Masterpiece Landscaping Blog

January 13, 2012

2012 - The Winter without a January

Filed under: Bulbs, Plant health, battling the Minnesota climate, shrubs and trees — glenn @ 3:18 pm

at least thus far fellow Northlanders…..

Previous to yesterday the vast majority of my grounds was bare of snow.   Where snow did exist, there was no accumulation, but only a dusting here or there in areas beyond the reach of the Sun.

As most of you readers know, I am thoroughly in favor of our Twin Cities moving into Horticultural zone 5.   In some grounds we are almost there, but msot of those grounds are in the Twin Cities themselves.

Last year we didn’t have a January either exactly.   As you remember we had the abundance of snow fall on November 13.   The ‘dump[ reached 32 inches most places on my grounds.   December came and went, dumping more ‘on the place below”.   And January came and went without any January thaw at all.  

It was good for our snow removal business for we could remove the endless number of ice dams on Twin City roofs.   Suddenly, mid February,  warm breezes, the tantalizing kind feigning Spring, ruined the money-making.   We had to wait another six weeks before the landscape gardening season began in earnest. 

Are there troubles assoicated  with a winter without a January?  

You bet there are.   Last evening the temperature hit our season low, zero degrees Fahrenheit after a month of March weather, but March weather without March snow…..the heavy wet kind. 

Some folks noticed tulip foliage already beginning to pierce the soil line on the south locations of their  house.    Although it is possible some Dutch bulbs might be already lost due to this warm and snowless winter followed by this sudden deep freeze,  it depend upon what temperatures are ‘on the horizon’. 

If there is an extended period of below zero temperatures   without any snow cover, any damage to  tulips will be nothing compared to what might happen to countless far  more valuable woody plant materials of borderline hardiness…..such as the Emperor Japanese Maples,  Forsythia blooms (although nearly all Forsythia shrubs themselves are hardy in the Twin Cities, the exposed wood of the Black Beauty Elderberry,  dieback also on many smokebushes to the ground, although their roots probably will survive.   

Young newly planted hemlocks, yews, yellow foliaged Japanese yews especially might be hard hit, depending upon the quality of the soil in which they have been  planted. 

Dwarf ginkgos might be killed.   Some of those other plants you spent $200 per unit for are also likely to be victimized.

As a rule “dwarfs’ of both deciduous and evergreen shrubs or trees are less hardy than their standard parents.   The ones most susceptible to winter kill from snowlessness are those from parents hardy only to zone 4, and most woody plants of horticultural zone 5. 

What to do to avoid the loss  of some of your favorite more sensitive plants?  

If your landscape garden or garden  border, or flower garden bear  no winter mulch added to the soil around their crowns already and you haven’t a bag or two or twenty filled with oak leaves, unchopped, you might think about applying rags or old sheets around the crowns of the plants possibly endangered.  

Tree  and  Intersectional  peonies might be susceptible to damage…..which reminds me as I write this article I have forgotten   to tend to them thus far.

So I have to run folks!  These peonies demand my attention!

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.

Warning to Twin City Homeowners: Water your grounds well this fall

Filed under: Plant health, battling the Minnesota climate, garden maintenance, shrubs and trees — glenn @ 10:03 am

Since our monsoons of early summer, there has been a drought in the general Twin City area.   For well established plants there generally shouldn’t be much concern….as yet.   For newly planted woody plants and perennials regular watering……that is reliable water availability is essential for survival.

A prolonged period of drought has about the same effect on woody plants regardless of soil type.   Plants will wilt and die  sooner in sandy soils.   They also recover sooner, assuming there is enough life stored in the plants for  recover.

Water newer plants placed in sandy soils daily for ten or fifteen minutes during extended dry periods.   Don’t include a few drops of rain in the middle of the night or afternoon.   They hardly matter.  

For heavy clay soils water regularly….to prevent drought….once every three or four days for twenty minutes……using a gentle sprinkle.    If the soil had already caked and cracked, apply a light sprinkle for ten minutes twice a day until the soil again become maleable.

