23 Oct 2016

The Art of Landscape Gardening #1

Beauty as a value in our western culture began its death throes from the unspeakable horror of the industrialized slaughter of countless millions of  World War I.   It stands to reason its disappearing  accelerated into oblivion with the slaughters which followed....World War II, and the estimated 20,000,000 in the USSR murdered by Joseph Stalin and the 60,000,000 killed by Mao Tse Dung to rearrange China into  police states. Music is an aural experience to...

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20 Sep 2016

How Beautiful is the Drive to Your Garage?

BEAUTY AND YOUR GARAGE So, you're driving home from work.   Traffic is miserable.  Every day traffic seems to become more consuming of  the world in which  you  live.   Home.....to home,  paradise at last? What would paradise be....a bath?....a nap?.....playing with ones kids?.....supper?......a beautiful family  living in a beautiful setting,  all of these pleasures at their proper time? We at Masterpiece Landscaping are in the beautiful-setting business for homes and businesses.   The following...

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12 Sep 2016

THE BEGINNING OF THE FALL

We human animals  spend much our life "avoiding"  falls. This is particularly true when the coming "fall"  happens to be your 82nd birthday.  Yet, without it I'd be already dead.  (Oh, the irony of Life!)   And without that fall there'd be no blessed Spring. Fall, that is the autumn one in our Minnesota , is a very short Fall, often barely over a month long  with every day the prospect of  colder, much colder...

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31 Aug 2016

When Color Conquers the Landscape Garden

BUTCHART GARDENS // VANCOUVER ISLAND, BRITISH COLUMBIA   Color in the well developed landscape garden usually conquers all other senses and moods possessed by the human visitor.  It is the most enticing lure collecting visitors.  Spring is usually the season when the   most spectacular  of color shows occur.   The foliage is fresh in color and texture especially in our Minnesota location. It is obvious to us northern landscape gardeners the beautiful colorful display...

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30 Aug 2016

Not all Beauties in the Landscape Garden World are Equal

 STOURHEAD // WILTSHIRE, ENGLAND   "Beauty" is a word which has disappeared from today's American vocabulary. For centuries in our "English" cultural past,  the adage, "ONE IS CLOSEST TO GOD WHEN IN THE GARDEN",  was taken for granted as nearly a universal truth.   Paradise was God-centered where   perfection, goodness, peace,   reigned in God's Beauty  on Earth,  a gardened landscape named Eden in the JudeoChristian tradition. Modernity has put an end to such...

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29 Aug 2016

Gardens, Like People, Gain Character with AGE

"Gardens, like people, gain character with age" is a truism which, at least  in the dream of things, is TRUE.   In both cases good fortune is a necessity.   Both people and beautiful landscape gardens can be destroyed, ' killed ' by the same tornado, mud slide, flood, fire, or earthquake.  As a generalization, however,  the adage IS true, at least in the ideal. Both beautiful people and beautiful landscape gardens usually  need  help,...

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28 Aug 2016

Why Do Metropolitcan Politicians, Bureaucrats Make Community Streets So Ugly?

My parents bought the house in which  I was raised in 1936 in St. Paul, Minnesota.  It was newly built on a "vacant"  lot of  the more prairie edges  of  the city south of Randolph, west of Fairview down to the Mississippi River itself.  "Civilized" American urban areas were developed post Civil War with the arrival  of European immigrants for the next forty years or so.   Scandinavians, Germans, and Czech went rural.  Slavs, Italians went Iron...

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25 Aug 2016

WHAT, on Earth, IS A WEED?

Yes, what on Earth,IS a weed! Our governments and other fanatics who choose to  dictate human thoughts and moods these days, insist weeds are plant-like  things they've been programmed  to dislike in order to feel good.    These 'dictate' people are  indoor people...office people.....downtown people, usually government people  who live amid cement and asphalt.   If these people  are third or more generation Americans,  their grandparents were raised on a farm, not the street.....but they...

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04 Aug 2016

Is There a Sunkist Arborvitae in Your Future?

Masterpiece Landscaping is a Twin City, Minnesota  artistic landscaping company nearing its 30th birthday.   We line up and plant  garden trees, shrubs, annuals and perennials  in rows only when artistically required to fit  formal settings or for some other special artistic display to inspire visitors. Landscape gardens, ideally,  should inspire the designer, the builder, and above all,   the home or business owners and their visitors whom we serve. It should never be forgotten,...

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01 Aug 2016

Landscape Gardens, Like People, Gain Character With Age…..

......or, at least they should!    But, then, what is a landscape garden? It is not a vegetable, beer, or flower garden, that's for certain. A landscape garden, at its best, is the most honored of all human art forms.   Nearly every human  culture's paradise is perceived as a garden perfection,  therefore....a, THE,  Garden of Eden....a place of perfect harmony for the eye, body,  mind, and soul.   Its pieces are various collections and...

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