Knecht’s

The Home and Garden Show today was a wonderful get together for the Northfield community. It’s fun to see so many friends and customers. The new middle school is definitely a building to be proud of. It is awesome!

Here are Leif and I along with our landscape designer, Amy Voight, in our booth this morning. Amy had many inquiries this morning as to her design services so we know we will definitely be having a busy year!

We would like to wish everyone a very happy Easter holiday as they gather with friends and family. Think Spring!

Check out our Photo album for pictures of the Show!

The Northfield Home and Garden Show is tomorrow at the new Northfield Middle School on Hwy 246, south of the Northfield High School.

Here is our booth from two weeks ago at the Faribault Home Show. From the conversations we overheard at the Faribo Show, people were looking forward to the Northfield Home and Garden Show! We will be setting up later this afternoon and are eagerly looking forward to seeing everyone tomorrow!

We will have on display some trees, a few trays of perennials, lots of photos from last year and flyers with coupons for use here at the nursery this Spring! Our landscape designer, Amy Voight, will be at the booth in the morning. We’ll be featuring a coupon for $25 off a landscape plan so if you have the need for a plan for either a new home in need of landscaping or re-vamping and adding onto existing areas this will be one stop you don’t want to miss!

We enjoy the Northfield Home and Garden Show because we see so many people and Leif loves to help them with advice and problem solving with their landscaping and tree questions! Hope to see many of you there!

Even though the winter has seemingly been around a long time (and it has) it has been spring for awhile here at the nursery. We have six greenhouses full of perennials that we have potted up in the last several weeks, we have just covered two of our hoop structures with plastic and are going to start “waking” up our over-wintered perennials and one of the other greenhouses has lots of baby trees in it beginning the growing process!

Here is Shar Jacobsen potting up Clematis with trellis’ in containers. We have over 500 varieties of perennials available here at the nursery and this is just one of them.
My mother who works for us in the spring potting up perennials commented that there sure are so many more colors and varieties of Clematis available now than there used to be. That is a true statement for so many of our perennials. One of my favorite plants is the Heuchera. This year we will have more than 20 different varieties available!

Our 2005 plant lists will be available early next week. We have finished getting them typed up and have transferred them to our webmaster for his expertise in getting them on our website.

We are animal lovers and our veterinarian - Countryside Animal Hospital - sends out a newsletter. I was reminded by something that I knew before and again was scared in what I read. The following is from their newsletter:

Each year the Perennial Plant Association and the American Hosta Society name a plant of the year. These plants have to meet certain criteria and are tried and tested.

The 2005 Perennial of the Year is the Lenton Rose or Helleborus xhybridus. This plant does well in a part shade to full shade garden. It needs well drained, humus-rick, fertile soil. It will flower in the early spring with long lasting single and double flowers. It will grow well in Zones 4 through 9. An excellent shade perennial!

The 2005 Hosta of the Year is Striptease. This vigorous hosta will form a 16 inch tall clump by 20 inches wide. Give it some morning sun and afternoon shade and it will perform wonderfully for you. The pale violet flowers will form on 2 foot scapes. We have Striptease in our hosta garden at home and it is one of my favorites. It is definitely a standout!

We are going to be having a booth at three different community Home and Garden Shows in the next few weeks! We are hoping to see as many of our past customers and meet many new ones! At all three shows, we’ll be handing out spring coupons to be used on all of your spring planting projects.

March 12th and 13th we will be at the South Central Builders Association Home Show in Faribault at the National Guard Armory located on Hwy 21 (the old Interstate 35) just south of the Hwy 3 intersection. The event will be from 9am to 5pm on Saturday and 11am to 4 pm on Sunday.

In 1986, President Ronald Reagan proclaimed National Garden Week - and it now has grown to include the entire month of April! It includes the “green” holidays of Earth Day on April 22nd, and National Arbor Day on April 26. Gardening has become the number one hobby in America! Four out of five people will participate in some form of gardening or landscaping every year.

The National Gardening Association has a wonderful web site full of ideas for the young and old, the family gardener and for the group of gardeners.