Masterpiece Landscaping Blog

November 9, 2011

Late Autumn Color in our Northern Landscape Garden

Filed under: The Art of Landscaping, battling the Minnesota climate, garden maintenance, garden seasons — glenn @ 3:08 pm

By habit  northerners, including  amateur and professional ‘horticulture’ oriented people  refer to color in the autumn garden as any  color but green.   Red, pink, scarlet, orange, rust, chartreuse, gold, yellow, maroon, plum….you get the idea……green is never listed.

This is mainly the  habit, monkey see, monkey do.   But there is another reason why these days greens have become so much more important in the art of landscape gardening.

Over the past twenty five years the greatest numbers of ‘new’ plants in our Twin Cities ‘north’  for use in our art form, are coniferous evergreens.   Some such as  Microbiota from Russia and Chamaecyparis from Japan, are genera which finally are available in the Twin City market.

Others are old time conifer ‘inventions’  which finally had made the Twin City market as a natural response to the greater interest in the landscape garden and an ability to pay extra  for the more unusual.

And then there are the newer ‘inventions’, new breedings and more commonly new discoveries from nature’s ‘mistakes’ all of which give us a much wider variety of colors AND sizes of green conifers…….

“Conifer”  refers to woody plants which bear cones.

At present on  this 9th of November, 2011  my landscape garden is still radiant with reds, pinks, browns, rusts, maroons, scarlets, oranges, yellows and chartreuse.   But the base for  this canvas is still green from the conifers…..from the darks of yews to  the  darks of the shade-sides of nearly any other upright green foliaged conifer, these are the plants which dominate, frame,  and define the beautiful pictures of a  classic landscape garden, not only today in late Autumn  at its colorful best, but in Winter and early Spring when their forms truly dominate the classic landscape garden.

Here is a partial list of the more noticeable sources of color in my today’s landscape  garden show in a year where there was no killing frost until evening six days ago and very little frost since:

Three Fothergilla with all colors of autumn,  three Paperbark maple trees, one brilliant yellow-gold, another blinding orange, and a third scarlet red all in full display,  two Norway maples pruned as eight foot shrubs, both orange,  two Crimson Spire oaks  viscious orange blending with rust and scarlet, and the third week of now pinkish orange of my eight by eight foot yellow leafed barberry. 

I allow the Japanese spiraeas to seed whereever they want….and then I cull when they are out of place according to my eye.   I think most of these autumn oranges are seedlings of Gumball spiraea or Anthony Waterer, or Neon.   Some are from Little Princess and remain tight foliaged and orange in fall color.    I have a number of Juddii viburnums throughout the grounds.   Besides the wonderul fragrance of its midMay blooms, these viburnums display a mass of plum to maroon to red leaf color in late autumn.

The best maroons are the more massive purple leafed smokebush especially Velvet Cloak.   Grace Smokebush is spectacularly colorful and has been for a month…..orange blending in every way to maroon.   The steadiest of the darker maroons is Black Beauty Elderberry, which in my grounds dies back to the ground every year and then recovers, sending up eight to ten foot stems…..notice the plural of this statement, please.   Every leaf is still on each of my half a dozen Black Beauties, and every leaf is the same dark purple-maroon as borne  months ago  in Spring.

The colorful conifers which provide the form and contrast of  today’s setting start with the brilliant yellow of some Sungold (King’s Gold)  Chamaecyparis, both trees and shrubs,  yet although  all essentially are the same Chamaecyparis pisifera aurea  nidiformis plants,  some have turned lime green instead.

The Andorra juniper has already turned into its winter’s plum color.

In stark contrast are those in the bluish greens…..Dwarf Colorado Blue Spruce,  Pumila Scot’s Pine, Hughes, Maneyi, Table Top, and Blue Prince  Juniper.  

The upright Japanese Yew or its Taunton ’spreader’ yew, especially if grown in summer shade, is still very, very dark green and getting darker as winter ‘falls’ on us.  Another impressive very dark green comes from the foliage of the Clanbrassiliana Spruce a dwarf of about 15 feet height at ‘maturity’. 

The Serbian spruce shows a bicolor combination of turquoise newer foliage above the older  dark green.

The conifer genus which our Minnesota gardens cannot do without is ‘Thuja”, the arborvitaes.  

Whether the tall pyramids, the spiky pyramids,  the fat uprights, the round ones, the bluish green ones, dark green or chartreuse green, the golden, or the burnt tipped orangie shrubby ones, those with spiral foliage growth and others fuzzier appearing, this genus is a god-send to  the Minnesota landscape gardener.

Most arborvitaes darken significantly as winter approaches.   Many of those with genetic yellow in them will begin to display it by the ides of March.

