Masterpiece Landscaping Blog

August 2, 2010

The Disappearance of Beauty and the Landscape Garden

Filed under: The Art of Landscaping — glenn @ 5:07 pm

Our company, Masterpiece Landscaping, Ltd., was invited to participate in a Garden Party last Thursday.  It was a fund raiser for the Friends of Roseville Parks held at the lovely grounds of Tom and Mona Dougherty.  Over 300 people attended. 

There were many programs offered to provide entertainment and learnings to the attendees.  I and Mike Berg of our Masterpiece staff were among the speakers.

I wanted to emphasize the importance of beauty as the fundamental goal in the development of the landscape garden.  Beauty and beautiful are words seldom used in the garden world these days.  I happened to notice while at the offices of the Horticultural Society in Roseville a few weeks ago, that of 80 or more topics offered by folks signed up for the Society’s speaker’s list, NOT A ONE MENTIONED THE WORD OR ANY RELATIVE OF THE WORD, ‘BEAUTY’.   Not a one mentioned landscaping as an art form.  

I mentioned in my presentation that beauty is no longer  respected in art,  any art.  It apparently is out of date.   Where is beauty expressed  in any of the more common art forms…music?  theater?  painting?  poetry?  literature?

In landscaping and gardening usually the instrutments of the trade don’t let us down.   The flowers themselves are colorful, trees might be shapely and not dying, shrubs occasionally are seen not hacked back to control their size, and evergreens when healthy are still beautiful, especially in winter.

But beyond the instruments themselves, little attention is paid to achieve beauty  in the home grounds…..and the flowers, shrubs, trees, and all of the evergreens, these instruments of beauty become neglected and begin to deteriorate.   Others  grow beyond the spaces allotted.  

Gardens, like people, gain character with age.    A bit of knowledge can help good character.

By ‘garden’  we usually refer to a space of ground where flowers are grown for display.   We usually don’t think of foundation plantings as gardens, but as a display of plants to cover the foundation of the house whether that foundation needs cover or not.

Most home owners don’t know if their foundations need cover.   Most landscape designers don’t either….foundation plantings are a habit….it’s a given.

Almost all landscaping itself,  as practiced for generations, is a display of lawn, and a display or two of other plant material.   And, in my 60 years of being aware of home landscaping, there can be no doubt that many of  these displays are  more attractive that they used to be.

There are more materiasl from which to choose.  Until recently there has been a bit more money available to spend on decorating the home grounds with various displays of plants.

Little of this has to do with a lancscape garden.   A landscape garden is to be entered.  Yes, it is a piece of land, but that piece of land is to be developed not to display plants as displays, but mimic nature and  idealize  nature as the human eye and mind dictate. 

Privacy, or at least the illusion of privacy, is vital. 

How does a home owner develop such grounds?

The landscape garden requires space, but it can be created in the “front yard” or the back, or both, of almost every 45′ by 100′ of a typical rectangular Twin City home lot.

Would you buy a house in which every room is a kitchen…..or the rooms are all livingrooms?

Why do we landscape our “yards” into two rooms at most…..the front yard and the back yard?

Foundation plantings out front, a  spiraea or three or five, some hostas, a lot of river rock, and a linden tree or a dying Colorado spruce  in the middle of the front ‘yard’.   In grounds where  plantaholics live, every space is filled with plants.  That is what space is for….to fill with plants.  More plants will be bought and placed whereever there might be an opening.

Occasionally, some beauty might break out, but the best one can usually achieve is to be noted as a person who is a plantaholic.

I have coined a phrase which tells all there is to know about the rule of achieving beauty in the art of landscaping……”What do you plant where, and why did you do it?”   Three questions as one…..but the most important question is “Why did you do it?”

However practical it may be to answer the question, “Why did you place that particular plant at that particular location?” with “Because that was the only space available”, you may find comfort in being among the 98%  who will answer the same, but you’ll never get anywhere as a plantaholic except collect plants.

“Because I like it there!” is not a satisfactory answer either, unless  you   explain why.  When you can explain rationally why you like something beautiful, you have taken  the most important step in becoming a successful landscape garden artist. 

Gals, this might be difficult to do, but give it a serious try.

