Category: garden maintenance

19 Oct 2010
October 19, 2010 0 Comments By masterpiecelandscapingadmin battling the Minnesota climate, garden maintenance, garden seasons, Plant health, Pruning, Rodent Control

Autumn Duties for the Landscape Gardener

What are the regular routines for the Landscape Gardener to maintain the home grounds in the best condition going into winter? Watering:   There is much debate over what the autumn to late autumn watering schedule should be for the Twin City area landscaped grounds.  Some 'professors' profess continued regular watering until the hard frosts; others suggest withholding water gradually to assist the plants hardening off for the cold misery of winter.  Plants here usually mean...

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20 Sep 2010
September 20, 2010 0 Comments By masterpiecelandscapingadmin battling the Minnesota climate, garden maintenance, garden seasons

Sixty Years Ago Most Minnesotans Farmed and Gardened

While I am at this post reaching into the memory of days gone by, I think it is important to note this additional recollection from  my childhood. In the 1930s and 1940s the major occupation in Minnesota was farming.  Most Minnesotans did not live in the Twin Cities.   Suburbs did not exist.  Small town life flourished.  Small town people grew gardens, usually the vegetable and fruit ones.  Farmers Seed and Nursery Company was in business...

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20 Sep 2010
September 20, 2010 0 Comments By masterpiecelandscapingadmin battling the Minnesota climate, garden maintenance, garden seasons

Some Peculiarities of Our 2010 Growing Season

Spring came very early in 2010.  Do you remember?  April was very pleasant and mild, even warm.  May was coolish. I remember as a child in the early 1940s an April Easter Sunday was featured with ice and snow nearly everywhere.  The days would be sunny, but wintery and cold. I much prefer our current delivery of Spring.   I am rooting for a Zone 5 growing zone.  We are almost there.   One would think most...

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13 Aug 2010
August 13, 2010 0 Comments By masterpiecelandscapingadmin About Masterpiece, garden maintenance, shrubs and trees

What Catalogs Don’t Tell Us About Mature Conifer Plant Sizes

I am looking at a nursery wholesale catalog....a guide which carries a paragraph or less to inform the unknowing a bit about the nature of the plant.  Information located there is made available by a number of sources.  It could be from the original plant propagator, a plant salesman, or a university professor in the horticultural department. In the landscape artist's world knowing names of individual plants is seldom important, except perhaps for billing.  Plants...

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24 Jul 2010
July 24, 2010 0 Comments By masterpiecelandscapingadmin About Masterpiece, garden maintenance, The Art of Landscaping

Marian and Larry Fischer of Waseca; Beautiful Garden Winners in 2009

We at Masterpiece are very proud of our friends in Waseca, Marian and Larry Fischer, Star  Tribune Beautiful Garden winners a year ago.  Their landscape garden dwarfs mine in size, spreading about 3 acres in all.   It  is exquisitely maintained and manicured.   The setting is truly an oasis in a beautiful endless "sea"  of corn.   We have been very blessed to have had the opportunity to work together with Marian and Larry to develop the grounds over...

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18 Jul 2010
July 18, 2010 0 Comments By masterpiecelandscapingadmin garden maintenance, perennials, random fun

What Is This Thing Called “Weed”

No, not the stuff the foolish  smoke!  The stuff  that grows where folks don't want the stuff to grow. To the Landscape Garden artist there is only one definition for the word, "weed"..... A Weed is a Plant Out of Place!       That is the definition, the whole definition,  and nothing but the definition......to the Landscape Gardener. In my landscape garden the plants out of place most everywhere are tree seedlings....sugar maples, red maples, elm, Ohio buckeye,...

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01 Jul 2010
July 1, 2010 0 Comments By masterpiecelandscapingadmin garden maintenance, Plant health, The Art of Landscaping

The Importance of Being Artificially Watered

We at Masterpiece Landscaping install grounds irrigation for the landscape garden.    Nearly all of the folks trained to install irrigation systems know nothing about installing  such systems in the classical landscape garden. What is the difference? Imagine a half acre of lawn.  Only lawn....nothing but lawn; no maple trees here, arborvitaes and pine there, viburnum and magnolia, anemone and heuchera, sedum and "Hot Lips" turtlehead in sight.  Only lawn, with or without dandelions.  Here installantion...

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21 Aug 2009
August 21, 2009 0 Comments By masterpiecelandscapingadmin garden maintenance

Weeding in the Rain

A weed is a plant out of place.  Goldenrod is not a weed, unless it is out of place.  Elms, maples, basswoods, and Ohio buckeyes can be beautiful trees, but they are major weeds in the garden as seedlings because they are out of place. Many oak seedlings in my garden are not necessarily out of place.  I often let them grow for several to many years, especially if they are white oak seedlings...in my...

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