I have a couple Sunkist or  Yellow Ribbon planted in full sun for half day that remains as yellow  today as it was in  July.  

Growing and maintaining the landscape garden is an art form surpassed by no other in stimulating the spirit of those who create it, maintain it and display it.

Give it a try, but be patient and alert.   Give us a call at Masterpiece when you need assistance…..at 952-933-5777.

November 8, 2011

To Clean or Not to Clean…..that is the November garden question

Filed under: Plant health, battling the Minnesota climate, garden seasons — glenn @ 3:57 pm

Because of this present November being exceptionally dry, pleasant, beautiful, and void of a killing frost until last Wednesday night here in the Twin Cities, landscape gardeners have been able to spend more time than usual amid their garden plants.  These following questions  arise for all of us and our answers may vary from year to year.

To water or not to water? 

Who expected the last part of October to be so dry?……and after a very dry August?   I had my watering system turned off two weeks ago, and had not watered for a week before that.   Yet, I was shocked while planting yesterday to see the soil so dry so deep into the soil.

I immediately hand watered all of the plants planted over the past six weeks…..beginning with the perennials whose root systems are much more endangered by drought.   I am able to use the sprinkler in the major portion of my landscape garden grounds, and again, watered the newer plantings as a priority.  

Overwatering could be a problem after mid August.   Many woody plants begin their winterizing shortly after the summer equinox.   This is called hardening off.   We don’t know much about the specifics regarding the vast numbers of plants now available for our grounds plantings.

We don know that watering heavily well into late autumn keeps some plants in summer growing mode.   They have not been allowed to adjust to the coming of the cold and severe, and can be killed.

About three winters ago, I lost four or five established yews, one of which was a beautiful tree.   I had never lost a yew on my grounds in 35 years of a dozen or more  plants of yew life.   Eventually, I discovered that their deaths occurred from a windy weekend in January.   There was plenty of snow, but with a temperature of ten or more below zero, and winds of twenty miles per hour over a twenty hour period, killed them.   I stayed warm  indoors that weekend day.   My yews had no place to hide.

To clean or not to clean?

This question is difficult to answer.    Fall cleaning the landscape garden is a major project in most grounds.   Size and time dictate the schedule.  Cleaning out the leaves whether from your or your meighbors’ trees makes the grounds appear, well, clean…and neat.   Lawns should be raked for their better health enduring winter.  

No one knows when the first major snowfall will occur.   Last year the tonnage was dumped over night and through the day starting on  Saturday, November 13, here in the Twin City area.   We got hit by a  35 inch heavy snow drop.   Much was damaged, but the ground never froze, because it was covered all winter long by nature’s best insulator, snow.

Plant debris and autumn leaf fall  are  typically blown to  obstacles, such as  neighboring plant stalks which entrap debris which  builds up protecting plant crowns until a sizeable  snowfall.   This is nature’s way some plants endure the rigors of an early winter.  

The real danger to our plants, whether perennials or the  more delicate woody shrubs, or sometimes even to the well established tougher reliables, is the “Test Winter”.

A test winter  is that winter in our Northland when the temperature drops to 10 to 20 degrees below zero Fahrenheit before Christmas without any snow cover.   Perennials are especially vulnerable.   If you had left nature do its thing, leaf debris would have collected  around the stems of such plants for insulation.  It can also be that winter when the temperature drops to minus 30 with a driving wind which can be a real killer for many woody members of the landscape grounds not blessed with snow cover.

To weed or not to weed?  

Weed whenever you can, but remember a weed is “a plant out of place”.

I allow certain plants ‘out of place’  to grow in my grounds within limits.   Red and white oak seedlings, for example.   Both are in beautiful autumn colors….red and maroon and kept within a foot of the ground offer colorful highlights when other colors have already faded.    Pruned Ohio Buckeye seedlings can be made into  an attractive shrub.

Late autumn is an excellent time to scour the landscape grounds for buckthorn seedlings since their leaves are still green at this time.    Every year I come across a four or five foot weed tree of ash, box elder or  other maples, or elm and buckthorn or pagoda dogwood growing handsomely.   How did I miss noticing  these varmints for the past five or six years some even being in full sight as I walk by?   They blended in with the other greens nearby.

To plant or not to plant?    Late autumn isn’t the best time to plant, but survival depends on moisture available and good soil preparation.   Regardless of season, when planting woody materials, make certain that the roots are ‘loosened’, that is freed from the circular pattern forced by the pot in which the plant was housed.

Root bound plants do not have a high rate of survival if transferred from pot to grounds without freeing  up the root system.

To wrap or not to wrap young deciduous trees?