More important….don’t allow your landscaped grounds to enter the world of water deprivation.   Not too many people I know enjoy standing at each plant for ten minutes hand watering their flocks.  Especially if the plants number in the hundreds…..or thousands.

Nothing made my home grounds more attractive, alive and lush than when my irrigation system was intstalled.   (Note….I lucked out regarding the soil which anchors and nourishes this lushness.  It is the best loam ever……I bought my home property totally unaware of this blessing, 37 years ago.)

If you have not been watering your landscape grounds regularly…..Start NOW.   

If you want to be relieved of the ‘pain’ of watering or the angst of remembering when to water, give us a call at 952-933-5777.     We have the best landscape garden installer and fixer available.   He, too, is an artist.   I wouldn’t have any other grounds irrigation ‘guru’ touch my own landscape garden…..but I’ll share him with you.  Give us a call.   An irrigation system for your home grounds isn’t very expensive……especially if you cannot keep your home grounds plants alive.

MOST PLANT DEATHS IN THE HOME GROUNDS ARE CAUSE BY DROUGHT…….that is the lack of reliable watering.

Heat of temperature does make a difference…..As you’d expect, high temperatures  increase stress on all garden plants…..including on you, their caretaker.

September 29, 2011

The Trouble with Trees

Filed under: The Art of Landscaping, shrubs and trees — glenn @ 11:40 pm

What is a ‘tree’ to the general Minnesota  public?   

Most people would not think of defining it, answering something like “a woody perennial plant usually of fewer than five upright stems”. 

If asked, most people will answer, “an elm”…..or “a maple” or ‘oak’…..not thinking that a White Pine and Colorado Spruce are also trees.    So is a redbud and a pagoda dogwood, and even a winged euonymus, which is usually sold as a shrub at your local nursery.

The golden chamaecyparis, now becoming popular at the local Twin Cities nurseries are sold as shrubs, but in reality are trees.   The same is true of  global techny arborvitaes.   If you don’t believe me, never prune these ’shrubs’ and discover their natural size  for yourself.

Most Oaks, Maples, even Ash and  the  Elm are huge trees in our state but become punier as  reliable annual rainfall declines.

Among the most common mistakes made when Minnesotans landscape their home grounds is the choice of tree  they select…..and forgetting that they might not need a huge shade tree to tower 50 feet or more  above any house in view.

Most trees on home properties  in the Twin Cities are weed trees, Siberian elms, mulberries, buckthorn, silver maple, green ash, box elders, even American elms.  

“I want color”, the homeowner demands.    Maples come to mind.   “I want a fast growing tree” and silver maple comes to mind, one of the most undesireable trees for any city  home lot and most lots beyond.  

The green ash is everywhere.   It is also fast growing and very weedy…..and cheap, very cheap from mass production thirty and forty years ago when folks hunted around for replacements for the American Elm.

Anything evergreen in trees is almost always called “pine” by our fellow northland natives.    Whether spruce, hemlock, arborvitae, fir or pine, they are called pine.   As mentioned earlier they are often not thought of as a ‘tree’, only as a pine or evergreen.

There is absolutely no difference between a White Oak, Sugar Maple, and a White or Scotch Pine in their natural growing habit.    If their lower branches are not removed, or die out due to lack of light, or are eaten,  they all   become shade trees…..big shade trees, at that……100 feet high shade trees whether your city neighbor wants shade or not.

Folks generally don’t like to cut down trees on their own premises.  It’s an emotional thing.   Some of the Colorado spruce around the Twin Cities are 80% dead and show every per cent of the  ugly deadness…..yet, no one cuts them out to make their home grounds more beautiful.

Most homeowners for that matter take their home grounds as it is without much thought of beauty.

I am not a fan of crab apples.    Unless our clients demand “crabs”  we prefer the redbud and the pagoda dogwood among the smaller class of trees usually sold as ornamentals.   

A far more beautiful tree than any crab apple, in my view, of course, is a new one for our horticultural zone market and not yet readily available……the Paperbark Maple, Acer griseum. 

