Living “cheek to jowl” as we do in our neighborhoods always develops the potential for some neighborly disputes. None is more contentious than the “fence vs. privacy” dispute. In some neighborhoods it is considered un-neighborly to put up a privacy fence. In the cozy St. Louis Park neighborhood in which my inlaws live, it is well understood (and enforced) that no one will ruin the rolling sward of forest and lawn by imposing fences. Even in Minneapolis, we encounter many, many hard-feelings and bitterness that are the result of someone putting up a fence.

On the otherhand, the need for privacy is a central factor in our client’s decision to call in a landscape designer. Even when we like our neighbors, we don’t want to always have to step out the door and be intimate with their every gathering and impulse. To say nothing about the neighbors who have a barbeque party every night and can only talk at the highest decibels. Or the nice family who’s children stare through the chainlink fence and ask you questions about everything you do. Or the mechanic who uses his yard as a storing area for various car carcasses and greasy parts. Even the “Master Gardener” neighbor who has such a carefully primped front yard always has a tendency to pile all her clay and plastic pots and compost pile along our property line to stare at all winter.

Here are a few rules when thinking about fences and privacy:

1. Think about your neighbor’s perspective during the design process (and beyond). What effect will the fence (or other privacy measure) have on their space? What ways can the design not only decrease the negative effects of the measure, but hopefully be an asset for them as well.

2. While I do not recommend having a “blank slate” brainstorming conversation with you neighbors, I do recommend that you talk with your neighbors about your intentions. Discuss not only the decisions you’ve made but what led you to the decision. Be sure to mention ways in which you’ve considered their space. Ask them what they think and if there is anything they feel strongly about. Sometimes their input can lead to a solution that is better for all parties.

3. Make the fence as transparent as possible while gaining the privacy required. No one wants to feel like they’re in a walled prison. Focus on blocking out the elements that require blocking, while leaving open views, areas for sun exposure, and paths for air circulation. Good fence design has a “light touch,” still leaving the space feeling open and with circulation and flow.

4. When using plants for privacy, be cautious about overusing evergreens. In our climate, evergreens are prone to burn and other issues that can make them look mangy and worn. Mixing evergreens and deciduous shrubs and tiering plantings in front of them, will often provide the privacy required without making it look like an obvious “wall.”

5. Get a survey done and double-check the city rules on fence locations. A survey seems like a hard pill to swallow at the time - they seem to run $600-$1000 - but they can save a lot of pain in the long run.

Tags: fences

“What do you think about Preen.” Preen is a weed preventer sold at your local hardware store or garden supply store. All herbicides target specific types of plants or effect plants at a specific time of their life cycle. Preen stops seeds from germinating and therefore is effective only against weeds that multiply from seeds that drop into the garden bed. It will have no effect whatsoever on the creeping charlie that moves in from your neighbor’s yard, or on any weeds that are already there.

I am becoming a bigger and bigger fan of Preen for client’s gardens for one reason: weed trees. Often weed trees account for a huge percentage of our weeding duties. In my garden I literally have drifts of elm and Norway maple seeds that collect at the edge of my garden beds. These seeds all germinate in the spring and I have a ground cover of little elm seedlings to contend with. While I hand weed these blankets of tiny plants, regular applications of Preen can counter this insurgence with less work. A couple notes: (1) apply Preen to the top of the mulch and water it so it moves through the whole mulch layer. Weed trees are perfectly capable of rooting in the mulch, not the soil. (2) If you have a garden where you like how your columbine, or spiderwort “moves around the garden” (I am in favor of this in my garden) - don’t use Preen. It can’t differentiate good seeds from bad and will prevent the good seeds from germinating as readily as the Siberian elm. (3) As with all chemicals, “Always read the label.”

