20 Sep 2016

How Beautiful is the Drive to Your Garage?

BEAUTY AND YOUR GARAGE So, you're driving home from work.   Traffic is miserable.  Every day traffic seems to become more consuming of  the world in which  you  live.   Home.....to home,  paradise at last? What would paradise be....a bath?....a nap?.....playing with ones kids?.....supper?......a beautiful family  living in a beautiful setting,  all of these pleasures at their proper time? We at Masterpiece Landscaping are in the beautiful-setting business for homes and businesses.   The following...

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10 Jun 2015

Spring, 2015 and the Landscaped Garden

From early May much of my life over  the past twenty years I have spent most of every day in someone's or my own gardened grounds. I cannot remember a May so pleasant, so cooperating a climate for gardener and garden member alike. Cool, not cold, moist, but not wet,  and above all no violent winds or down pours. This past Sunday was June 8, 2015.  I noticed my first mosquito bite of the landscape...

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28 Mar 2012

Have You Had Your Watering System Installed, Yet?

For those of you who have visited our Materpiece home  grounds in Minnetonka you often comment how lush everything appears  to be.    I do too.   First, by the luck of the  'home' draw where I live, the soil nearly throughout the grounds is loamy and deep.   Second, I have only a nine minute lawn mowing reponsibility here leaving 90% of the land space, minus house, garage, and driveway, 'open' country for landscape gardening.  I then have...

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06 Oct 2011

Inviting Birds to Your MN Landcape Garden in October

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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18 May 2011

GARDEN TOUR AND PLANT SALE: May 26-27 and May 28

NEW! GARDEN TOUR AND PERENNIAL SALE Garden tour and perennials for sale from two classic landscape gardens featured in the St Paul Pioneer Press, Mpls Star/Trib and Upper Midwest Garden magazines. You will see the plants available for sale in their idealized settings. Perennials include sun and shade GROUND COVERS (Canadian and European ginger, Iris cristata, Lysimachia 'aurea', Sedum 'communis',sweet woodruff); WOODLAND PLANTS (Brunnera, Celandine poppy, Jack-in-the pulpit, Jacob's ladder, maiden hair fern, Mayapple, sensitive...

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21 Apr 2011

Please Try Again

I received the following email from fellow landscape garden addict, Regina Reed: INSTALLING SPRING 44%  done   Installation Delayed.......Please Wait!   Installation Failed.....Please try again.   404 error:      SEASON NOT FOUND   Season "Spring" Cannot Be Located........  The Season you have been looking for might have    been  removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable.  Please Try Again

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06 Aug 2010

Korean Angelica (Angelica gigas)

Last year I had a grounds crowded with Korean Angelica.  I wasn't pleased with the location of the various populations.   I have grown Gigas now for about 8 years.  We are  at a point where I limit the number of those permitted to mature to about 400.  Well, 200 plus, anyway.  I have removed over 300 not counting the seedlings which keep popping up all summer.   Fortunately, they are easy to cull or transplant. Then,...

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30 Jul 2010

Global Warming Right in My Front Grounds!

I had a mature elm removed from the front grounds of my landscape garden last Thanksgiving weekend.    I suspect it was over 65 years old and of about the same height.  If someone wants to purchase  the trunk I have it stored away in a quonset hut.  I am not certain what I am going to do with it. The tree did not have Dutch Elm disease, but it was afflicted with  a minor disorder.....a...

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14 Apr 2010

The Conifer Garden at Courage Center

We at Masterpiece would like to invite readers and friends to visit the Conifer Garden which we installed about eight years ago at Courage Center on Golden Valley Road in Golden Valley, MN.  It is located at the South Entrance to the Center.  Spring is an exceptional time to visit the grounds.  The Leonard Messel Magnolia is now in full pink bloom.  The Redbud trees will begin their sharp pink-lavender blooms next week or so. ...

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