No, it does not possess colorful flowers.  

It is a neat, very precisely shaped tree in  form and leaf, midsized, with the most beautiful colored bark to see back lit in sun.    Place it on the South aspect and be captivated by its radiant rich reddish to caramel brown peeling trunk all day long when sunlit.  You won’t get much work done, but you sure will be inspired by the scene.

Its fall color  depends upon the length of autumn before snowfall.   In its native states, Pennsylvania and Ohio, the tree displays as beautiful a fall color of foliage of any tree.

Think carefully before buying any tree to be planted  on your home grounds.   Consider its mature size and its expected size in ten years.   If you live in one of those suburbs where all of the grounds’ top soil was removed, you might be lucky to grow a Box Elder.    There is always the Siberian Elm…..which would probably grow well in Hades.   You won’t be able to buy it at your local nursery.   So, snooker up to  a friend living in Minneapolis or in one of its inner suburbs and collect a few of the millions of seeds or simply transplant one of the Siberian Elm already a weed.    You won’t mind the tree  if you believe that halitosis is better than no breath at all.

Consider how much of your homegrounds  you want covered with shade.    Lawns grow poorly in shade……think weeds, because they will.   Fewer shrubs and perennials grow well in deep shade.    Worst of all if your grounds are covered with shade, you cannot see the beauty displayed by  the sunlit shadows, character  and colors of  components which make  the landscape a gardened one.

Plant your trees and shrubs according to  the path of sunlight across your homegrounds.    Remember that the sun without clouds is nature’s spotlight constantly moving across the stage.   While the deep shade of the garden may be cooler in summer by twenty degrees, its shade if everywhere will deny the drama of  what is specially lit for a few minutes and then slips out of the picture into shade.

The landscape garden’s best friend is the sun.   Its  second is shade, and third is water.

Beware of planting the big trees.    The trouble with these trees is their shade, despite its pleasure….and their roots.    Too many big trees on the homegrounds  is what makes hostas  so popular.

September 9, 2011

A Listing of Ten Terrific Conifers for the Twin City Landscape Garden

Filed under: shrubs and trees — glenn @ 12:22 am

The most important woody plants for any Minnesota  landscape garden are  the  conifer evergreens. 

If you were to ask most Minnesotans, the garden aware or not, what the longest landscape season in  Minnesota might be, they would be confused, hesitant, unsure how to answer, rather than think first and reveal the answer everyone knows….WINTER!

In fact our Minnesota winter is equal to all of its  other landscape seasons, Spring, Summer, and Autumn, combined.    Here in the Twin Cities it used to last from November 1st to May 1st  on the average for the first 30 years of my life…..gradually warming to a more tolerable November 15 to April 15 with an  earlier Spring to show up every once in awhile as in the Spring of 2010.

Last November it was the 13th of the month when Winter exploded all in one Saturday and Winter never relented for the rest of the season.    Dare we remember?

So, figure it out.   If  Winter lasts here as a landscape season as long as the other seasons combined, it doesn’t take much thinking to conclude what I concluded still playing “landscaping” in my sandbox nearly 70 years ago.   A Minnesota winter is very harsh and bleak without them.

So, the most important plants in the Minnesota landscape are evergreen conifers.   They stand as the core to any and all landscape gardens in our Northland.  Their form and colors dominate from  the first of November till about the 15th of May when the big sized deciduous trees begin to color up the neighborhoods with their cover of green lace which lasts only about a week.   Usually, by May 20,  the tree and shrub line of our landscapes is overwhelmed with green……masses of green……chlorophyll doing its thing most efficiently, with the conifers no longer dominant, but blending into the mass often even in form.

A landscape garden rich in conifer evergreens well placed,  is a noticeably  attractive  landscape garden twelve months of every years…….and is most beautiful when the artist’s eye makes the effort to set the scene beautifully rather than planting them all in lines.

Over the past twenty years no grouping of plants can match the number of truly useful, hardy,   and beautiful  plants introduced to  our northern world than the evergreen conifers.

