16 May 2017

Redbuds and Spring, 2017 in Twin City Land

Nearly no one gardens anymore......whether the vegetable or the flower one.....even in Minnesota. Seventy years ago, even during World War II and its previous Depression years, most city folk did manage to garden for food and flower .....as did our local  farmers who hadn't lost  their land. "Working" the land was still common regardless of 'plot' size.    People knew what  kohlrabi and  bleeding heart were. Redbuds were understory trees, weeding throughout  eastern forest openings incapable...

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03 Feb 2017

The Beauty of the Fragrance of Human Manure In the Landscape Garden

Winter is rarely  a kind season for most of our landscape gardens and their gardeners  here in Minnesota.   Winds,  killer  evening temperatures,  crushing snow layers, sunburns on bark, deer, dogs,  and then there are the rabbits. Sixty years of rumor have told me   rabbits are hit with a vicious virus or two about every seven years which wipes out the vast majority of a settled rabbit population...,.I used to believe the rumor....until reviewing...

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17 Nov 2016

2016….The Most Beautiful Autumn of My Conscious Life

About six weeks ago I had planned in mind, but not on paper or computer, what a landscape garden expert...me....should share to you, the vast landscape garden  unaware of the great outdoors around you before snowfall. I had in mind a written lecture NEVER to almost  never, mine the grounds you own by throwing away its leaves, for leaves should be recycled rather than burned or sent to garbage.....I planned to suggest tricks of my...

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19 Apr 2016

There is No Life Without Decay

Every year more and more Americans live and work indoors.   Every year more and more Americans know more nothing about their outdoors  where they live. I was lucky being born 82 years ago.   I was raised in the city, in a house on a ninety by forty-five foot lot taught to know the outdoors, both at home and at school.  It was in first grade before World War II when  I was first...

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15 Dec 2015

“There’s a Change in the Weather” arriving to your TC Landscape Garden Very Soon

I celebrate the year, 2015 in suburban Twin Cities, Minnesota,  as the most comfortable, the most gentle, , the most pleasing to garden plants of all shapes and sizes, and therefore, the most beautiful of my memorable lifetime,  well perhaps only seventy years of it.   Further, when it was decided to rain, the wetness was somehow 'professionally' timed to arrive gently and sufficiently around every third day totally free from  angry cloud bursts.  ...

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04 Nov 2015

There is no Plant Life without Rot……What Are You Doing with your Autumn Leaves?

This Twin City Autumn has been the kindest extension of Summer ever in my remembrance.   Warmth without heat, rain without snow and wind. Leaf fall is merely one stage in the cycle of plant life here in our Northland.  This is the season our  Earth is being replenished with Earth's yesterday foliage  in order to continue life's cycle.  The health of our trees and shrubs ideally  relies on water and its relationship with rot,...

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31 Oct 2015

A Brief Review of the 2015 Local Landscape Garden Season

I am old enough to have lived a history which includes remembering in a broader sense  personal experiences from varieties of  weather  and seasons over the years. On two occasions around  World  War II time,  it snowed heavy wet stuff on my birthday of mid September, and  once later while watching a September Saturday  football game at old Memorial Stadium. I like winter here in Gopherland, but it is so long.    I have long...

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19 Aug 2015

The Big Four Essentials for Garden Plant “Happiness”…from Masterpiece experience

Sun, water, soil, and nutrients  are the basic essentials for healthy garden plant growth.....Once again:  SUN, WATER, SOIL, NUTRIENTS for plant and YOUR happiness!!! Sun:   Not all garden plants, either  woody or  herbaceous,  prefer full sun.   Others disdain deep shade.   Full sun might burn sensitive plants' leaves, turning them ugly brown or pathetic yellow.   Deep shade  advances diseases on wet leaves which are sensitive to rot.    Nearly every perennial plant,...

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02 Oct 2014

A Review of our Landscape Garden Year, 2014

I have been very delinquent regarding my recordings of landscape garden arts at this Masterpiece Landscaping blog site. That I admit and regret. However, Nature has had something to do about that on two fronts this season: First, I reached my 80th year of life this past Summer.....Second, the pond along which more than two hundred feet of my gardened property abuts, flooded beyond anything previously recorded from the countless torrential rains of this past...

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20 Apr 2014

It Was a Rough Minnesota Winter, Folks

It snowed here last Thursday evening. We had only 8" here in my territory, two-thirds of an acre just west of Hopkins, Minnesota. By sunset yesterday, if the sun had been seen while setting in the rain, there was still some unmelted snow in the woodsier part of my grounds. Looking down from my office window as I write this note, I still see a portion of last December's snowdfall on the north side of...

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