Knecht’s

This Saturday - April 1st - is the Northfield Home and Garden Show. It will be held at the new Northfield Middle School on Hwy 246 on the south edge of Northfield. There are 60 different area businesses who will exhibit their goods and services. There are seminars being presented by Represenative Ray Cox and Delora Linder on interior designing. Please stop by our booth as we will have all three of our landscape designers and Leif Knecht there to answer any questions you may have. We will be having a drawing for a free landscape design plan as well! See you Saturday, at the Northfield Home & Garden Show!

We are pleased to announce that Shar Jacobsen has passed the rigorous test to become our next Certified Nursery and Landscape Professional. Shar studied this winter and took the examination of March 10th. The exam is co-sponsored by the Minnesota Nursery and Landscape Association and the University of Minnesota. They tested Shar’s knowledge of general horticulture, plant identification, oral questions as to her thoughts and opinions of the “green” industry and landscape design. We salute Shar and say Congratulations!

Shar joins five others on our staff who are Certified Nursery and Landscape Professionals! We believe that this added expertise helps us greatly at assisting our customers.

Thinking outside the box…a sure sign of spring. What is this? Notice the broken twig a little bit above the carrot lying on the ground….imagine the twig as the arm and the carrot as the nose. The snowman has now melted and his moisture has contributed greatly to the flower bed on which he was perched!

Other signs of spring not outside the box… early this morning just cracking the window a little bit, the sounds of the birds was amazing. They’re all singing their songs so beautifully. The air - with the distinct smell of rain - was so refreshing. Spring is here!

The first signs of spring flowers have appeared on the hillside here at the nursery. I was so excited when I opened the gate this morning and was welcomed by the emergence of these spring wonders!

Please stop by the nursery often this spring. We planted another 1000 bulbs last fall so we will have an even more spectacular bulb display this spring!

Since Spring is taking it’s own sweet time in getting here - last weekend we took our two little grandsons to the Marshall Field’s Flower Show in downtown Minneapolis and then to the “Amusement Park at Mall of America”. To make it even more fun for the boys - we parked at the Mall and took the new light rail downtown. The amazement on the eyes of a little guy riding the train! Only if the joys and amazement of the three year old could remain in adults!

Jordan will be 6 in June and Tyger is only 3 1/2 so he was really excited and couldn’t get enough of the rides. He is our “little” one and even though he could ride on some of the rides, he was a little too short, so Grandma and Tyger had to find other rides while Grandpa and Jordan went on the “big kid” rides.

The weatherman is predicting above normal temperatures now after this weekend so hopefully the snow will leave in a few days. Even though we had a mild winter - we are definitely ready for it to be over with!

Kristin Lucas rounds out our landscape designer staff. Kristin will be graduating from Dakota County Vo-Tech this spring with her degree in Landscape Design. For the past two years, she has worked at a nursery in Farmington, Minnesota in their nursery and in landscape design.

Kristin’s duties here will include working with our retail customers and landscape design customers. Kristin is a vibrant, energetic person whom we really welcome and we know she will relate well with our customers!

To schedule a visit with Kristin - please give us a call! She’ll be happy to meet you!

Last fall, we did a large buckthorn eradication job for a client here in Northfield. They have a beautiful home set on three wooded lots and over the years, buckthorn has been invaded the native trees and shrubs on the property. Our crew went in and did the first round of eradication. In a project of this scope, we’ll need to go back this year and do some more, and perhaps another small round in 2007. Visit our Photo Gallery where today I posted a Photo Album with pictures and descriptions of the steps that we were taking in eradicating buckthorn on this property.

The newest addition to our staff is Keith Bode. Keith comes to us with many years of experience as a landscape designer, landscape foreman, installer and garden center salesperson.

Keith is busy doing landscape design plans for our customers and is anxious to meet and assist as many of you that he can! He has extensive experience and can show you his work as well as offer you advice on your landscape wants and needs. If you have a small job or need an extensive landscape plan - Keith is here, ready and able to help you!

He will be here fulltime at the nursery - drawing his designs, helping set up the landscape jobs, working on our retail sales decks and of course, doing site consultations! When you stop in here at the nursery - chances are Keith will be here and will welcome you!

Today is the Lonsdale Community Business Showcase held in the facilities of Losdale Packaging. What a wonderful display of all of the various businesses in and around Lonsdale! Leif Knecht, Heidi Gervais, our retail manager, and Keith Bode, one of our Landscape Designers staff our booth to welcome Lonsdale Area residents! The Lonsdale Chamber of Commerce is doing a wonderful job in promoting their community. Over 60 local businesses were represented. Spring is such an exicitng time and as our busy season approaches, we welcome the opportunity to get out and show the public what we’re about, what we can offer and to meet them and other business people.

The Minnesota Czech Country Expo
will be held in New Prauge at the Community Center on Sunday, March 26th. The event opens to the public at
10:00 am and goes until 3:00 pm.

The Northfield Home & Garden Show will be held at the new Northfield Middle School on Saturday, April 1st! Please stop by our booth and say hi and pick up some coupons to be used this spring!

The first tip is to try to attend as many of the spring Home and Garden Shows that you can. A few were held in February but now in the next month - they’re being held all over. We will be having a booth at three different shows this spring - Lonsdale, MN, New Prauge, MN and of course, the Northfield Show.

Go ahead and continue pruning your shrubs and trees. Be careful not to prune spring flowering shrubs now. If you give your lilac shrubs a haircut now - you will be pruning off the flower buds that you want to have blossom in May/June. Spring flowering shrubs are best pruned after they have flowered. Example - prune your lilacs in late June.

Even though this has been a very mild winter - we all have spring fever. Try to stay off your lawn until the frost has left and the area has dried out. If you put alot of traffic on your lawn when it is wet in the spring - you will compact the soil and damage the grass.

My apologizes for those of you that keep up with our website during the winter. It was my intention to get several areas updated and new info added. However, most of February saw me not feeling very well. From an inner ear thing going on to the worst cold I’ve ever had - I finally declared this morning that I thought I was going to live and now here I am. Watch for pictures and alot of updating!