.....if one, especially the homeowner, has prepared for it. I cannot remember a winter more visually more beautiful than our present sample of snow and cold. It's been colder, much colder in the past. It has snowed, and snowed heavier in the past....but a winter such as ours here in the Twin Cities of Minnesota this season, cannot be beat for its beauty. I wonder how many of our fellow Twin Citians have recognized what...
Read More >>Unfortunately for the broader community, our Minnesota landscape industry does not view 'landscaping' as an art form. At university it is not taught as an art form. The ladies of the garden clubs love flowers. They do not consider the home grounds as a canvas for landscape garden beauty. Husbands are allowed to mow the lawn. Cities often demand trees be planted along the roadways whether needed or not and without regard for beauty. My...
Read More >>October 10th is the average date in Minnesota's Twin Cities and environs of winter's first frost. My landscape gardening experience reminds me that over the past 25 years this first frost date has been delayed to around October 14th. Thank God! Landscape Gardening is supposed to be an art form. One would never know that 'supposed to be' by looking at our Twin Cities' practice of the art. In our modern day one has to...
Read More >>Preparing for your ideal winter landscpe garden is begun in late fall before the first snowfall. This is particularly true of your landscape garden is more the feature of your grounds than lawn. Lawn is normally flat grounds. Although it certainly supplies negative space in winter as in summer, when it occupies large sweeps of grounds, lawn doesn't bear captivating shadows in winter because it IS flat. My 2/3rds of an acre of grounds, nearly...
Read More >>I visit my landscape garden almost every day of the year. After all, I do live in paradise on Earth. Even if not perfectly planned, the pleasures topped by inspiration and gratitude however selfish they may seem, are almost incomparable in life's experience even competing with the joys of the family, and offering easier solutions when things go wrong. I have made a list of plants during these winter walks while examining my various gardened...
Read More >>Three to five inches of light gentle snow settled once again upon our Twin City Minnesota landscapes again last night stretching to a few moments ago. It is still cloudy. There are no shadows, no forms performing radiantly on stage showing off their grace and form, their dark and white, the purity of beauty equal to Nature's best. Gray it may be, but the purity for beauty is just as gracious, just as awesome, quieter,...
Read More >>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...
Read More >>In our part of Minnesota the Winter landscape is equal in duration to our Spring, Summer, and Fall landscapes put together. Do your own adding. With the exception of some oaks, leaf fall is over before the first of November. Leafing out in Spring invarably begins the week of May 15 here in the Twin Cities dictated by the habits of our major deciduous shade trees. This lacing of our landscape is one of the...
Read More >>Winter arrived last evening here in the Twin Cities of the Northland. In a matter of an hour or two a rather dry settling of snow covered about two inches the beautiful landscape garden surrounding my house. Never is the beauty of these grounds superior! I don't look forward to winter any more, but its visual beauty when natural or artistically recreated can be breath taking. So much so, I have swept paths through these...
Read More >>The Art of Landscape Garden is, of course, a Visual art form. So is 'Magic!' These are similar expressions, both being visual 'trickery'......The 'artists' want to control what the eye is to see, or what the brain thinks the eye preceives. In the ideal the art of landscape gardening should be to the eye, what Beethoven's compositions are to the ear. To the vast majoirty of home owners the grounds around the home they own...
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