Usually one wraps these trees to protect them from the south and southwest sun during winter.    Some trees, such as young ash, apple, and crabapples, are very susceptible to sun scald, that is, the sun’s strength of warmth usually in February and early March warms up the exposed tissues during a sunny day.   Upon sunset the tissue freezes as the temperature plunges, and destroys the cells, splitting the bark on the south and/or southwest side of the tree.

Another reason for wrapping younger trees is to provide protection from rodents.   Last winter was a terrible, terrible time for trees killed by rodent’s, voles, mice, rabbits,  under the snow eating away at the young bar, girdling the tree, causing its eventual death.    Crabapples, apples, plums, even young oaks were killed.

For some reason wrapping with the corregated “Tree Wrap” confuses the varmints enought to make them forget about bark breakfasts and dinners.     If deer are in your neighborhood these late October and early November days, you know the hunting for does stags, like to sharpen their weapons on trees  up to fifteen inches in girth and your chest level.

This “Tree Wrap” wrapping seems to fool them as well….at least until I get reliable reports suggesting otherwise.

November 2, 2011

Why is our 2011 November landscape garden so Beautiful?

Filed under: About Masterpiece, Pruning, The Art of Landscaping, battling the Minnesota climate, garden seasons, perennials, shrubs and trees, winter landscapes — glenn @ 1:53 pm

If you have been ‘playing’  in your landscape garden the past month you may have noticed that this October of our year, 2011, was special…..If so, why?

My grounds throughout is at its most colorful best this early November   than  in all the 37 years I have lived here in the Hopkins area.  It is a landscape garden about 1/2 acre in size, laid out over the years by my passion to create beauty in the land over which I have domain while I live.

I have noticed I have been  spending more time ‘being there’ in the garden the last few weeks than previous Octobers.   Beauty has its lure.   It sure beats drugs by anyone’s observation, I would think.  I noticed yesterday and today, I’ve been  loathe to  leave  its  beauty, so I  have been manufacturing  various tasks to  keep me here.  

These tasks are governed by the garden’s beauty.    I prune, rake, cut back some perennial foliage, clean fallen leaves from the conifers…..nothing well organized, nothing planned, simply enjoying a daily three mile walk or more walking its paths, “Being there”…..and thinking why is this year’s Autumn so special in my landscape garden?

We have had no killing frost here.   I think that’s the answer.   There have been only two evenings when the temperature dropped to 31 or 32 degrees Fahrenheit.   Statistically,  October 10th has been  the average date for killing frosts in our Twin City area.   That is nearly a month ago.

We don’t have much sunshine these days.   The maples, Ohio Buckeye, Kentucky Coffeetree dropped their leaves by  mid October.   There are no garden  shadows without sunlight.  And November is Minnesota’s most cloudy month, meaning that in the landscape garden there is no shade from the major trees by late October, except from oaks.   If there is no sunlight, there is no shade, and with no killing frost, color at ground level to small tree level is not only still displayed, but not visually  damaged.

Most of all, this color can be seen from left to right and right to left in its entirety.   No killing frost allows many garden perennials to extend their bloom, no longer  in mass but as high lights and small groups.   Their foliage, led by the chartreuse, yellow, gold, and orange of large hosta clumps throughout the grounds, many floppy, still  display a coloring never before seen in such quantity during the growing season.    Some hostas, such as   June and El Nino, are still in their summer season form and  color.  

The fire colors of the major barberries and the maroons of the colored ninebarks, velvet cloak and grace smokebushes and white oaks in the distance, and all of the seed pods, blackened dead or golden brown, the blue from late summer blooming geraniums and reds from fothergilla, my annually pruned red oak at the back door entry to my chocolate brown-red sided house is nearly beyond inspiring.

Then I walk my paths and notice a large clump of Korean lilac , whose autumn color beauty I haven’t seen for many years……a color of soft, dusty, pink, tan, rust, orange all blendings  on leaves the size and appearance  of butterflies resting enmasse on the lilac’s autumn  ’twigs’.

Yet, no matter how beautiful the colors of this scenery I have described  may be in anyone’s eyes, they are insignificant without the most important color and collection of plants to glorify the setting……the greens of our evergreen conifers, from ground covers to magnificent trees.   It is they who are now entering our Minnesota garden world dominating its beauty until mid May every year,  that command its  scenes.

Until this  week, the most inspired I have ever been by  my landscape garden was in early February some nine  years ago, at 3:30 AM in a light snowfall of large snowflakes sparkling from a full moon  peeking through the cloud cover.

I was to go to a colleague’s wedding in Hawaii…..and I thought no place in the world could be more beautiful than the scene  I was leaving.   I went to the wedding in Maui.  Everything was beautiful, but not as beautiful as that morning.

Nor is the color of today’s display, but it is its equal.