Give us a call at Masterpiece Landscaping  for more information about establishing landscape gardens on your home or business grounds.   We offer garden tours and addresses of beautiful gardens which contain beautiful displays, but in a ‘cathedral’ of a landscape garden.

July 24, 2010

Marian and Larry Fischer of Waseca; Beautiful Garden Winners in 2009

Filed under: About Masterpiece, The Art of Landscaping, garden maintenance — glenn @ 11:12 pm

We at Masterpiece are very proud of our friends in Waseca, Marian and Larry Fischer, Star  Tribune Beautiful Garden winners a year ago.  Their landscape garden dwarfs mine in size, spreading about 3 acres in all.   It  is exquisitely maintained and manicured.   The setting is truly an oasis in a beautiful endless ”sea”  of corn.  

We have been very blessed to have had the opportunity to work together with Marian and Larry to develop the grounds over the years.  I am jealous of its beauty.

It is one form of landscape garden art to create the forms of the grounds…that is, answering the 3 questions in one, “ What goes where and why?”  

 It is yet another landscape garden art to maintain the beauty of the grounds.  

The following article was written by Kim Palmer, a reporter with the StarTribune writing the the Home and Garden section.  You can read the entire article and view the video at the StarTribune website…December, 2008 in the Home and Garden section.

From an interview with the Fischers, Ms. Palmer writes:

“I think I was born to be a gardener,” Marian said. “I’ve loved flowers and nature since I was a child.” Growing up on a dairy farm in Iowa, the oldest of seven children, nature was her escape from the clamor of a busy household. “I like peace and quiet,” she said. “Outside it was quiet.”

When she and Larry had children of their own — two sons — she raised them to savor the natural world as she had. “I would not let them sit in the house, even when they were young,” Marian said. If they wanted to watch Saturday-morning cartoons, they had to do it in a “wired” treehouse. “So at least they were outside.”

The strategy apparently worked; both sons are now gardeners themselves, and they and their friends congregate at the farm every fall for a big Oktoberfest, featuring a barn dance, bluegrass band and apple-pressing. “We are blessed with so many wonderful young people in our lives,” Marian said.

From field to woodland

From the beginning, Marian had a strong sense of what kind of landscape she wanted. Adding trees, for windbreak and shade, was a top priority. “I’m not into this restored prairie thing,” she said. “I was a child of the prairie, having spent so many hours in the hot, sticky field. I’ll go visit a prairie, but I don’t want to re-create one. I prefer shaded woodland.”

But she was still searching for ways to create the beauty that she thirsted for, even as others were starting to take notice of the Fischers’ efforts. In the mid-1980s, the couple’s garden was included on a tour as part of the Minnesota Horticulture Society’s convention. Little did Marian know that she was about to meet a mentor who would have a profound impact on her and her garden. Before the tour, the society’s director at the time, Glenn Ray, owner of Masterpiece Landscaping, came to preview their garden. Later, she went to hear him speak. “He talked about the fragrance of the lilac, and he said it with such passion,” she recalled. “Fragrance is really my thing.

A few years later, when she was on a mission to make her landscape more interesting during the winter months, she remembered Ray, looked up his phone number and asked if he did consulting, which he did. Marian has vivid memories of his first critique. “He said, ‘Why did you plant everything in straight rows?’ I said, ‘I’m German. I grew up on a farm.’”

She soon decided that Ray had the aesthetic sensibility she needed to lift her gardens to a new level. “I am a gardener. Glenn is an artist. It was obvious to me that he had what I didn’t.”

So she started hiring him every year, to refine her garden and do some of her pruning. One year, she showed him a heavily wooded area where farmers had been piling boulders for decades. “Glenn said, ‘You have a gold mine!’” Marian recalled.

That was the beginning of the dry streambed, a project four years in the making. Ray considers it “the jewel of her garden.”

The Fischers and their sons remember, and still laugh about, the painstaking process of building it. “Glenn is really fussy about the position of boulders,” Marian said. “He could spend an hour on one boulder, turning it this way and that, then say, ‘Sorry, that boulder isn’t going to work.’”

Early in their partnership, she followed his advice to the letter. “I don’t argue with Glenn. I would limit my horizons if I did,” she said.

