I have coyote preying on my grounds. The resident couple have produced a pup. We seldom see these folks, but they are there and we have quicky pictures to prove their settlement. In the thirty eight years of my residency here in suburban Minneapolis , I have been able to create and maintain a beautiful classic landscape garden. We live in a climate in which winter is the major landscape season, as long as all...
Read More >>Winter Twin Cities, Minnesota, 2011 has not yet arrived. The joy is mixed with sorrow at Masterpiece Landscaping, at least from this writer's perspective. The Joy: For most of this past month, December, there has been little precipitation, meaning no snow. For this past month I have been able to stroll along my garden paths and pretend I am working. I always enjoy its beauty. Yes, the ground is frozen which eliminates planting or transplanting/ That suits...
Read More >>The Bleak Season at my grounds last year began on Saturday, November 13 with a 32 inch dump of wet snow burying nearly every plant shorter than ten feet tall. This snow and a lot more following it lasted all winter long. There was no January thaw, the first in my memory causing drifts up to six feet making paths impassable. The snow was so deep I couldn't plow my body through the permasnow five feet deep where...
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 >>The Landscape Garden is more than what most people consider to be garden. It is an enclosure to enter, stroll though, walking the paths up to and passed plants which might appear sculpture at one look, and framing after a few paces along the path. Envision a private woodland with windows and openings where beautiful forms or colors can be seen and beautifullly displayed. Benches in the distance entice visitors to find the path to a resting...
Read More >>Now is the time to be analyzing your winter landscape. This is not the best year for such analyzing. The snow has been much too heavy causing many of our evergreen forms to disappear into the abyss of snowcover. Many of my four plus foot high shrub arborvitaes have simply disappeared into the drift totally unnoticeable and likely will remain so all winter long. The six to eight inch snowfall of last week whitened the...
Read More >>One of the great advantages of living in Minnesota is the dramatic change in the landscape from day to day and season to season. Most of its citizens are no longer out door people, meaning that it is unlikely they are aware of the full truth of this statement. There is no garden without light and people. Light upon the garden in the North is always in a rush. Today's "garden" as seen, will never again return....
Read More >>Winter! Yes, you guessed it.....or did you? Some people forget that Winter is a landscape season. Most Minnesotans divorce themselves from landscaping the home grounds for Winter. What is there to do but shovel snow? Garden fever begins sometime in February, but it is a low grade fever caused by impatience and garden magazines beginning to be noticed on various store shelves. Then the garden catalogues arrive causing real angst. Most Minnesotans pay no attention to how ugly their home...
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