Use your own imagination, fellow Minnesotans.   What setting without color  could be as or more beautiful than this year’s extended,  special Autumn,  in Winter?  Picture it yourself.

I doubt it could be a garden scene without the beautiful forms of our Northern  conifers and silhouettes of  what they enframe on a moonlit evening graced by huge sparkling snowflakes.

The most important plants in our Northern landscape gardens are the evergreen conifers!!!

 Winter is our longest landscape season…..as long as Spring, Summer and Autumn put together.

Check out your own landscape where you live.   If you think there could be improvements, please give us at Masterpiece Landscaping a call  at 952-933-5777.   We can help solve your landscape problems.

October 30, 2011

Not all Minnesota Autumns are Equal

Filed under: About Masterpiece, Ground Covers, The Art of Landscaping, battling the Minnesota climate, garden seasons, perennials, shrubs and trees, winter landscapes — glenn @ 8:40 pm

I spent  much of this gray  day involved in my own landscape garden.   I am loathe to call it work, for once I enter the space, I am too lost in its aura, too mesmerized  to feel any labor.    I become occupied and governed in deeds   the space has captured  me to do.

Not all autumns are equal.   In my space this October has been one of the most beautiful ever.   Traditionally in the Twin City area, the first two weeks in October will rival or surpass any two weeks in Spring for sheer beauty from color…..

In my garden world  the sugar and red maples and Ohio buckeye, the younger red and white oaks, typically  turn red or orange before October 15.    Their  leaves are gone by now,  opening forms they once hid in Nature’s shade and  mass of summer green.  The smaller notes of the garden composition, the ground covers, annuals and herbaceous  perennials flowered well  and long into the month.  Some garden phlox, lamiums,  hotlips turtlehead, goldsturm rudbeckia, fireworks solidago, the stonecrop Autumn Fire, and Johnson’s blue geranium  are still hanging on with spots of bloom, but more as highlights of color rather than sweeps.  The Ginkgo remains bright green until a heavy frost.  The next day the foliage is yellow…and the next,  it  all  drops.  

As brilliant and shocking as the color was this early October, today was ever bit its equal competitor. 

The color was made much softer from the grayness of the day, but their splashes are  far more noticeable and wide spread.     That which covers much at ground level, with the exception of the evergreen conifers,  is no longer green as earlier in the month.   Most of the  hostas, many of which are huge, explode with yellow and appear by the  scores throughout at ground level.

The most spectacular color for the past week and one or two more is the soft smoky pinkish-cinnamon, red-orange yellow leafed barberry, eight by eight feet in size, standing large  behind a dwarf turquoise  foliaged Scots pine both rising above the yellow hostas and the green pachysandra, gray green lamiums, darker green vinca, and almost black-green fall display of one of my favorite plants in the landscape garden, bronzeleaf ajuga.  These ground  covers are ‘rugs’ in the landscape garden, some to be walked on, but these listed  are to be appreciated  for their color and frangrances and color of bloom, if so endowed.  

The groundcovers mentioned are at their very best displayed  when they become relatively large rugs opening the negative spaces needed to appreciate their  forms and color contrasts with their neighbors more precisely.  

In the ideal landscape garden the eye must be controlled if captivating the visitor is to become as complete as possible.   It is your artistic goal to cause anyone who enters this sacred space of Earth, which you are learning to form, to forget from whence they came…..

Most often the person escaping will be you, its artist, and its most frequent visitor.    Beginners should realize that the more often you enter your space, there likely will come a point of no return when you become lost to your  landscape garden’s  spell.  

Losing ones self in the grounds  comes easy for a lot of guys who mow lawns.   Many love what they do, and know exactly what I am conveying in this article.  And they don’t have to know very much as long as the mower is operating properly.  

Learning the ‘rules’ of the landscape garden can be complicated for a period of time.   Except for the names of the plants, there is no new vocabulary necessary to learn.    You know the words….such as space, height, size, shape, color, rhythm, shade, texture, and so on.

Most of today’s October maroons in my landscape garden are maroon all garden season.   Velvet Cloak smokebush, Black Beauty Elderberry, Rosy  Glow barberry, Helmond Pillar barberry,  Concord barberry, Centerglow Ninebark all of which can be seen better with absence of foliage from the major shade  trees.   Northern Hilites and Dwarf Korean azaleas are in  their maroon foliage in my garden  today as well.   The  Crimson Spire Oak grown in full sun,  is on fire with scarlets, reds and oranges. The one in a fair amount of shade is still green.

Green is a an essential  color in the autumn landscape garden display.  There are so many varieties of green……as you know it is the king and queen color of God’s garden……for we  couldn’t live without  its chlorophyl.  

What is the longest landscape season in Minnesota?    When I taught classes through the University of Minnesota Extension Service, I almost always opened up the session with that very question.

