >>There may be some global warming folks, but it was not caused by mankind and will not be a threat to human existence nor the Earth itself. Do you remember that terrifying 8.9 earthquake last March off northeastern Japan? Well, it seems it tampered with the length of an Earth day a bit. Read the following article from SPACE.com: HOW THE JAPANESE EARTHQUAKE SHORTENED DAYS ON EARTH "The massive earthquake that struck northeast Japan Friday...
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