But over the years, she has gotten bolder and more outspoken, she said. She’s redesigning one of her gardens now to reflect more of her own aesthetic. “We’re remaking this into a Marian garden rather than a Glenn garden,” she said. “I want flowers and beauty. He wants structure and form. We’re working on it.”

Ray doesn’t mind. In fact, he’s gratified to see her inner artist emerge.  “She’s a wonderful student.  When I met her everything ws in lines and squares.  She had no confidence artistically.  Now she’s part of telling me what she does and doesn’t like.  She’s developed an eye.”

Comment:  I think those who know me agree, even if painfully, that when I say, “I get as much pleasure from teaching about Landscape Gardening as I do about installing one”, it is true.

They know one lights me up as much as the other.   Sometimes they have to endure both at the same time.   My colleagues and friends are usually very forgiving, though.    And Thank God.

Thank You, “Star-Tribune” For the Honor of Your Recognition

Filed under: The Art of Landscaping — glenn @ 9:40 pm

Dear Friends:  Last Wednesday we at Masterpiece discovered that my home garden had been  chosen one of the six winners in the Star-Tribune’s annual Beautiful Gardens contest.   

In an article appearing  in the paper’s Home and Garden section, Kim Palmer wrote:  “How do your gardens grow?

Extremely well, judging from the overwhelming response to this year’s Home and Garden Beautiful Gardens contest.  We received nearly 200 entries, a record number for the contest it started in 1997.

Frankly, we were blown away, not just  by the sheer volume of gardens submitted, but also the beauty they represented.  We saw award-worthy gardens in every style and on every scale.  In the end, our team of six judges narrowed the field to the following six winners:

Glenn Ray, founder of Masterpiece Landscaping, has influenced many local gardeners, including several previous Beautiful Garden winners.  His own Minnetonka landscape is a “masterpiece of color, texture, form aroma and imagination,”  according to its nominator.”

Ms. Palmer listed:

Richard and Shirley Friberg, Roseville…….Dianne and Dan Latham, Edina…….Randy Ferguson, Minneapolis……Diane and Curtis Dutcher, Brooklyn Park……..and Chris Trevis, Lake Elmo as Beautiful Gardens winners as well.    Each garden was skillfully described.

Congratulations to you all.

I admit that I am quite pleased and thank everyone involved for  this recognition and honor.  I especially thank Chris and Marion Levy, long time clients,  and as with so many of you, good friends who apparently nominated the grounds, and Kim Palmer for the special paragraph she wrote, quoted above, about me and the garden.  

And I thank all of you and my colleagues at Masterpiece who have added to my great good luck in life to work with such good and talented people, creating something  beautiful for people interested in garden beauty to add to their lives, and maintain  friendships  which help make life beautiful and so well worth living.

From the bottom of my heart….Thank you, ALL!

July 21, 2010

Garden Party in Roseville, Thursday July 29, 2:00-7:00 PM

Filed under: The Art of Landscaping — glenn @ 9:32 am

Friends and, we are happy to say, “clients” of Masterpiece Landscaping, Mona and Tom Dougherty,  are opening their gardened grounds for a grand garden bash for all of us who love beautiful gardened landscapes. 

Flower, trees, and shrubs, and even lawn, will receive the special honors for the day.  Much of the talk and many of the talks will be about them …….to know more about the garden arts  and our  tricks of how to put these gifts of the Earth into beautiful settings to enspirit us and our friends and neighbors. 

But, that isn’t all.  Boulders, bees, and butterflies and even backyard chickens will honored with speech and gossip.

Tea and tasty treats will accompany the beauty.  Classes on landscaping design, flower arranging, and other plant “arts”  are open to all.  Music will attend as well.

Advance reservations are $20 (tax deductible).  Send checks (made to Friends of Roseville Parks) to Norma Forbord, 2016 Evergreen Court, Roseville, MN 55113.  Call 651-636-4280 for further information.  Tickets at the door are $25.

Our Masterpiece staff will be there presenting programs and  answering your questions helping all to know more about creating beauty in the Minnesota Home Garden.

July 11, 2010

Guided Garden Tour Scheduled for July 15, 7:00 PM

Filed under: The Art of Landscaping — glenn @ 3:02 pm

For those of you who are especially interested in the Landscape Garden, you will learn more on this guided tour than just the names of plants.  You will discover some interesting features of the Landscape Garden which sets it aside from the Plant Display Gardens  one views everywhere.

