Garden

Pink coneflowers in a garden

Perennials provide color year after year and are easily maintained once established. Each perennial offers unique features in your garden—from vibrant color to interest for wildlife, perennials are utilized by homeowners to create an attractive landscape.

Wendy Froistad bought her Maple Grove home 34 years ago. For the first 15 years, she focused on her family and their day-to-day activities. The family’s yard was well-kept but unexceptional, a standard landscape in a nice suburban neighborhood.

Born without a green thumb? You are fashionably in luck, because the latest trend in green things is one of the easiest plants to grow (and to give): cactus. It’s not a plant we’re accustomed to seeing in Minnesota, so curiosity abounds around its ease, visual detail and interesting textures.

Driving by the Millers’ home, you would suspect that someone in the house loves colorful flowers. A large, partial-oval garden spreads from the front door toward the curb.

In 2005, Kelsey Ness took a job at Lynde Greenhouse. After three years, she realized that what she thought was simply a job had become her vocation.

Two decades ago, LeRoy and Barb Dahlberg’s sprawling backyard was home to a few lonely trees, a makeshift baseball diamond and an endless stream of their kids’ neighborhood friends.

Imagine a garden tucked away behind a white picket fence, shaded and serene under a canopy of leaves. Only this garden, unlike those beckoning the sun and daylight admirers, comes most alive during the moonlit hours.

Deanne Lange grows 160 hostas, 101 different varieties of daylilies, and 171 types of perennials in her Maple Grove backyard.

A colorful finale to Maple Grove Days, the annual Maple Grove Garden Tour
brings people together to enjoy the beauty within their own backyards. With a
yearly attendance of more than 1,000 people, it is one of the largest in the
area.

Marilyn Arnlund

Gardening Naturally

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