Typically there were no snappy responses.from the students….perhaps thinking it a trick question.  And, indeed it was.    They couldn’t answer because they never thought of winter as a landscape season.

Shocked!  They were shocked when they learned that the landscape season, winter, is equal to all other landscape seasons….fall, spring, and summer…..combined in our  Twin City area.

My next question followed thusly:   If winter is the longest landscape season in our Minnesota year, what are the most vital trees for Minnesota’s landscape beauty?

Silence…..until, typically someone shouted out “pines”!

Well, not exactly, but I  knew that  ’pine’  among Minnesota home owners means …..”pine,  plus  spruce, hemlock, yew, juniper, arborvitae, fir, microbiota, and chamaecyparis”,,,,,, in other words, the northern  evergreen conifers.

Normally, sometime  in mid October these magnificent evergreens, their  large shrubs to medium sized trees to the giants, Norway Spruce,  Colorado Spruce, Scots and White Pine rise from the summer’s green to dominate our grounds for six months until mid May when in a week or so the lace of  deciduous green begins to cover most of our gardened state in cycle once again.

The conifer ground covers and spreaders and small  shrubs   add greens of all shades;  gray green, dark green, lime green,  turquoise, and chartreuse.  Some turn plum color for the winter, yet others such as the ‘Red Cedar’ juniper and microbiota, brown. 

Most evergreen conifers darken as they enter winter.  Yet, I have a Chamaecyparis tree which remains yellow all winter,  while  other same chamaecyparis turn  chartreuse.   Shade, soil, genetics,  the regularity of moisture, one, all, or none of the mentioned , probably  have some bearing on color control from season to season.

If you are a Minnesota homeowner and your house has some space available for plantings, please do consider a landscape garden as an art form for your enjoyment.   Give us a call Masterpiece Landscaping, Ltd….952 933 5777  if you are interested in joining a tour of landscaped gardens in the Twin City area……..spring, summer, fall,  and the big daddy of them all in these parts, WINTER.

October 6, 2011

Inviting Birds to Your MN Landcape Garden in October

Filed under: Uncategorized, garden seasons, perennials, shrubs and trees — glenn @ 8:49 pm

I was a ‘birder’ by age 12.   I discovered their populations during my morning paper route which included homes  at the end of my route, near the Mississippi River in St. Paul, Minnesota.  

Cliffs…stone abutments….huge boulders,  woods, slopes, and torrents of water moving southward, noisily and threateningly.  It was exciting to climb and sit and observe.

What more could a paper boy  want   having delivered his papers by  5:30 in the morning with nothing around him but birds and fox, trees, woods,  and an angry river….at least in the Spring?  

I explored.    I learned some trees had different looks  besides ‘elm’.    They differed in their leaf patterns, shapes and sizes.  I had to know their names…they had to have names…..and so, went to the Groveland Park Library to find out.

The name,  Aralia spinosissima, wasn’t listed there.   It arrived at the grounds where I now live about 35 years ago when I was in my 40s….and I had never heard of it until then.

I did study Latin in high school…..I chose the class without advice or pressure.   I lucked out.  Fewer learnings have taught me a greater collection of understanding in my lifetime…..in history, the world of plants, Bible studies….and my understandings of  America, its language,  and the western world.

I shall tell the story of Aralia spinosissima’s arrival to my property in 1976 or so in another report.

Its name tells us that it is an Aralia…..that it is related closely in its ‘being’ with these relatives, the Aralias….all of whom  have similar  genetic makeup ….such as Aralia racemosa, Minnesota’s native ’spikenard’.     But this Aralia is not racemosa, an herbaceous perennial, but is a ’spinosissima’, a spiny woody perennial.  

 Its name  in Latin means the most spiny spiny thing ever.

Aralia spinosissima is well named.    Even its  leaves, double compound and  three feet long, are spiny.   

In my own grounds where it had set root, totally unbeknownst to me, and had grown among some French lilacs, its trunk was so spiny it shredded the skin off of my right arm when I reached passed it to weed where  it  touched  me as I pulled my arm away from the task.  I had assumed it was just another lilac trunk…..but where did it get its thorns?  I asked myself  staring at the bleeding.

Aralia spinosissima blooms in early September, late August at my grounds.   It grows  in full sun and,  since its dramatic entrance to my world of plants, has spread to about six trunks which have reached fifteen feet in height….about its maximum size.  It’s not a plant for limited spaces.

 I have a landscape gardened grounds….about a half acre in all,  with hundreds of varieties of plant material.   The birds collect here in vast numbers starting late August  lasting throughout much of October.  These birds are busy preparing for their southward flights.

