The present winter, the one without a January and February, has been an agitating one. We've been waiting winter's arrival since November 13th , the anniversary of the 25-35 inch snowfall the year before; the winter without any thaw in both January and February. The snow kept coming down and piling up around us. Landscape gardens disppeared, hibernating under the snow until mid March a year ago. I couldn't walk my grounds all snow...
Read More >>I just now came across this beautiful video of one of God’s beauties of life, the Delivery of a Fawn. It reminded me of one of the most inspiring sights of my life some fifteen or twenty years ago which occurred in my own home landscape garden one Spring. As you know, I am by profession, a landscape gardener. I have planted and nursed a beautiful setting on my homegrounds since I and my family moved...
Read More >>How many times a day do you enjoy walking your garden paths? Have you noticed how much more fulfilling these walks are in winter than in any other season of the year? There may be less color; the fragrances are fewer or more hidden; the sounds are clearer in the particular, but silent in the mass, more than the other six months of each year. However, in no other daytime can the forms of the uprights show...
Read More >>at least thus far fellow Northlanders..... Previous to yesterday the vast majority of my grounds was bare of snow. Where snow did exist, there was no accumulation, but only a dusting here or there in areas beyond the reach of the Sun. As most of you readers know, I am thoroughly in favor of our Twin Cities moving into Horticultural zone 5. In some grounds we are almost there, but msot of those grounds are...
Read More >>I have coyote preying on my grounds. The resident couple have produced a pup. We seldom see these folks, but they are there and we have quicky pictures to prove their settlement. In the thirty eight years of my residency here in suburban Minneapolis , I have been able to create and maintain a beautiful classic landscape garden. We live in a climate in which winter is the major landscape season, as long as all...
Read More >>Winter Twin Cities, Minnesota, 2011 has not yet arrived. The joy is mixed with sorrow at Masterpiece Landscaping, at least from this writer's perspective. The Joy: For most of this past month, December, there has been little precipitation, meaning no snow. For this past month I have been able to stroll along my garden paths and pretend I am working. I always enjoy its beauty. Yes, the ground is frozen which eliminates planting or transplanting/ That suits...
Read More >>The Bleak Season at my grounds last year began on Saturday, November 13 with a 32 inch dump of wet snow burying nearly every plant shorter than ten feet tall. This snow and a lot more following it lasted all winter long. There was no January thaw, the first in my memory causing drifts up to six feet making paths impassable. The snow was so deep I couldn't plow my body through the permasnow five feet deep where...
Read More >>This article should be considered a WARNING to any readers who planted or had us or anyone else plant new plant materials on your grounds since about the first of July this year in the Twin City area. We certainly had a number of rainfalls earlier in the year. Many were of the plundering type in which the downpour was overwhelming but not terribly helpful to landscape garden plants. Following these deluges, we have had...
Read More >>By habit northerners, including amateur and professional 'horticulture' oriented people refer to color in the autumn garden as any color but green. Red, pink, scarlet, orange, rust, chartreuse, gold, yellow, maroon, plum....you get the idea......green is never listed. This is mainly the habit, monkey see, monkey do. But there is another reason why these days greens have become so much more important in the art of landscape gardening. Over the past twenty five years the greatest numbers...
Read More >>Because of this present November being exceptionally dry, pleasant, beautiful, and void of a killing frost until last Wednesday night here in the Twin Cities, landscape gardeners have been able to spend more time than usual amid their garden plants. These following questions arise for all of us and our answers may vary from year to year. To water or not to water? Who expected the last part of October to be so dry?......and after...
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