They grow from ground creepers, such as Motherlode or Icee Blue Junipers  to the behemoths, the Eastern White Pine and Norway Spruce….100 or more feet tall…….and so much beautiful stuff in between.

I have  been asked to list some of my favorite evergreen conifers for our Minnesota landscape gardens……I shall limit myself to ten.

However, before I begin the top ten of my today’s ranking (tomorrow I might be in a different mood),  I have to remind you, dear reader, as a genus, Thuja, the Arborvitaes are by far the most needed, versatile, easiest to grow, with the widest range of variety for most of Minnesota where there is ample winter cover and growing season moisture.  

1…Of the major sized trees of any kind, deciduous or conifer, my favorite shade tree  is the Eastern White Pine.

The Minnesota nursery industry is cruel and always has been cruel to this magnificent piece of all year beauty.    For these misfits  tend to prune all young conifers to look like Christmas trees.

The most beautiful trees in Minnesota are the Eastern White Pine.    Take a trip to Hackensack, Bemidji, or the Lake Itasca region, or look in some of the older communities of the Twin Cities if you have any doubts.

And they are shade trees ever bit as much as the Sugar Maple or Green Ash.    And they drop no acorns on your bean as do the bur oaks and the white pine’s major competitor for beauty, the mature White Oak.

Spruce are not shade trees.   Tree forms are conical by nature.  It’s their habit.   They can’t help it.   As beautiful as the Blue Colorado Spruce used to be, it is no more as a mature specimen.   Too many diseases and too much shade have come to destroy its magnificence.  

2…However, my garden has to have a Hillside Spruce somewhere in its character….so I have three…..one about a foot tall, on its way to 25 feet, another six feet on its way to 25 feet, and another nearly ten feet tall of the same statistics, except that on my grounds with my great soil, all will probably reach 35 feet or more.  It is a Norway Spruce cultivar which looks like candelabrum when young…..very stiffly branched…..very proud of itself….and very green, dark green.

There are many, many dwarf and dwarfish Norway Spruce now available for planting in our Minnesota landscape gardens….But one has to shop around  for some of the best of them.

3.   I admit that I am stuck on the DeGroot’s Arborvitae.   The most beautiful I have ever seen are growing on  a property on Riviera Road north of St. Cloud,  in sand with an automatic watering system…and regularly fertilized.   The last time I saw them, perhaps five years ago, they had reached 20 feet in height, and narrow as a needle with dense foliage.   

DeGroots is a semi-dwarf pyramidal arborvitae.   It is a beautiful specimen as a needle upright and as a needle upright enframes anything and everything as you  approach  it. 

4.   Another arborvitae….this time a shrub….Rheingold Arborvitae, and it must be grown in full sun from dawn to three o’clock anyway to bring out its burnt orange tints……the only conifer shrub of such talents.   I think I have six or seven of these to show off, but only two are in full morning sun, yet I like them all.

Despite all of the complaints about junipers being prickly, this genus, Juniperus, is almost as rich in its offerings as Thuja.  The Eastern Red Cedar can become a spectacular tree of greatest character, but I am no going to include it among my favorites here.   Instead I am going to select a ground creeper:   5…Icee Blue Juniper…….a shiny bluish beauty which glows in full sun.   It rises only a few inches above the ground and can creep for many feet.  It is expecially impressive creeping over retaining walls.

6….Hetz Juniper….an upright usually pruned to look pyramidal, but more naturally grows broader.  It has darker green, prickly foliage, but it carries two beautiful colors of fruit…juniper ‘berries’, as they say.    One set, the present year’s set of ‘berries’ is light blue which usually adds to countless sets of  purplish blue ‘berries’ from last year’s production.   Now, imagine healthy dark green foliage with bright lighter green young shoots cluttered with both light blue and purplish blue produce of ‘berries’ all at the same time….now, that is a beautifully colored  plant.

It can get very tall.

