I have long rooted for global warming....well, not so much global warming as Minnesota warming.....up to a point, of course. That point would occur when the Earth around where I live enters Horticultural zone five.....No warmer, and certainly no cooler. Why would I want to slip back into the dark ages of landscaping in Horticultural zone 3.5 or 4.0? I'll never see the day, but I have craved to be able to landscape in a...
Read More >>.....if one, especially the homeowner, has prepared for it. I cannot remember a winter more visually more beautiful than our present sample of snow and cold. It's been colder, much colder in the past. It has snowed, and snowed heavier in the past....but a winter such as ours here in the Twin Cities of Minnesota this season, cannot be beat for its beauty. I wonder how many of our fellow Twin Citians have recognized what...
Read More >>I love deer. My hunter-son hunts them during hunting season. We both are devoted to our occasionally gainful occupation in life, landscape gardening. My home, therefore my landscape gardened grounds which surround it, is located in the third tier of middle, very middle class Minneapolis suburbs. Streets here were planned to curve when homes were built in the late 1950s. The lots are bigger, more often the 250 by 120 foot irreglarly-shaped kind rather than...
Read More >>Unfortunately for the broader community, our Minnesota landscape industry does not view 'landscaping' as an art form. At university it is not taught as an art form. The ladies of the garden clubs love flowers. They do not consider the home grounds as a canvas for landscape garden beauty. Husbands are allowed to mow the lawn. Cities often demand trees be planted along the roadways whether needed or not and without regard for beauty. My...
Read More >>We should have shared this Onslaught of Winter article with readers a few weeks ago. However, the nature of this particular Twin City late autumn has been keeping our company busy until the real snow arrives. Each autumn in our area is unique in its appearance and character. No one seems to record each year's peculiarities and we usually remember only the extremes....especially the thirty inches one Halloween in the 1990s and a repeat the...
Read More >>We receive notices from city 'officials' in a monthly bulletin. City officials are politicians and want people to re-elect them. Here in Minnetonka where I live city officials are officials for life..... In our horticulture world they rail against wild mustard and buckthorn nearly every month during the growing season. A few years ago purple loosestrife was on the city officials hate list. Now that European insects which suck the life out of purple loosestrife...
Read More >>October 10th is the average date in Minnesota's Twin Cities and environs of winter's first frost. My landscape gardening experience reminds me that over the past 25 years this first frost date has been delayed to around October 14th. Thank God! Landscape Gardening is supposed to be an art form. One would never know that 'supposed to be' by looking at our Twin Cities' practice of the art. In our modern day one has to...
Read More >>In general the Minnesota home owner knows little to nothing about the landscape garden world. They do not understand it as an art form. They do not know the names or the habits of the plants in the neighborhood as well as on their property. A shade tree gets big, conifers are called pines, shrubs are bushy. No one really pays much attention to names. "I don't like spiraeas", a recent new client uttered in...
Read More >>Panic in autumn regarding Minnesota conifers is a condition of the human Minnesotan who notices yellowing of foliage among conifers and begins to worry about it. These Minnesota's conifers don't panic for they are doing their normal conifer thing....ridding themselves of yesteryears' leaves, foliage, needles, whichever you wish to call their stuff turning brown in the autumn....usually the leaves older than three to five years. Usually only the garden-aware Minnesotans pay attention to such environmental...
Read More >>My landscape garden abuts a man-made pond with about 200 feet of "shoreline". The pond was the trumpcard ensuring my drive to purchase the property late 1973. True, the house was an uninteresting box and smaller than our Minneapolis home, but I was finished with city life. Hippies with all of their ugly, had invaded our neighborhood....and I had three children to raise. The box was at the end of a cul de sac where...
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