Category: shrubs and trees

07 Apr 2017
April 7, 2017 0 Comments By masterpiecelandscapingadmin About Masterpiece, perennials, shrubs and trees, The Art of Landscaping

Today’s “Garden” Conditions AD 2017 and the Landscaped Garden

Most folks who own 'grounds' are not landscape garden gardeners.  Especially these days of cultures of different drives and habits. Beauty has disappeared from today's American cultural experience and has been absent for more than two generations.   Yes, this is a matter of opinion, but most of you readers and "non-readers" aren't old enough to remember the late 1930s through the 1950s when Americans of the Great Depression became dedicated to win a World...

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17 Nov 2016
November 17, 2016 0 Comments By masterpiecelandscapingadmin battling the Minnesota climate, Plant health, shrubs and trees

2016….The Most Beautiful Autumn of My Conscious Life

About six weeks ago I had planned in mind, but not on paper or computer, what a landscape garden expert...me....should share to you, the vast landscape garden  unaware of the great outdoors around you before snowfall. I had in mind a written lecture NEVER to almost  never, mine the grounds you own by throwing away its leaves, for leaves should be recycled rather than burned or sent to garbage.....I planned to suggest tricks of my...

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26 Oct 2016
October 26, 2016 0 Comments By masterpiecelandscapingadmin shrubs and trees, The Art of Landscaping

Without Decay, There Is No Life…Especially in the Landscaped Garden

Dear Minnesota  Homeowner....It's late October in the Twin Cities.   What are you planning to do with all of those falling leaves now swirling around your grounds? Most likely you'll do what you've done as long as you have lived in your Twin City house...either rake the leaves up,  or  very loudly power blow them into a pile, bag them up and have them  driven  someplace  to make them disappear. I have lived on my...

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23 Oct 2016
October 23, 2016 0 Comments By masterpiecelandscapingadmin About Masterpiece, shrubs and trees, The Art of Landscaping

The Art of Landscape Gardening #1

Beauty as a value in our western culture began its death throes from the unspeakable horror of the industrialized slaughter of countless millions of  World War I.   It stands to reason its disappearing  accelerated into oblivion with the slaughters which followed....World War II, and the estimated 20,000,000 in the USSR murdered by Joseph Stalin and the 60,000,000 killed by Mao Tse Dung to rearrange China into  police states. Music is an aural experience to...

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28 Aug 2016
August 28, 2016 0 Comments By masterpiecelandscapingadmin garden maintenance, garden seasons, Residential Projects, shrubs and trees, The Art of Landscaping, winter landscapes

Why Do Metropolitcan Politicians, Bureaucrats Make Community Streets So Ugly?

My parents bought the house in which  I was raised in 1936 in St. Paul, Minnesota.  It was newly built on a "vacant"  lot of  the more prairie edges  of  the city south of Randolph, west of Fairview down to the Mississippi River itself.  "Civilized" American urban areas were developed post Civil War with the arrival  of European immigrants for the next forty years or so.   Scandinavians, Germans, and Czech went rural.  Slavs, Italians went Iron...

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25 Aug 2016
August 25, 2016 0 Comments By masterpiecelandscapingadmin garden maintenance, perennials, shrubs and trees, The Art of Landscaping

WHAT, on Earth, IS A WEED?

Yes, what on Earth,IS a weed! Our governments and other fanatics who choose to  dictate human thoughts and moods these days, insist weeds are plant-like  things they've been programmed  to dislike in order to feel good.    These 'dictate' people are  indoor people...office people.....downtown people, usually government people  who live amid cement and asphalt.   If these people  are third or more generation Americans,  their grandparents were raised on a farm, not the street.....but they...

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04 Aug 2016
August 4, 2016 0 Comments By masterpiecelandscapingadmin About Masterpiece, garden maintenance, garden seasons, shrubs and trees, The Art of Landscaping

Is There a Sunkist Arborvitae in Your Future?

Masterpiece Landscaping is a Twin City, Minnesota  artistic landscaping company nearing its 30th birthday.   We line up and plant  garden trees, shrubs, annuals and perennials  in rows only when artistically required to fit  formal settings or for some other special artistic display to inspire visitors. Landscape gardens, ideally,  should inspire the designer, the builder, and above all,   the home or business owners and their visitors whom we serve. It should never be forgotten,...

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30 Jul 2016
July 30, 2016 0 Comments By masterpiecelandscapingadmin battling the Minnesota climate, shrubs and trees

Aralia spinosa

One of my favorite woodies in my gardened grounds is Aralia spinosa....(Aralia spinosissima).   About forty years ago it arrived in my possession around mid- August,    I had a large vegetable garden and was beginning  my artistic landscaping of my  property  nearly 90% of which was covered by a mediocre lawn. I was director of the Minnesota State Horticultural Society then.  Our office was located on the St. Paul University of Minnesota Agricultural School...

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04 Jul 2016
July 4, 2016 0 Comments By masterpiecelandscapingadmin shrubs and trees, The Art of Landscaping

I was born to Landscape Garden

No one could have loved a career more than I, Glenn Herbert Ray, now approaching his 82nd year of life.   For you readers to bear "witness", it's 5:30 PM this moment as I sit at  the computer after spending ten straight hours "working" my landscaped home grounds to maintain and increase its beauty.   My cartilage-less knees are killing me at this moment.  It was this pain which put an end to my  today's...

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28 Apr 2016
April 28, 2016 0 Comments By masterpiecelandscapingadmin battling the Minnesota climate, shrubs and trees

Chamaecyparis pisifera, Vintage Gold

One of the finest conifers introduced to the Twin City landscape garden market is Chamaecyparis pisifera, Vintage Gold.     Its advertised form is global, reaching about three feet in height. A human generation or two ago the only golden foliaged conifers seen on anyone's grounds,  private or public,  were  dying arborvitaes.   Dying junipers usually chose brown before yellow as their passage to death color. Chamaecyparis pisifera, King's Gold is a flimsier, fluffier  foliaged...

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