The temperature low last evening was televised locally as 29F. Plant deaths have been on my mind for the past 24 hours with the return of hard frost. Unaware, I discovered that my sprinkler system had turned on at 3AM this morning making most of the grounds appear frozen solid. I had potted about 100 Angelica gigas leftovers from last year's growth now anxious to get into bloom mood for August displays, but they all...
Read More >>And what is a Minnesotan supposed to do when it is April 09, 2012, and it is already May 15th in the landscape garden, and frost is in the forecast for the evening? French lilacs in open sun are about to bloom, redbuds in the city are already opening their flowers, crab apples appear about to open theirs as well and the temperature is expected to drop to 26F tonight. If your tomatoes were already set out...
Read More >>Sunny Schneiderhan, starette landscape gardener beautifying her space in Dinkytown USA, reported active sawflies on a mugho pine last Wednesday. Fortunately, for those of us who live in suburban Twin Cities where our horticultural zone is not yet #5, we usually have a four or five day respite from such attacks than our city brothers and sisters who grow Scot's and mugho pines. Do note and remember that Spring on a sunny South and the Southwest...
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 >>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 >>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 >>If you have been 'playing' in your landscape garden the past month you may have noticed that this October of our year, 2011, was special.....If so, why? My grounds throughout is at its most colorful best this early November than in all the 37 years I have lived here in the Hopkins area. It is a landscape garden about 1/2 acre in size, laid out over the years by my passion to create beauty in...
Read More >>I spent much of this gray day involved in my own landscape garden. I am loathe to call it work, for once I enter the space, I am too lost in its aura, too mesmerized to feel any labor. I become occupied and governed in deeds the space has captured me to do. Not all autumns are equal. In my space this October has been one of the most beautiful ever. Traditionally in the Twin City area, the...
Read More >>I was a 'birder' by age 12. I discovered their populations during my morning paper route which included homes at the end of my route, near the Mississippi River in St. Paul, Minnesota. Cliffs...stone abutments....huge boulders, woods, slopes, and torrents of water moving southward, noisily and threateningly. It was exciting to climb and sit and observe. What more could a paper boy want having delivered his papers by 5:30 in the morning with nothing around him but birds...
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