Tags: weeds

We are often asked by clients and sometimes by neighbors who are watching us do an installation, “Don’t you use fabric or plastic under the mulch?” The answer is that generally we don’t use fabric when we are installing wood mulches. There is a feeling that covering the soil with fabric will help to stop weeds. But almost all weeds originate from seeds that float down from the air and start from the top of the mulch surface not from the existing soil. The goal is to make sure the few weeds that can start from the soil - like thistles, vetch, merrybells - are sufficiently eradicated prior to installing the new bed. The other reasons we don’t use fabric under hardwood mulch is that (1) it tends to make the mulch slide off the surface (2) there is nothing worse than having a nice garden bed with an edge of fabric sticking up and (3) it makes weeding and plant transplanting extremely annoying once the roots grow into the fabric.

Now, we do use fabric under rock mulch, but for a different reason. Although rock mulch has fallen out of favor, it can be an effective mulch for a shrub bed or other bed that you don’t plan on ever digging in. Fabric is used in a rock mulch bed because you want to make sure that no soil gets into the rock mulch, so you are separating the rock mulch from the soil below. Rock mulch, like all garden applications, is not a NO-MAINTENANCE solution. In order to be effective the home owner should regular blow out leaf, tree seed and other organic debris out of the bed. Overtime this debris will break down creating little soil deposits - the perfect medium for weed germination. This is a regular occurence at the edge of rock mulch beds next to sidewalks.

SUBQUESTIONS:
“What if my beds have been completely taken over by pernicious perennial weeds?” We occassionally talk to home owners who want to do a garden makeover and have beds that have been completely invaded by merrybells, thistles, lily-of-the-valley, weed trees, snow-on-the-mountain, creeping charlie, and other weeds that are perennial. As opposed to the discussion above these weeds often colonize by spreading through the soil rather than growing from seeds on top of the soil. They survive the winter and start up again in the spring. Eradicating these weeds can be challenging and should be taken very seriously - we’ve learned this the hard way. A one time hand weeding will not get rid of these invaders.

Repeated applications of Round-up will often knock these weeds back to a point that the remaining survivors are easier to contend with. But a technique we favor is called “sheet mulching.” This technique includes covering the bed with corrugated cardboard or thick layers of newspaper and topping this with 6-8″ of mulch. This should stay in place for at least a year. The following year you can remove some of the excess mulch and plant.

Tags: fabric, mulch, weeds

“How’s the economy effecting your business,” is a question I hear a lot. And I ask it alot. I ask our vendors and clients if everything is going alright and it is understood I mean “with the economy and all…” And there are varying answers. The company that supplies our dumpsters, Atomic Waste, says their core business is really down (meaning the biggie construction companies) but he’s never seen so much movement in the small markets. The owners of Ambergate Gardens in Victoria say the landscape companies they work with are down but their retail business is ahead of last year. A friend who runs a small landscape company in town says he’s never been so busy.

There is no doubt things are really bad. I talked to someone yesterday who was in construction for a local firm. She said the company had 100 carpenters early last year and cut down to 30. This year they are even lower.

Luckily our year is going well. We have the best group of employees we’ve ever had and have been keeping everyone busy. Sometimes we feel like the proverbial duck that is calm above the water while kicking like hell underneath… but, hey, we are keeping our employees busy and have a great set of clients.

Not a day goes by that I don’t think in my head, “Wow, our clients are great” AND “Wow, our employees are great.” Our clients are giving us the opportunity to complete fulfilling projects and our employees are efficiently and conscientiously completing them. Can’t ask for more than that.