7.  Sunkist (or Yellow Ribbon) Arborvitae is an absolute must for any Minnesota home grounds with good soil, ample moisture, and a space in full sun….at least for 7 hours of the day….eastern exposure.   My gardens always include this beauty some way or another worked into a spot along with DeGroot’s arborvitae.  

Don’t believe the labels regarding this beauty’s height (eight feet)…..I have three Sunkists all of which are surpassing  20 feet.   I don’t mind.   I’d give them their space no matter what.

8.  Swiss Stone Pine……Neat, precise, confident and superior in attitude, as if it is too beautiful to ever be found in  just any old garden……for it’s immediate presence impacts the scene.   This is a must for any smaller space for it is a slow grower and does not reach out in all directions as it ages as does the much larger Eastern White Pine.

9,  Gentsch Hemlock…..wow, is this beautiful….ever so graceful with its younger branchings.  which tend to be whitish as they ‘pop’ out in late spring and in shade, likely to be showing off all summer.

There are many cultivars of Hemlock (Tsuga), many I have not mentioned of the arborvitaes and junipers all of which could be listed among the best 50 conifers, or 100 conifers to select for use from ground covers to major trees.   Very old Scots Pines are unforgettable in their beauty, almost always for  unique and unpredictable reasons but almost always showing off their striking bright orange bark.     Some of the best dwarf pines are Scots Pines….a very good one being, Pinus sylvestris ‘pumila’.   

10….Chamaecyparis pisifera   aurea  filifera…..In late spring  of 1974 our good friend and devoted gardener Allie Simonds gave my wife and me  two of these Chamaecyparis pisifera aurea  as house warming plants.   I had heard of a Boulevard Chamaecyparis before.   I knew the Boulevard  Chamaecyparis was hardy, because  a Mr. Maynard was growing a beauty in the front grounds of his home in DULUTH, and the home was not along Lake Superior’s  Park Point……(the warmest horicultural zone in the state of Minnesota, by the way….a legitimate zone 5 even forty years ago).

In 1974 the two  gifts were a bit larger than my two fists, that is, a gift per fist.

I was nervous for I felt  the pressure was on me to make the gifts happy.   Were they hardy?    Allie had bought them from White Flower Farms in Connecticut.   There was no internet to zoom to for a Connecticut view of the matter….for it did say zone 5 on a tiny label…..so I thought it needed protection.  

How does one protect an evergreen so small?   I decided to place them both lined up along my walkway to the back garden where I would have to see their progress every day of their lives, which to tell you the  truth, I suspected would be short.

How did I know in 1974 our horticultural zone in the Twin Cities would leave zone 4 and close in on zone 5?   I was all for it and am even more so today.   Why should anyone prefer killing weather for six months of the year when it can happen for only 4 or so?

I thought these  newbies were going to be shrubby as the picture on the tiny label suggested….with a bit of an upright look to them.   Eventually by the 1990s Sungold and later King’s Gold Chamaecyparis showed up on the local market….as shrubs.

They are still sold as shrubs….but these pisifera chamaecyparis are really trees masquerading as shrubs….sold a shrubs because nurserymen can sell 20 shrubs to every tree of a species.

One of the  most beautiful understory conifer  trees on my grounds are these two Chamaecyparis pisifera aurea filifera  now over twenty feet tall.   They look beautifully Japanesie in natural form.   They had been growing under a mature but struggling oak tree for more than thirty years,  which was removed a year ago this past November.  Neither Chamaecyparis  had ever shown anything ‘aurea’….for decades bearing  only a green green until this summer.  

Both are now brilliant yellow in folliage….and that is a real attraction to go with their natural Japanesie character…..lightly peeling bark carrying slightly weeping branchings.

Note:  For all of you who have bought King’s Gold or Sungold Chamaecyparis as a shrub…..I have some new for you……yes, they too are  TREES by nature…..if you allow them to become trees.   My tallest Sungold, growing without prunind,  thus far is ten feet tall…..and it carries its yellow foliage unchanged throughout the winter.

How do you like that color and  snow combination?

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.

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.

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