"Patterns of Springtime "

By Pete Haran Vice President

Nature has a unique way of letting us know what time of year it is by creating patterns within each season. During the summer months, the landscape is dominated by the lush greens of healthy turfgrass, evergreen trees and shrubs and, of course, all of our large canopy trees. As fall approaches, the reds and yellows resume authority as the landscape prepares itself for the upcoming winter. During the winter months, the landscape is dominated once again by the browns of dormant grasses and the leaves of the trees that have lost their color and fallen to the ground.

But what about the springtime? How do we recognize the features of this particular season? The true beauty of spring is that the landscape is not dominated by one single color. Rather, it is controlled by the tremendous effort and energy being released by all living plant species as they begin forming new buds, flowers and leaves.

Although we cannot hear this energy, we are able to see, and in some small cases smell the fragrant results of it. The results we can physically see take the form of widely dispersed colors and patterns. This is the time of year when many ground covering plants, such as periwinkle and pachysandra, produce a mist of purple and white (respectively) over the ground, sometimes speckled with the yellows of blooming daffodils and the pinks and reds of tulips as they push their way through the soil.

There are many shrubs such as Azaleas, Gold Flame Spirea, Purple Sand Cherry and, perhaps the most common, Yellow Forsythia, which also create random splashes of color all through the landscape, while most other plants are just showing subtle signs of new foliage.

Small flowering trees like the fragrant Magnolia and larger shrubs like viburnum, fill the air with a pleasant aromatic smell, enhancing the landscape with color as we await the new foliage of spring. Other small trees like the Eastern Red Bud, the Serviceberry and flowering Dogwood add to the early bloom patterns with random violet, pink and white throughout the landscape.

By flowering early in the spring season, larger trees like the Flowering Purple Leaf Plum, Columnar and Weeping Cherry Trees and Redspire Pear, provide a random canopy of pink and white overhead for a few weeks during this period.

Last, but not least, comes the haze of crimson red and light green created by trees like the Red and Sugar Maples, as buds form over the entire canopy, eventually to be released in the form of seeds and new leaves.

Evergreen trees like the Norway Spruce and White Pine show their expense of energy by forming young buds and "candles" which are lighter green in color and eventually become the new needles as they mature.

Professional landscape architects have studied this energy we call springtime for decades and can help re-create the patterns and arrange these types of plant species in such a way so we can continue to enjoy this annual phenomenon in our own gardens and landscapes. With the help of Nature combined by the efforts of the plants themselves, we are able to recognize and truly appreciate the landscape patterns of springtime!

Lipinski Landscape & Irrigation Contractors of Mt. Laurel offers a diverse range of professional award-winning design / build services to home builders and homeowners in the Delaware Valley. Be sure to visit the Lipinski web site at http://www.lipinskiland.com.