No plants on my grounds cause more frenzy among birds  than my Aralia spinosissimas.   They swarm their meals  as  if blood were spilled  into a pond of pirranha, particularly over an hour or two after dawn.

The original bloom is a collection of  dusty white  florets in a hoop resembling a queen’s tiara, and held high at the top of its taller branches.  As it ages going into September, it become slightly pink, and then decidedly pink.   As the fruit develops at each floret, the color darkens to dark pink eventually reaching a lovely maroon…..when it announces it is ripe for the taking.  

The uneaten fruit darkens to a dark wine/purple color when it drops for rodents to finish the feast.

The foliage, resembling Green Ash from a distance, turns a bright yellow as the fruit darkens.

It is one of my favorite plants.   I can examine its floral show up close when looking out my second story windows.  I wish I could give you an accurate account of the birds who visit.   My eyes are too old to manage.   In later October there will be a weekend visit of Cedar Waxwings…..en masse, which will attack the Aralias, get drunk, and wobble for a day or two and then they flock southward.

Robins do the same….and I do know that many of our native sparrows monkey around when the fruit is ripe, but they are small and the markings are less telltale.

Aralia spinosissima is a rare breed for common gossip.  But one must allow it space.

August 29, 2011

September is Fall for Evergreen Conifers Too!

Filed under: Plant health, garden seasons, shrubs and trees — glenn @ 9:16 am

……..and this year September is arriving a bit early for my Swiss Stone Pines……the interior needles are beginning to turn yellowish. 

Autumn begins June 21st or is it the 22nd now with the beginning of the shortenning of the day.  Our Northland’s deciduous trees are already  working on cutting  off their today’s leaves.   Nearly all will be dropped by November 1st, year in and year out.

Some of us are lucky enough to grow white oaks on our property.   Many of these beauties maintain their tanned leaves all winter long.   Some Ironwoods do as well.

All of our northern conifers lose at least their oldest brand of foliage, that which is most interior  to the trunk.   This is a September affair in the Twin Cities and surroundings. 

Tamaracks, also know as Larch, are evergreens which are not really evergreens.   Their ’needles’  turn a bright yellow in September and all are discarded in a matter of a week or two.  

By the way, it is almost a crime to call Tamarack foliage ‘needles’.   The species has among the most gentle foliage to the human touch know in Nature.   The tree is much neglected in the northern landscape garden.

This year my Swiss Stone Pines seem to be yellowing in their interiors  already.  It is normally early. 

If any of your conifer trees  display yellowing foliage in June or July, you most likely have a problem with a fungal leaf blight.   Many spruce and yews are especially susceptible to such blights which attack the older needles, but permit the young to flourish for a year before they are killed as well.    Countless sickly Colorado Spruce, once proud and beautiful in its ‘blue’, stand ‘ugly as sin’ plagued by fungal disorders.    Most are treatable, but treatment tends to be long term…..especially if the spruce are located in shade.

July 17, 2011

The Week of the Hot Weather Which has been WET

Filed under: battling the Minnesota climate, garden seasons, perennials, shrubs and trees — glenn @ 8:02 pm

We in the Twin Cities landscape gardening world  have had a hot and wet several weeks following a very short Spring.  

It was only one year ago our world was blessed with one of the most beautiful landscape garden seasons I can remember…….An early Spring….warm April, cool May, and a Summer of nothing general to have worried about.   Plantings with irrigation systems did exceptionally well making plants exceptionally healthy……and then November 13, 2010 visited and dumped nearly 3 feet of wet and heavy snow at my place doing more damage to my woody plants that all of the previous 36 years of residence here combined.

Have you noticed how beautiful the Nikko Blue and Endless Summer hydrangeas have been blooming?   Their blooms are nearly all pink or paler yet, but there is a record number of blooms on each plant….Why?

We had a mild autumn in 2010  right up to the sudden enormous snow dump on November 13.  After the dump all winter long there was no thaw….in January or any other time.  The snow kept accumulating and so protected flowering plants under snow cover from bud frost, so many blooms from the previous year’s formation survived the winter freeze and became available to cause you pleasure this month.

Warmth and regular watering aids plant growth even if you have forgotten to fertilize your landscape grounds for the past decade or two.   If we would look a moment to examine  our neighborhood’s  collections of plants, they all look rather lush……warmth and regular watering will do that to most plants, both woody and herbaceous.

For those of you lucky enough to have installed a sprinkling system,  and your garden consists nearly entirely of woody plants and lawn, you might want to consider waiting for a week before turning on your system for regular watering again.   Unless your grounds in sandy or sloped severely, and unless you have a wealth of herbaceous perennials as the mainstay of your grounds. 

