The Shrub Guys

About The Shrub Guys

In August, Windsor's shade-tobacco fields come out from under their white netting, and the long barns along the farm roads fill with leaves hung to cure in the summer heat. Colonists were already planting this river bottom in the 1630s, where the Farmington River slips into the Connecticut and the land lies flat, rich and green. The Shrub Guys bring that old habit of tending to Windsor's yards: hedges and shrubs shaped back into clean lines, lawns mowed and edged, the sprawl of high summer cut down to size. There is a sculptor's pleasure in a boxwood squared off just so, or a row of yews brought back from shaggy to sharp. At midday, with the tobacco barns standing open to the breeze, a Windsor front yard can look as composed as a painting.