June To-Do List
• Try to finish planting by early this month
• Transplant and divide perennials; keep watered and shaded
• Start to place stakes around plants that need it
• Watch for Japanese Beetles
• Deadhead to extend bloom times of perennials
• If it has rained, wait to get into the garden until after soil has dried to prevent spreading fungus and disease
• Start perennial seeds now so they will have a strong root system before winter
• Take photos and notes of what looks good and what doesn’t so you can have records to work with when planning next year’s garden during the winter month
Pruning:
• Cut leaves from spring flowering bulbs once they have faded
• Prune spring flowering shrubs, like lilacs and forsythia to help promote new growth
• Cut back spring-flowering plants
• Pinch autumn-flowering plants
• Shear any foliage that is showing signs of distress
In the vegetable garden:
• Plant heat tolerant types of lettuce that can be shaded by other crops
• Plant short-season crops now so they will ripen before frost
• Remove crowded seedlings to make room for the stronger plants
• Donate extra veggies to a shelter or food bank

Sources: The Well Tended Perennial Garden, Tracy DiSabato-Aust, http://www.nwhealth.edu/healthyU/getMoving/garden3.html

Lawn kind of crunchy? Is your garden a bunch of saggy plants? Well, for good reason. The Twin Cities experienced the third driest May on record. We received a grand total of .47″ of rain in May. It is really critical to get some water on your plants. Put a hose set at a slow drip on your trees for 30 minutes to an hour. And hand water or put a sprinkler on your perennials and turf until they get a good soaking - dig your hand into the soil to make sure it has soaked several inches down.

The picture to the left shows an evolving project in south Minneapolis we worked on two years ago. Even within this narrow space two distinct spaces are created with the wallstone wall and there is always something warm and inviting about clay pavers - here in a circular patio with soldier course. I couldn’t resist taking this picture showing the space starting to get that “lived-in” look.

Tags: backyard

What is the difference between a pergola and an arbor? If you look up the words in an on-line dictionary you will find arbor defined as something like, “A shady resting place in a garden or park, often made of rustic work or lattice work on which plants, such as climbing shrubs or vines are grown” (The Free Dictionary by Farlex). A pergola is defined as, “An arbor or passageway of columns supporting a roof of trelliswork on which climbing plants are grown.”

Landscape design writers such as Gordon Hayward and Cynthia Cash define the strict usage of the work pergola to refer to a colonnade or passageway.  About.com quotes Cynthia Cash, ”The primary difference in an ‘arbor’ and a ‘pergola’ is that an arbor is a free-standing structure (also used to support vines), whereas a pergola is a long linear structure over a garden pathway.”

Judging from images pulled up using Google, common usage of the word pergola defines it as a “substantial” columned structure which can either be over a walkway or, more commonly, over a sitting and dining space adequate for a group of people. While this could also be called an arbor, the word arbor is generally reserved for smaller structures over gateways or individual benches. Both arbors and pergolas are used as a structure to support climbing plants.

No matter how you use the words, arbors and pergolas are important elements to define, soften and divide both small and large spaces. Arbor gates create a defined transition between “outside” the garden to the intimate interior. They also frame a view into the garden at this threshold. A pergola’d sitting area, either attached to the house or freestanding, creates a defined outdoor room as well as breaking up horizontal lines of fences and garages.

Tags: carpentry

One of the great things about stone is that there are such distinct regional differences. Stone one might find just laying about in a field in one region is often devalued by the local residents because they see it everywhere. In Minnesota, what we call “field stone” is a random assortment of rounded rock in all different colors and sizes. We also call it “glacial boulders”, which defines more closely the character and source of this rock.

The rounded shape and colors that range from pink and white, to blue and dark red, define its geologic past. This rock we see stacked in huge suburban retaining walls and the “river rock” we see in shopping mall shrub plantings is the result of the glaciers pulling rock from a variety of northern sources, tumbling it over thousands of years and dropping it randomly on the landscape. Its kind of like “stone washed” jeans - these rocks have a lived-in look.

While its ubiquitous nature leads to it feeling kind of common, it really is our “native rock” and can be used in ways to accentuate its nature rather than just to solve maintenance problems or cover space.

Tags: stone

This weekend we saw the first saw fly larvae on a pine tree. Double-check your pines for this pesky pest - they are tiny worm-like larvae of the saw fly and their voracious appetites can defoliate even large trees. You can spray the tiny monsters off with a garden hose or, on larger trees, call your friendly arborist for control measures.

Tags: pests