07 Apr 2017

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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23 Oct 2016

The Art of Landscape Gardening #1

Beauty as a value in our western culture began its death throes from the unspeakable horror of the industrialized slaughter of countless millions of  World War I.   It stands to reason its disappearing  accelerated into oblivion with the slaughters which followed....World War II, and the estimated 20,000,000 in the USSR murdered by Joseph Stalin and the 60,000,000 killed by Mao Tse Dung to rearrange China into  police states. Music is an aural experience to...

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12 Sep 2016

THE BEGINNING OF THE FALL

We human animals  spend much our life "avoiding"  falls. This is particularly true when the coming "fall"  happens to be your 82nd birthday.  Yet, without it I'd be already dead.  (Oh, the irony of Life!)   And without that fall there'd be no blessed Spring. Fall, that is the autumn one in our Minnesota , is a very short Fall, often barely over a month long  with every day the prospect of  colder, much colder...

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31 Aug 2016

When Color Conquers the Landscape Garden

BUTCHART GARDENS // VANCOUVER ISLAND, BRITISH COLUMBIA   Color in the well developed landscape garden usually conquers all other senses and moods possessed by the human visitor.  It is the most enticing lure collecting visitors.  Spring is usually the season when the   most spectacular  of color shows occur.   The foliage is fresh in color and texture especially in our Minnesota location. It is obvious to us northern landscape gardeners the beautiful colorful display...

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04 Aug 2016

Is There a Sunkist Arborvitae in Your Future?

Masterpiece Landscaping is a Twin City, Minnesota  artistic landscaping company nearing its 30th birthday.   We line up and plant  garden trees, shrubs, annuals and perennials  in rows only when artistically required to fit  formal settings or for some other special artistic display to inspire visitors. Landscape gardens, ideally,  should inspire the designer, the builder, and above all,   the home or business owners and their visitors whom we serve. It should never be forgotten,...

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01 Aug 2016

Landscape Gardens, Like People, Gain Character With Age…..

......or, at least they should!    But, then, what is a landscape garden? It is not a vegetable, beer, or flower garden, that's for certain. A landscape garden, at its best, is the most honored of all human art forms.   Nearly every human  culture's paradise is perceived as a garden perfection,  therefore....a, THE,  Garden of Eden....a place of perfect harmony for the eye, body,  mind, and soul.   Its pieces are various collections and...

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14 Jul 2016

The Disappearance of the Beautiful throughout Today’s American Art

Some things heard and/or seen are simply more beautiful than others.....in the eyes and ears of the normal, that is.....Psychotics live on a different planet 'normally'.   Beethoven's adagios make the recordings of noise at your local super market sound like dead skunks stink. No one listens to anything Beethoven anymore.    What is celebrated as music today  is  noise to the ear as the fragrance a well used summer  out house is to the...

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22 May 2016

Masterpiece Home Grounds Open House Thursday of This Week

Masterpiece clients, friends, followers, helpers, and 'newbies' are all welcomed to join our Masterpiece Landscaping family Open Garden  at our home grounds, this Thursday,  May, 26, 2016,  from 4 PM to dark..... Usually this event occurs in August, not always the most spectacular show time to display outstanding  landscape beauty in our Minnesota. In beautifying the landscaped garden world, May is the most beautiful, the most fragrant, colorful, inspiring refreshing season of the year in our...

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02 May 2016

The Spring Landscape Garden is the Most Beautiful

The vast majority of urban and suburban  home owners and others who visit the outdoors rather often,  are not particularly interested in beautiful landscape gardens.    Such gardens  are too rare   to be found.  If ever found, they are usually limited to the back 'yard'. Not that there might not be well manicured grounds, well mowed lawns, a healthy tree or two implying a degree of neatness and care somewhere.    But where are...

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07 Apr 2016

“Whither Goest Thine Eye?”……(with your landscape in mind)

Whether one lives in the woods, in suburbia, the city with "a yard" or on the 24th floor of some structure, most of us have two eyes which help lead us on our path from birth "to dusty death" as Shakespeare described the end for some. Our eyes  absorb things ugly and things of beauty.   What the eye absorbs usually becomes  habit forming.    Our todays are not carbon copies of yesterdays personally, collectively,...

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