When Minnesotans think of gardens, they think of displays  of flowers and occasionally a few shrubs.  Blooms are the mainstays of these  plots.  Often such “gardens” occur in the back yard or these days, as foundation plantings in the front as well.  They are to be viewed only and therefore they become two dimentional. 

Landscape Gardens are to be enterred.  The skill in the design generally is to lure the visitor and control what is to be seen and felt.

As a rule flower gardens are a female habit.  Gals love color and many are very particular about particular colors.   Guys are generally more interested in form with color supporting form.  One of the reasons, surely, is due to the fact so many human males have an assortment of color distinguishing problems.  Some are badly colorblind. 

The tour will begin just west of Hopkins.   There is no charge, but a donation to Courage Center will be appreaciated.   Call  at 612-919-5200 or the Masterpiece Office at 952-933-5777 for reservations and further details.

There are some folks who believe the landscape garden is limited to areas with large grounds.  This is not the case.  At least two of the settings we will be visiting will be typical city lots. 

This is also the time those of you who seek living amid beauty must think about planting for the winter landscape garden.  You’ll certainly want to join us on the tour.

July 1, 2010

The Importance of Being Artificially Watered

Filed under: Plant health, The Art of Landscaping, garden maintenance — glenn @ 9:21 pm

We at Masterpiece Landscaping install grounds irrigation for the landscape garden.   

Nearly all of the folks trained to install irrigation systems know nothing about installing  such systems in the classical landscape garden.

What is the difference?

Imagine a half acre of lawn.  Only lawn….nothing but lawn; no maple trees here, arborvitaes and pine there, viburnum and magnolia, anemone and heuchera, sedum and “Hot Lips” turtlehead in sight.  Only lawn, with or without dandelions. 

Here installantion is simple and quite cheap.    Installation of irrigation into a landscape garden is often much more complex, primarily depending on the placements of the tree and shrub material.

If your dream is to create landscape beauty for your home or business grounds, plant your masterpiece first.  Let the irrigation follow the art, never the reverse, art following the irrigation system……unless, of course, you have no choice.

My family and I moved to my “landscape” canvas in Minnetonka where I still live, on January 1, 1974.   Immediately with the coming spring,   The grounds  “yard”  was almost entirely lawn.   I began at certain edges around the property to develop the privacy required for a landscape garden.   At that time I was heavy into pyramidal arborvitaes.  They were cheap, grew rapidly, and didn’t cause any shade.   Besides the foliage is very fragrant.  Moreover, I was sculpting my winter garden as well.  (None of the originals have survived to this day…..a result of a disastrous winter storm.)

Once established, arborvitaes (there are dozens and dozens of varieties) can tolerate the Twin City swings of water to drought quite well.   Holding on to money while raising a family was not as easy, so I never dreamed I could ever reach the patrician heights of owning a first class irrigation system for my landscape garden.  

I had it installed in 1990, but did not start to use it until  four or five years later….let’s estimate 1995. 

At that time my grounds already had sufficient structure and design to qualify as a “landscape garden”……but, barely, compared to its today’s form.   Yet, the grounds were generally attractive, but not melodious, not harmonizing, not grand.

“Gardens like people gain character with age” I have always reminded my landscape garden students.   My garden at age  twenty or so had not yet reached maturity.  Nor had its artist in so many respects. 

By 1998, by then three years into its water irrigation life, nearly everything within the grounds where the regular, reliable water reached appeared lush.

Today, no one, including me, is more astounded at the lushness of greenery  at every corner of these grounds.  And to taunt those of you who have not yet made this wise investment into  irrigating your own garden plants I do admit I face a new problem ever since regular watering became a way of my garden plants……

Astilbes have become a major weed  here. ( if you think with the traditional meaning of  weed…some plant showing up in your grounds which you didn’t plant and you feel you have to pull it.)  I have thousands, I do believe, from the fifty or so I have planted here in my life time.  Some are growing on logs.

 

But I am a staunch believer that “a weed is a plant out of place”.   By now the majority of plants on my landscape garden grounds are volunteers which I have artistically accepted into my family of plants which I enjoy being among.

