Our home grounds at Masterpiece is a classical landscape garden…..One enters its realm to retire from the present time and world. With every move forward into the gardened grounds there are windows to view distant arrangements and grand paintings to admire.
One is magnificently alone among Nature in its ideal. Not the only ideal, but one of an endless possibilities for the ideal.
The sunny setting provides sharp colors and bright contrasts. The temperature falls 15 degrees when entering the shade rooms.
The structure of the massive appearing grounds is built mostly with coniferous evergreens which, of couse, provide extraordinary beautify and suggestion of life in the dead of a Minnesota winter. The lure of each trail comes from the distant views of beautiful forms seen through nature’s window. The eye has been captured by each setting. One forgets time.
Captured too are the fragrances flowing mysteriously from someplace just around the corner or perhaps close to the ground itself.
A weed is hard to find, for almost every plant has its place.
Every day becomes a new season….new colors are found, forms change, the sun’s spot light never quite the same and sometimes appears lost forever. Every day demands a new visit…..to see another new canvas of beautiful arrangements. Forsythias yield to azaleas and rhododendrons. Azaleas and rhododendrons yield to redbuds, viburnums, and early peonies. This Spring’s garden as seen, is lost forever.
Spring not only refreshes and resurrects the garden’s population, it is the most beautiful time for color in the Minnesota garden. Yet, more important than color in the Minnesota garden….more enticing and more subtle is the beauty of form…….Nature’s sculpting of beautiful shapes, textures, and the spaces inbetween the objects make the garden appear a dream world.
Form is the most vital artistic element of the Minnesota winter setting when color is essentially absent or significantly subdued. THERE IS NO WINTER GARDEN IN OUTDOOR WINTER MINNESOTA WITHOUT CONIFEROUS EVERGREENS. And perhaps the most important coniferous evergreen genus is the arborvitae…..Thuja…… with all of its countless cultivars and varieties. Unfortunately, most are favored in winter by our Virginia White Tail deer as well.
No plant which is beautiful in winter is ugly in summer. Countless plants in the typical Minnesota display garden rather than a landscape garden, are either ugly in winter or appear dead or disappear entirely for the season. The annual and perennial flower garden are not in view for six months of every Minnesota year.
Occasionally, garden artists must admit, a dead appearing oak or Kentucky Coffeetree in winter can offer a striking silhouette in the distance.
During the month of June on each Friday from 3 PM to 6 PM the Masterpiece home garden will be open to the public for a guided tour. Come and see for yourself……Call 952-933-5777 to sign up.