Masterpiece Landscaping Blog

November 14, 2011

It has been very dry in the Garden this Fall. WATER NOW if you can.

Filed under: Plant health, battling the Minnesota climate, garden maintenance, perennials, shrubs and trees — glenn @ 9:55 pm

This article should be considered a WARNING to any readers who planted or had us or anyone else plant new plant materials on your grounds since about the first of July this year in the Twin City area.

We certainly had a number of rainfalls earlier in the year.   Many were of the plundering type in which the downpour was overwhelming but not terribly helpful to landscape garden plants.   Following these deluges, we have had a significant drought.   Here in the western part of the Twin Cities where I live, I don’t think we have had an inch of rain over the past two and a half months.

I have an irrigation system which is scheduled to water the grounds for twenty minutes every other day.   It runs early in the morning, except if I am home weekends.   I like to watch my plants watered whenever I have a chance, so I turn the system on manual when I have the time to see the watering.

My irrigation system was winterized over four weeks ago….during a day of light, very light, rain. 

October is usually a drier month in the Twin Cities, and has been so all of my life.   We usually see a good amount of rain here in September.    With the cooler nights approaching cold nights, plant  need for water is not as critical as in warmer months….and the days of sunlight become significantly shorter in the fall, so there is less evaporation.

And remember although tree shade does reduce moisture evaporation from your understory plantings,  the big trees, mainly maples, elms and basswoods hype up their own water needs first and foremost when dry or not dry, for these trees when mature, aren’t protected by shade…….unless maybe by cottonwoods if you live in an area  big enough  to handle them.

Coniferous evergreen trees are not serious water robbers.  Most  respond very well when watering is reliable.

When the temperatures of summer reach or pass the 90 Fahrenheit degree mark, most of our garden plants begin to shut down to save moisture…….if there is no reliable watering available.

By far the greatest killer of  landscape plants, woody or otherwise,  especially among the newly planted,  is from lack of water…..more specifically, the lack of regular reliable watering.  

Soils also play a role in plant deaths due to drought.   I am lucky….actually my plants are lucky to have a great soil environment from which to grow.   There is no clay hereabouts…..for which I am grateful.    My grounds are loamy  by nature and made loamier by years and years of my mulching the grounds with oak leaves.   Only five  per cent of my landscape garden is in lawn…..which takes nine minutes to mow.    The remaining is in garden plants including trees,  and paths…..and my house, of course.

If you live in our area, and have planted or have had planted a  number of perennial plants, woody or herbacous  in your garden this year after mid July, I advise you  to get out your sprinklers this week as soon as possible and water them well.   It will also help your herbaceous perennials to make it through the winter.

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.

September 1, 2011

Fall is a Good Time to Plant

Filed under: The Art of Landscaping, perennials, shrubs and trees — glenn @ 9:04 am

Yes, Autumn is a good time to plant…..especially in September.  I admit I prefer Spring as the best time for planting most of the more permanent garden material.   One can better view when something is going wrong with spring planted material.

I usually don’t recommend landscape gardeners go hunting for bargains when  looking for  principal plants, the most important trees and shrubs of your landcape picture.    Yet, let’s admit it, most of us who are “taken” by plants are often “taken” by plants even if we know  nothing about them……at any lower price or accept freebies from friends or ‘enemies’ for that matter…….Enemies  being  persons who offer to sell you or give you Aegopodium….the perennial ‘Snow on the Mountain’ for your gardened grounds.

Not all plants are equal.

I am trying to think of any groupings or individual plants that should not be planted in Fall.   None come to mind and I don’t have any vibes that I am forgetting any.

Some plants are better transplanted this time of year.   September is the best time to transplant Peonies, for instance.    As a rule fleshy rooted perennials are better transplanted in Fall, and skinny  rooted ones in the Spring.

Of  course I am hooked on buying expensive plants this time of the year  for my own landscape grounds, if I see a bargain for a plant I am particularly curious about and is on sale…….or any time of the growing season for that matter.   I confess I am  a plantaholic…..I buy with self interest and pleasure whether I need the plant fix and have  the money for it or not.

For the uninitiated to this dilemma, plantaholism is a major disease among landscape gardeners and others who play in their home grounds soil.

Some folks are fat because they eat too much or eat the wrong foods.   Some gardens are fat because their caretakers buy too much or buy the wrong plants.

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.

July 18, 2010

What Is This Thing Called “Weed”

Filed under: garden maintenance, perennials, random fun — glenn @ 4:33 pm

No, not the stuff the foolish  smoke!  The stuff  that grows where folks don’t want the stuff to grow.

To the Landscape Garden artist there is only one definition for the word, “weed”…..

A Weed is a Plant Out of Place!       That is the definition, the whole definition,  and nothing but the definition……to the Landscape Gardener.

In my landscape garden the plants out of place most everywhere are tree seedlings….sugar maples, red maples, elm, Ohio buckeye, buckthorn, box elder, Norway maple, Green Ash,  Red Oak, White Oak, American Arborvitae, Japanese Yew, Red Cedar, and so on and so on.  Then there are the herbaceous perennials which can be weedy, weedy, weedy no matter what the definition might be. 

In my garden I cherish one of these weedies…..the progeny from my Purple Cats Astilbe.

