Landscape gardening is a visual art form…..and so is the magician’s magic. Beethoven’s masterpieces are aural art forms. We want to exert feelings to the eye as Beethoven causes for the ear…..after all …beauty is better than the ugly, but remember, if everything is equally beautiful, it is logically equally ugly.

The abcs of creating a beautiful Landscape garden is the major question in three parts: What is to be planted Where, and Why should it be done?

Most Americans know very little about the Landscape Garden arts. Most landscaping is done by habit, not by a drive to create beauty, which requires some degree of eye, feel, and thought and knowleege of plants……whether by homeowner or most commercial enterprises. Plants use, selected for whatever goes where, are usually chosen depending upon cheapness of price rather than quality and visual beauty. Location of incoming plant is almost always occurs at the spot where there might be most room…..not what the plant does or doesn’t do for the eye when seen.

We have been planting Paperbark maple, Acer griseum, for many years now, and are pleased Bachman’s Nursery is now making them available to their wholesale customers. We have had to special order them in the past.

Countless hundreds of ‘new’ woody plants of all shapes and sizes especially conifers, some discovered, others ‘invented’ over the past thirty years, are now available for home landscape garden use in our Northland. Unfortunately, almost no homeowner or gardeners is aware of these ‘introductions’.

Readers may want to follow up on some of our favorites for northern gardens which are not readily available locally…..Holger’s juniper, Waneta plum, Gentsch Canadian hemlock, Highland spruce, Horstmann’s Silberlocke Korean Fir, and a host of Japanese White pines…..all exuisite for a variety of uses in the Landacape Garden.

The trick isn’t in the gathering of the plants….it is in the “Where” they are to be planted, and, the “Why”.

Call us at Masterpiece….952-933-5777 for the best choices of plants, where to plant them, and explain Why.