Knecht’s

This weekend we will be experiencing the coldest weather in many years - one TV station said in the past 3 or 4 years, and last night another one said in the last ten years. With this in mind - this weekend will probably include alot of inside activities!

Now is the time to start creating your “Outdoor Rooms”. For the folks that like to spend time in their yard but are not really into intensive gardening would certainly enjoy the backyard patio and eating area - or the outside “family room”. For avid gardeners, the possibilities are endless. You can have the family room, water garden, rain garden, secret garden, play areas, vegetable gardens and the list goes on. Stand inside, looking out, and envision where you’d like to start. Grab some paper and write down your ideas or even start sketching them out. Start with the big picture and then zero in on the areas of most importance to you. We can provide advice on proper plant choices and hardscape choices (patios, walls, etc).

We have two great landscape designers on staff - Amy Voight and Kristin Lucas - and if you would like help, advice, a sketch or a landscape plan drawn to scale - they are ready and eager to help you! Our designers are able to help you with whatever your needs are. Contact us for more information on Kristin and Amy!

We are proud to introduce the newest addition to our retail staff - Paula Kangas. Paula hails from Hibbing, Minnesota having grown up on a farm “up north”! She graduated from UW - River Falls with a major in horticulture and a minor in forestry. In her “spare time”, Paula coaches girls basketball and softball for Visitation High School in Mendota Heights.

Paula moved to Northfield last fall and wanted to quit the commute to the metro area and work close to home! Paula worked as the Horticulture Specialist with the City of Woodbury Parks Department. She designed and installed the annual and perennial beds in the park system as one of her duties. With this experience we are anxious for her to begin working with our customers and to share ideas.

Another area of expertise for Paula is with roses. She is a member of the American Rose Society and has earned the designation of “Consulting Rosarian”. We field hundreds of questions every season on roses and this is exciting for us as we now have an expert on staff for rose questions!

Paula will be available here at the nursery by the end of February to help with questions and ideas. If you have a question or two - send them our way via the Contact Us page and we’ll have Paula get you an answer!

Leif is once again writing his weekly articles for the Northfield News. I made a New Year’s Resolution that I will get his weekly articles onto the website each week as they provide lots of information and we always receive comments on them. By adding them to the website - it will enable those that don’t receive the local paper and those out of town to also enjoy them. The following is the article for January 27th.

Selling a house during 2006 presented some real challenges, with a large inventory of houses available and a smaller pool of very value conscious buyers. With so many good opportunities for buyers to have both their choice of many fairly comparable properties and to drive a hard bargain on price, what kinds of things make the difference between the houses that sold and those that remain on the market?

I suspect that with many good values available, price is not the deciding factor for most buyers. Buying is for most of us an emotional decision as much as a dollars and cents decision. It just has to feel right, especially for the possession which more than any other object frames our life. Houses become homes. They shelter us from heat, cold, rain, snow, ice and wind. A home is our refuge, the place to relax, bond with family and rejuvenate ourselves. It just has to feel right, which brings us to “curb appeal”.

First impressions do count — a lot. If a house has hundreds of thousands of dollars invested in large amounts of space, quality materials and workmanship, and is in a “good neighborhood”, it’s a definite plus. If it’s available at a good price even better. But if it doesn’t have “curb appeal” forget the whole deal. Before the agent has gotten the key in the door, the prospective buyer has already mentally moved on if the exterior appearance and landscaping are not appealing in a way that suggests “this is home!”

Beautiful trees are one of the most important components in giving a property curb appeal. Tiny, stunted, malformed, poorly positioned or non-existent trees detract from the look and feel of a valuable house. All too often, owners of brand new homes have it in their minds that they don’t want to rake leaves, so trees don’t get planted. Meanwhile, the neighbors who have homes of a similar caliber plant a number of good quality medium sized shade trees and evergreens in well selected locations. Five or six years pass. Those modest size trees are now beautiful trees of a respectable size. Their part of the neighborhood no longer looks like an abandoned soybean field. Their property is framed by well shaped trees that accent some other nice shrubs and perennial plantings, and the way these trees lend their grace to the property suggests that “this is home”.

Suddenly the good folks who own the house with no trees find that jobs or some other circumstance dictate a move to another community and a For Sale sign goes out on the front lawn. A week later, the neighbor who planted trees finds that they too must put their home on the market - same size house, similar materials and quality of construction and similar asking price. The house with no trees looks as if the construction crew just cleared out a few months earlier. The home with nice trees looks mature, inviting and well thought out. The house with trees sells in less than a month for just a bit under the asking price. Ten months later, the house with no trees sells for $30,000 less and with ten additional months’ of carrying costs for the seller who has been paying two mortgages for months on end. For a few hundred to a few thousand dollars, he could have planted the trees 5-6 years earlier like his neighbor, but he didn’t want to rake leaves.

Just remember, for the buyer it has to feel right, it has to feel like home. Nice trees are a great investment in a property, they make it your own and they make it feel right when you pull up to the curb.

Labels: Yard and Garden Notes by Leif

This past weekend we enjoyed the Tulip Festival at the Mall of America. When it’s colder than normal now and the end of January is almost here we are definitely thinking about spring. The colors and displays of tulips were amazing. With over 20,000 tulips, around every turn in the Amusement Park, there was another burst of color!

If you planted tulip and daffodil bulbs last fall - your spring color display is only weeks away. We planted several hundred bulbs again in our nursery displays last fall and are anxious to see them all in bloom this spring.

This morning while I was driving out of the woods - I had to stop along the driveway since the sun was shining over the meadow. The sunlight was directly hitting our “winter interest” of the landscape.

Shown here is Karl Forester Feather Reed Ornamental Grass, with several varieties of dogwood including Cardinal Red Osier, standard Red Twig Dogwood, and Arctic Fire Dogwood. The large evergreen brings green (and white with snow) into the landscape and along the edges and behind the evergreen are our Northern Pin Oaks and Red Oaks which have hung onto their leaves bringing another element to life. The ornamental tree to the right of the grass is a Korean Sun Pear. With it’s rounded crown and branching, it adds an architectural dimension.

The tracks that are visible are wildlife tracks of the rabbits, deer and other woodland creatures that use the meadow in the winter time.

This variety of ornamental grass is one of our favorites. It bounces back up when weighted down by heavy snow and looks great until spring when we cut it back to just above ground level. The dogwoods - with the lack of snow this winter have provided wonderful color for the past three months. Both of these plants are very hardy and easy to grow.