Nothing has made my trees and shrubs  more healthy appearing, more rich and lush….and, yes, more beautiful than the introduction of artificial watering to my landscape garden.

P.S.  I no longer kill my favorite perennials while dragging a hose around for advantageous placements for watering.  I had learned to hate the garden hose.  Now we are more tolerant of each other.

Give us a call at Masterpiece Landscaping, 952-933-5777 to schedule your irrigation installation quote.

June 28, 2010

The Disappearance of Seeking Beauty in Modern America

Filed under: The Art of Landscaping — glenn @ 9:57 pm

Over the past century and a half  western societies have suffered from the rise of the omnipotent university.  As the university populations increase,  the individual human imagination  decreases and the art of  creating beauty disappears.  Some university art education critics claim the human mind becomes programmed.

The “feelings’ of the individual become institutionalized.  What one absorbs  and attempts to understand or  respond to in inspiration….become  numbed. 

The quest to achieve that which is beautiful dies.

Beauty has long disappeared from most corners of the world of art.  Music, literature, poetry, painting, sculpture, theater  become more recognized, honored and remembered by vulgarities, mindlessness, or the shocking or  pedestrian. 

The state of the arts in a culture reveals the state of the mind of that culture.

Sameness in landscaping is learned at university.  Today’s university instructors teach tomorrow’s “teachers”. 

This sameness in copied by the homeowner,,,,or the college kid looking to make a bit of extra money during the summer.   

When I shop at Lund’s supermarket,  I hear the most boring, mechanical sounding noise piped into shoppers ears.  It is   irritating in its recorded monotony and harshness….so completely devoid of anything resembling a pleasant melody……..It’s the ”music” of Orwell’s 1984.  

Of all the beautiful music in the world that has been composed, of all the inspiring and moving words which with  the melody of music and the beat of poetry which  have lifted mankind to the heights of human expression, nearly none of it is heard or read anymore by the modern American.

Beauty of Art is dead in America…..and has been for a long time.

We are told, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”.    That is a profound untruth.   There are  some differences from culture to culture, nearly all are superficial.  Most humans will agree on what is more beautiful than another……if they are put to it.   But recognizing beauty during the course of their every day lives is not often noticed except maybe at the bird feeder.  There are attractions….sexual, sensual and the bizarre, but beauty is a word just about absent from  the American vocabulary.

Recently I contacted the Minnesota State Horticultural Society to consider adding my name to their long list of speakers of horticultural matters.  Nearly one hundred titles, topics were listed which one might check off. 

Not a single topic or title recorded the words “beauty” or “beautiful” within any of the nearly one hundred topics.

The classic music of landscaping and gardening is the Art of the Landscape Garden.  That classic art form was also not to be found either in topic or title.   Most gardens, if they can be called “gardens” are displays of plants, usually herbaceous perennials and annuals.

We live in a society which no longer seems to seek  beauty…..except for how in our modern day we are supposed to make ourselves over to appear physically  as some kind of commercial model no matter what inside might be missing.

Recognizing beauty is somewhat similar to recognizing porn since one has a hard time defining it, but one knows it when one sees it. 

It is common in the world of gardening to grow flowers for their beauty.  I cannot deny that.   Although the human hand does play a part in the development of that beauty,  such as keeping it watered and fed, protecting it from diseases and creatures, the beauty itself is essentually a cause of nature.

I liken it to a single chord of music…..for a split second the chord might be moving to someone…..but it would not be described as beautiful.   Chords become beautiful when compared to other sounds…..how they relate together to create harmony.

Beauty is the opposite of ugliness; harmony the opposite of disharmony.  It is the range from pleasantness to the wildly inspiring which captures ones emotions whether instant or prolongued.   And in the landscape garden exquisitely designed to casually well designed  the visual music may rise and fall as cleverly and moving   as one of Beethoven’s most successful composition.

However, one rarely visits a landscape garden.

Many home landscapes are neat.  One might exhibit an outstanding tree which might be noticed by a handful of people in a year’s time.    Most, however, simply exist.

The human responsible for the grounds  ”plays” elsewhere,  oblivious to the world of beauty of the landscape garden.