I have an underground irrigation system to water my plant world.  I realized early in my gardening life that astilbes demanded a moist environment.   I never thought for a moment that meant reliable waterings from an underground irrigation system. 

Where I once had one clump of Purple Cats Astilbe, I now have, perhaps, thousands of its seedlings.  The color isn’t quite there, but these reliable perennials are as big if a bit more pink that purple, a replica of its parents.  They are everywhere, and at the moment, they are in full bloom. 

I weed out only those which defy harmony.   I know there will be a problem in the future.  For each new hundred clumps  established each year, what will happen to my grounds in five more years.

I have a very small area of my landscape garden in  lawn.  Nine minutes worth to be exact.   The only other routine demand is managed automatically…..the watering for fifteen minutes a zone, every other day program. 

The rest of the grounds is an open door for any and all plant visitors to set up shop……where there is room, however.   Many plants are fussy about where they will do their thing.  I have been trying to get my ginkgo to produce for years and have succeeded with only two and both are rather moody about growing much.

I have Virginia Creeper growing.  Until about August first, mature  and happy Virginia grows about three feet a day and in several directions at the same time.  I call Virginia weedy, but not a weed.  I am the one who decides where Virginia can live and flourish.  Yet, pound for pound, no other species has been removed from my property over the past 36 years except perhaps for the exception of an 90 year old American Elm I had removed last Thanksgiving Day weekend.

I find the Creeper a great ground cover in some locations, and an attractive accent in foliage in others.  I never let the plant crawl up the trunks of trees, if I can help it.   That looks messy.

If one does have grounds fairly well designed naturalistically, there are other “weedies” which make good ground covers more restful to manage…..violets come to mind….cushion and chameleon spurge are good,….

 Japanese anemone is bound to be successful despite your moods.  In Latin is named, Anemone robustissima.   That should tell the interested gardener all that is needed to know.  The “issima” part can be translated to mean….”the very, very, very most!”

It the plant were the very, very, very most in height, the plant would likely have been named,  Genera “altissima”……referring to its altitude.

You can put it together, dear reader.   Expect Anemone robustissima to enjoy its stay in your garden.  Fortunately for all, it is a very attractive for a “robustissima”.

There are many plants who do enjoy “taking over” in the grounds.  And there are some weeds far worse than others, because no one can control them.

Among such weeds, Campanula  rapunculoides leads the list.  Another is Goutweed, the socalled perennial Snow on the Mountain.  As a large group  the grasses, especially lawn grasses can be killers in the perennial garden.  That is why timely and proper edging the perennial garden border from the lawn is very important.

Most weeds can be pulled out easily by hand.  I have always liked “weeding”.  It is so resrfull and uncomplex.   One simply reaches out, grabs on to the stem at its nearest to the ground, and pulls.

If the landscape garden is beautiful before weeding, imagine how clean and sharp it will be after weeding.

But, never forget that a weed is a plant out of place if you are a person so fortunate in life to have found the art of landscape gardening.

May 10, 2010

Ground Covers in the Landscape Garden

Filed under: Ground Covers, The Art of Landscaping, perennials — glenn @ 11:07 pm

Mulch, soil, leaves, river rock are all ground covers.  Each have there own place in Earth’s landscape  with river rock probably best located at the river.

The ground covers honored by this article are the ones which produce flowers and the coniferous evergreens that like to spread.

Have you ever seen a Japgarden juniper over fifteen feet wide.  You’ve missed a beauty if you haven’t.

Ground covers provide the negative space among  upright forms in the garden to allow those form to show their best shapes and  features.

I have about a half acre of landscape garden, which includes my house and garage.  About one per cent of this space is lawn…..which is a ground cover that does not produce a typical flower, nor is it coniferous.    Well, what did you expect?  Lawns are in the grass world.  Lawns can be walked upon.  Most flowering and coniferous ground covers cannot.

There are several sizes to ground covers, used  here not  in the meaning of  space they may occupy, but in their height…divided into four levels of growth….ground hugging, low growing, medium height, and tall ground covers……in all the plant world covering the soil  in masses of  about knee high height and lower.

As a guide, use garden thyme, chocolate chip ajuga, most  sedums, creeping jenny (lysimachia), creeping phlox, Wilton carpet and Mother Lode  junipers, and the tiny veronicas  as the ground hugger; sweet woodruff, ajuga, white arabis, wild ginger, the smaller leafed lamiums, or Japgarden or Prince of Wales  juniper as  low growing;  microbiota,  Hughes juniper, Mayapple, and the larger leafed lamiums as medium height, and Buffalo,  Gold Lace, and Broadmoor junipers, and some ferns as tall ground covers.

You will notice, that by ground covers we refer to plants which increase their domain horisontally.

It is in the idealized Landscape Garden where ground covers perform their most attractive roles in their performing.  Most of these plants gain character as they increase their space.

The sedums flower later in the season, but nearly all of the other ground covers show their very best in Spring.  The “best” might be the flower shape, the tightness of cover or the pattern of cover or foliage,  the fragrance, the color, either of foliage or flower, or the rhythm of foliage, its texture, its patterns of foliage.

Clients and clients-to-be are welcomed to visit some of Masterpiece’s landscape gardens to learn more about ground covers.   Call us at 952-933-5777 for an appointment.  We shall be looking forward to showing you the important role ground covers play in the art of landscape gardening.

For a description  of the Landscape Garden please go to our home page at this web site.