Today, February 14, 2013, our Northland’s Twin Cities’ landscape, the good and the bad, is overwhelmed by the most beautiful ourdoors the human eye and mind can perceive.

The description “breath-taking” belittles the glory of the scenery. No matter how beautiful a day can be here or anywhere on Earth, none can surpass Mother Nature’s canvas this morning…..

At this moment , four hours after sunrise, after a nightfall of four to five inches of the most glorious kind of gentle new snow cover, this view of paradise is still holding. The entire painting remains as it was at the beginning of morning’s light.

The purity of the snow’s white covers all, the winsome and the ugly, the inspiring and that which crushes the human spirit. Creating, imitating its beauty in the private and public is rarely practiced by human touch these 21st century days of modern life.

Despite the teachings and practice of our MODERN SCHOOL day, SOME THINGS ARE MORE BEAUTIFUL THAN OTHERS. Today’s scenery should expose the barbarity of that politics we learn now at school and university.

Although there are many inspiring days of Northern seasons, the freshness of smell and brilliance of color and leaf of early Spring, the rhyme and harmony of Summer, and the fire of the Fall, nothing rises to the shock of the beauty of the perfect snowfall on a setting under sunlight of a beautiful, well planned landscape garden specifically designed with winter in mind.

Such a piece of land cannot be planted in winter, but it can be planned in winter.

In my own graduate studies at the University of Minnesota’s Horticulture Department nearly 40 years ago, not a single five second uttering regarding landscaping for winter beauty.

Art and teaching art, especially in search of something beautiful, at universities is a contradiction these modern American days. One cannot teach what one does not know. “You can’t milk a turnip,”

Not all conifers are equal in the garden. Not all woody plants glorify snowfall equally. From last evening’s snowfall, ven the garden’s negative spaces are no longer flat and shadowless, but are now covered by various mounds of shapes and sizes embracing snow ‘blow’.

I notice sunlight is now slowly passing, as I look out my ‘garden-painted’ window, but nothing has noticeably melted. Our Northland’s frosting of the landscape garden is now only a fraction short of perfection. Much of the sky is still at its best blue….

WINTER’S length here in our Northland is VISUALLY EQUAL TO SPRING, SUMMER, AND FALL COMBINED. How could it be that we in the Northland are so negligent in our landscaping priorities?

If you are interested in learning more about planning and planting with Winter’s beauty in mind, and/or seek more information regarding classes or tours, please call us at Masterpiece Landscape, 952-933-5777.