Are you surprised that we at Masterpiece Landscaping specialize in the art of the landscape garden.  Regardless of the size of one own home or commercial lot, smallness of space does not eliminate a landscape garden. 

Please contact us at Masterpiece to give you a free tour of its home landscpe garden.  You will notice the difference from the cookie cutter pattern   at first glance.  Call us at 952-933-5777  to schedule your tour….limited to 3:00-6:00 on Fridays and Saturdays.

June 20, 2010

Classical Landscape Garden Open For Public View

Filed under: About Masterpiece, The Art of Landscaping — glenn @ 8:34 pm

Our home grounds at Masterpiece is a classical landscape garden…..One enters its realm to retire from the present time and world.  With every move forward into the gardened grounds there are windows to view distant arrangements  and grand paintings to admire. 

One is magnificently alone among Nature in its ideal.  Not the  only  ideal, but one of an endless possibilities for the ideal. 

The sunny setting provides sharp colors and bright contrasts.   The temperature falls 15 degrees when entering the shade rooms.   

The structure of the massive appearing grounds is built mostly with coniferous evergreens which, of couse, provide extraordinary beautify and suggestion of life in the dead of a Minnesota winter.   The lure of each trail comes from the distant views of beautiful forms seen through nature’s window.  The eye has been captured by each setting.  One forgets time.

Captured too are the fragrances flowing mysteriously from someplace just around the corner or perhaps close to the ground itself. 

A weed is hard to find, for almost every plant has its place. 

Every day becomes a new season….new colors are found, forms change, the sun’s spot light never quite the same and sometimes appears lost forever.  Every day demands a new visit…..to see another new canvas of beautiful arrangements.  Forsythias yield to azaleas and rhododendrons.  Azaleas and rhododendrons yield to redbuds, viburnums, and early peonies.   This Spring’s garden as seen, is lost forever.

Spring not only refreshes and resurrects the garden’s population, it is the most beautiful time for color in the Minnesota garden.  Yet, more important than color in the Minnesota garden….more enticing and  more subtle  is the beauty of form…….Nature’s sculpting of beautiful shapes, textures, and the spaces inbetween the  objects  make the garden appear a dream world.

Form is the most vital artistic element  of  the Minnesota winter setting when color is essentially absent or significantly subdued.   THERE IS NO WINTER GARDEN IN OUTDOOR WINTER MINNESOTA WITHOUT CONIFEROUS EVERGREENS.  And perhaps the most important coniferous evergreen genus is the  arborvitae…..Thuja…… with all of its countless cultivars and varieties.  Unfortunately, most are favored in winter by our Virginia White Tail deer as well.

No plant which is beautiful in winter is ugly in summer.   Countless plants in the typical Minnesota display garden rather than a landscape garden, are either ugly in winter or appear dead or disappear entirely for the season.  The annual and perennial flower garden are not in view for six months of every Minnesota year.

Occasionally, garden artists must admit, a dead appearing oak or Kentucky Coffeetree in winter  can offer a striking silhouette in the distance. 

During the month of June on each Friday from 3 PM to 6 PM the Masterpiece home garden will be open to the public for a guided tour.  Come and see for yourself……Call 952-933-5777  to sign up.

June 15, 2010

The Landscaped Grounds of Metropolitan Minnesota

Filed under: Residential Projects, The Art of Landscaping — glenn @ 10:36 pm

If you and I were to walk up and down the sidewalks of the city or streetsides of suburbia, it is likely we could give a pretty good listing of the personalities of the homeowning folks  who live there. 

Many years ago I taught landscape classes at the University of Minnesota’s Extension Service.  For the winter landscaping class, we added a bus tour to drive along many communities to tell my story about the art of landscape gardening as practiced in urban Minnesota.

To tell the truth, readers, the story wasn’t and isn’t terribly inspiring.   The scenery often  wasn’t that much to look at.  So I picked out a wide variety of settings……one of the most quieting and lovely was the setting in Minneapolis at Red Cedar Lane.

People neglect their grounds.  Typically, they hire a landscape company or college kid, there’s often little difference, and they place and dig in plants  by the numbers a child might draw.  Folks can understand lining things up and putting them in circles.   Rumor has informed them that uneven numbers are better in the garden than even numbers…..how is that one for understanding?   Homeowners were once told that everthing had to be balanced…….