I have thousands of perennials growing side by side and in and about my woody plant locations both in sunny and shady areas.  (One of the many reasons I use pyramidal forms of woodies, evergreens especially in the landscape,  is they do not cause shade.   You can grow any sun demanding  plant in their midst without fear  of disease or shabby appearances or decline.)

If your landscape garden soil is sandy, try to identify a shrub that is rather tell-tale about needing watering……The PeeGee hydrangea and its ‘off spring’ and hybrids will be among the first to scream “water please” with the first drooping of foliage.   

Don’t count on getting your clues from Endless Summer, however.  It’s foliage is almost always drooping during hot sunny days whether it has plenty water of not.  

Regarding garden plant mortality, more garden plants in our Northland likely die from lack of water than all of the other plant troubles  combined.  

August 2011 should be hot but  less wet.   We can probably expect a reduction   of our heavenly water supply as winter approaches   For those of you without automatic watering systems, you would do your grounds well by watering occasionally, but regularly, reducing the actual frequency after mid August, supplying some moisture weekly until October.

Your garden’s  soil type does matter.   More frequently and regularly water sandy soils until the evening temperatures drop below 45 degrees F.     Clay soils should never be allowed to dry and harden.  

Mulches can help retain moisture regardless of soil type.

June 3, 2011

Masterpiece Garden Visits Extended

Filed under: About Masterpiece, The Art of Landscaping, battling the Minnesota climate, garden seasons — glenn @ 8:13 am

It is always the case that beautiful gardens must be seen most often at their very best……for the year, anyway.

In Minnesota, today’s garden quickly disappears into another piece of scenery never again to be seen in the form and beauty just witnessed.   The Sun, the light of our landscape garden stage, thank heaven, never stops  featuring Earth’s exquisite beauty or squalor, for that matter.

Gardens, like people, gain character with age.

Our 2011 Minnesota version of Spring is somewhat unusual or ‘old-fashioned’, some would claim.  It has been short, rainy, cloudy, threatening and cool.    Such combinations from the ordinary rearrange the times plants show their best……which almost always is in Spring when every living plant in resurrected into a renewed form.

In our Masterpiece Landscape Garden at 14624 Woodhill Terrace in Minnetonka, more color is peaking in a shorter time period.   Usually the maximum color and form of the new Spring occurs the last weekend in May.   And so, we opened the grounds to visitors.   But we missed this peak by a weekend.

Barring hail, tornado or tsunami, the grounds will be at their most beautiful EVER this weekend, ie., tomorrow and Sunday.   Please come and visit.  Hours open to the public will be from 11am to 5pm on Saturday, June 4th and Sunday, June 5th.

Instructions to the location are explained in the previous blog article.   Thank you….see you this weekend.   glenn

April 15, 2011

April 15, 2011…..A Look at the Minnesota Weather and Gardens

Filed under: battling the Minnesota climate, garden seasons — glenn @ 11:02 am

Income Tax Day has little to do with landscaping unless your business is Landscape Gardening.   However, most home owners interested in beautifying their immediate environment  are among the roughly 50% of our population who still  pay income tax each April 15.  (Nearly 50% of Amerians do not.)  

 I am much relieved that my forms assembled by a reliable, long time trusted accounting firm have been sent in, properly organized with all of  the important numbers in order and before deadline.

How  could an American be more content on April 15, 2011?

Well, I can be more content if the weather hereabouts wouldn’t be so ‘old-fashioned’  this year.  Most of us outdoor people have enjoyed the gentle, quiet  warmings  of  our Minnesota garden weather the past many decades.  As I have often mentioned, I am rooting for a horticultural zone 5 for our Twin City population, or at least in my Hopkins area climate.   A zone 5 horicultural  environment increases the opportunities to create beauty ten-fold than a zone 4.

However, beauty is not ‘in’ with America these days.

I have good memories of late March and April 60 and 70 years ago.   Easter Sunday was  about the  only  time when my Dad would join my Mother, sister and me  for church service.   I loved the inspiring music of an Easter Sunday.  

 I also remember the outdoor landscape of  EVERY Easter  Sunday in those early days of my life, including high school…….ice and snow everywhere  with half of those  Sundays, sunny, windy  and cold and causing  some melting, slow melting  of the crusty ice nearly everwhere around us ourdoors.   On the other half of Sundays  ice, wind  and snow and everywhere  ice particles flying around stinging the face to toughen the body and mind to remain hopeful that warmth and warmth’s revival of the living  might occur in a month or two.

There are some folks these days who hanker for those good old days of April weather sufferings and pray and plot for global warming.  Such people should be happy with the Twin City weather this tax day, April 15 through April 17.

I repeat. I am not one of these people.   And I admit I have been very spoiled with almost all of the past 40 Aprils of my life.    How lucky could I have been? 