Then, twenty years ago, as now, most people displayed  their grounds as if the grounds are a burden…..in the way.    Today, where lawns are cared for, they are more beautiful than ever.

“I don’t have time to garden”, is a frequent comment, so the “I” will hire some “turkey” (as we used to say in the days of yesteryear when Americans  were more polite)  to drive up in a dump truck and unload twenty five tons of river rock or trap rock to cover the grounds to reduce “weeding”.

During our tours we would observe some home fronts without ever discovering where the entry door was….or  if there were any windows nearby.   There was so much evergreen growth, it was certain no one had touched anything outdoors for several decades.

As a generalization one is roughly what ones grounds look like.  Neat?  Messy?   Tight?   Loose?  Meticulously developed?   Dog poop along the front entry walk?…..with a pit bull daring a visitor to approach?   House painted purple with pink stars around the front door?  

In one neighborhood a gal displayed bed springs with plants growing amid the wire…..all in the front yard.

Most landscapes are simply designs made as if  by cookie cutters.  If maintained neatly, they could avoid being unpleasant…….but, let’s face it,  Minnesota-America, the  landscape grounds as a tastful art form where we live   is generally………..

 PRETTY BAD  THEATER!     But, at least more people are spending a lot more money for this theater than ever before!

At least in order to see BAD theater, one has to buy a ticket……Most everyone has to look at bad landscaping whether one wants to or not. 

One sees less of that “detachment” from the outdoors these days. 

Today, there are at least twenty plants to every one available for garden use just thirty years ago.  Perhaps the area where the most dramatic changes have taken place providing for a new look is the number of dwarf and semidwarf evergreens as well as countless new colorful “evergreens no available to help you live in a beautiful setting.

If your home does not have an inspiring and/or beautiful landscaped grounds, feel some comfort in knowing that the landscaped grounds of almost all of the most expensive newer homes of the past twenty years,  is pretty attrocious……take a tour to see for yourselves.

Look at the magazine and other pictures of “upper crust”, newer houses and examine their landscape grounds.   The only tour they would show for often would be the tour to demonstrate what went wrong. 

Our society is lucky, however, in the fact that most of our families do live in areas which possess an out doors……unlike Europe.   If a population never spends time tending plants outside where the sun shines or doesn’t shine, where the rains fall hard or hardly fall, where shadows occur and weeds grow and the birds sing, one might believe in the fraud we here that Carbon Dioxide is a pollutant.

Only indoor people could fall so low.  

Many lessons are learned every day from the experience of caring for  ones home grounds.  The more beautiful they become,  the more care is given because good people generally like to take care of beautiful things. 

Beautiful plants are countless in number.  They often become more beautiful in settings one with another and another or can grow to be admired as  sculpture.   

Call us at Masterpiece Landscaping,  952-933-5777,  and sign up for guided tours of  selected lovely landscaped grounds here in the Twin Cities.

Would you enjoy living in your house if it consisted of only one room?   Bathroom, kitchen, bedroom,  children’s rooms, t.v. rooms all removed so there would be only one room to the house.

Many,  if not most homeowners in our metropolitan area, if they “live” outside ever at all, they live only one vast room, or in two rooms…….the front and the back…..not much of a lure to see a world of life out of doors.

May 18, 2010

Three “The Art of Landscape Gardening” Sessions To Be Offered

Filed under: The Art of Landscaping — glenn @ 10:14 pm

Masterpiece Landscaping has started a three session class to acquaint homeowners to the art of the landscape garden.  The class is led by Glenn Ray, co-owner of Masterpiece Landscaping and former instructor of  class sessions, “Landscaping the Minnesota Home Grounds” and “Beauty in the Bleak Season”, through the University of Minnesota Extension Service.

Glenn was Executive Secretary of the Minnesota State Horticultural Society from 1974 to 1988. 

The class sessions will be held on Saturdays tentatively set at  12:30 to 3:00 PM.  The specific Saturdays have not yet been determined.  We will meet at Glenn’s residence in Minnetonka.   Fee for the 3 sessions is $100 per person, $150 per couple. 

Number of participants is limited to ten.  Masterpiece’s clients will have preference.

Those interested should call Glenn at 952-933-5777.

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