 As I look out my cubby-hole office onto the front grounds of my house, there still is snow on my neighbor’s embankment….unlike those past Aprils of colder clime when  I would see only patches of ground peaking throught the glaciers,  teasing that  spring might be just  around the corner.

Last year, 2010 year, was more modern, my kind of global warming year.  My PJM Rhodododendron was  already in full bloom on April 1.  My magnolias were already just past their floral  best.   Some earlier crab apple trees were already in full bloom  this past week.   Cool, gentle breezes warmed both me and my plants as I reveled in my ‘work’ outdoors.

Spring in Minnesota can vary over a month from season to season, but overall, the Aprils of the past twenty years have been glorious consistently warm, sunny with just enough moisture with a following May so often no warmer,  even occasionally cooler than the April before it. …….he ideal for spring plants and the human mind and body which spends time to care for them.

In older Minnesota there was a much, much shorter Spring usually cut short by a sudden blast of hot  Summer…….Spring, the most inspiring season of the year for those blessed to be interested in garden beauty would be  reduced to a day or two.     Its cold would abruptly  shock plants  into this  Spring  with wind, driving dirt, dust and pollen shrivelling, killing  the blooms of any plant whose misfortune it was  to attempt life in our Northland.  There’s the Minnesota of  its 150 years of pioneer settlement.

Last year at  my good friend, Sunny’s garden, her well-cared -for  azaleas maintained their blooms in exquisite beauty for nearly  a month…….rather than two days, as may happen this season,  AD 2011.  

Keep in mind, too, that we in Twin City Minnesota, have not experienced a “trial” winter for more than twenty years, if my memory serves me correctly.

What is a trial winter?   

Well, it is a killer of a huge percentage of usually  perennial plants, both herbaceous and woody, we have enjoyed in our Twin City gardens for decades  because of the kind, ‘thoughtful’ absence of trial winters.   

Trial winters are those winters  when the temperature dips down to minus 15 degrees Fahrenheit or worse, anytime  when there is no snowcover on the ground.   It is lethal to very damaging to many  of the plants we most cherish for beauty in our landscape gardens.  The astute gardeners at these times are the ones who did NOT clean out the grounds in the Fall.   Leaves and other debris would by Nature, be blown to collect around the crowns of  perennials, including the woodies, aiding in insulation around the vital plant crowns…….giving them a chance to avoid  “murder” by death by freezing.

Sixty years ago most Minnesotans were still outdoors people.   Today there are fewer than five per cent of the population among these ranks, and culturally are looked upon as failures in life.  Success occurs in an office.   Beauty has disappeared as a concept and therefore a goal in ones creative pursuits.  

Beauty is ‘out’ but Rain Gardens are in.    Native Minnesota plants are in also…..”ugly” has become as popular in landscaping as it has become popular in our today’s music, painting, poetry, sculpture, and government and commercial landscaping.   We learn our ‘uglies’ at university but nearly everything we learn today comes from university.

“Ugly” is also  ’in’  with those who sit at their computers and play games designing  our Minnesota  climate destiny of tomorrow.

They view today’s April 15, with its bitter winds, dust and cold, its hostility to life, human and plant, whatever it will kill or maim,  as ideal for Minnesota.    These are indoor people, very, very different animals in every way from our  grandparents.

February 14, 2011

Forsythia Will Be Blooming in Six Weeks

Filed under: garden seasons, shrubs and trees — glenn @ 8:24 pm

That’s right.   Somewhere around April Fools Day the forsythia shrubs will be fooling everyone by showing off their  bright shocking yellow color. 

The big one in size on the market these days is usually “Meadowlark”    This and many other of the larger forsythias which are sold in our climate zone four, usually can withstand a relatively cold winter and manage to bloom well.   However, even though these plants are  thoroughtly root hardy here, some may not be bud hardy, mening the shrub is fully hardy if you don’t care about getting a bloom every year.

This April should be a good forsythia bloom because lots of snow came early this last fall, November 13….bending and covering nearly all the stems with snow.   In addition  there was no significant thaw all winter in the Twin Cities, until this past weekend.

The Amelanchiers are early to bloom as well.   They have a white flower but don’t have that knock out punch of presence as the forsythias.

A very nice understory tree for form and aroma which blooms in later April, depending on the Spring, is Toka Plum…..If there is a plum pollinator nearby you might have fruit by mid August which is a first class treat.   If there is no other  plum in the neighborhood, you will still own a lovely tree.

Spring might be a bit late this year.  

A reminder…..Forsythias, like Viburnums and Lilacs, and many other shrubs bloom on last season’s wood….meaning the best time to prune is immediately after bloom, perhapss mid May.    If you prune forsythias significantly in the summer or  fall, you will be removing the floral buds.

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