5 Tips for Planting a New Flower Bed // Garden Answer

hey guys how's it going Laura with garden dancer today I want to give you five tips to help you out when you're planting a new area in your garden or revamping an old area which is what I'm doing today so the first tip is to check for winter interest basically what does that area look like when there's snow on the ground do you have a beautiful evergreen or a container or a tree or something still there when all the blooms are gone so in my spot right here I have a fence which does count as winter interest because it is structure and I also have a pagoda dogwood with rustle up in it right now but this is a beautiful structure in the winter time and I do know in the future I'm going to be adding a container right here with an evergreen topiary so I should have plenty of winter interest the second tip is to assess the light in the area it's super important to know whether or not you're dealing with full Sun full shade or somewhere in between you want to pick the proper plants so that you have success with them this area right here even though I do have a tree right here it gets full on afternoon Sun and then it gets the radiant heat from part of our gravel driveway here so we have to keep that in mind when I'm choosing plants the third tip is to make sure irrigation is in place which you can see I do have some drip tubing running through here but it's not super consistent I'm gonna have to maybe add an extra little bit in here it's just a good idea to do that before you plant things because then you're not having to work the tubing around your plants it just makes it a lot easier when it's already in place and you don't want to have to become a slave to watering during the summer time the fourth tip is to diversify your bloom color and your foliage color even in a small area like this like maybe I'm dealing with eight feet six feet and it's kind of an arc I want to make sure that it's pretty all year round so I do have some winter interest going on this is a pagoda dogwood tree so it has a green leaves so knowing that when I go in to choose my anchor piece right here I I'm gonna go with something red so that they contrast each other so that they are set apart from each other and also when I go in with my perennials here I've chosen two different kinds that will overlap blooms a little bit but one starts late spring and goes to midsummer and then the other one starts midsummer and goes through the rest of the season so I make sure to have color all throughout the whole year and I think that's really important so that you just have something beautiful and you can enjoy all the areas in your garden all the time and the last tip is to layer so most flowerbeds have a natural back to them they're either up against a building or a fence like this or the back part of your yard and so if you layer plants you start with tall ones first and work your way down that way you can see each plant individually there's nothing blocking anything else if you have a flowerbed that you see from both sides you do your tallest piece usually in the center and kind of go down on either side so that it kind of creates almost a a wall or a back in and of itself right through the center so every area is a little bit different but those are five things that I always check for in every single area before I start so let me explain what I'm gonna do today there's a couple of day lilies right here I don't even know what variety they are they were here when we moved in and there's a hardy geranium there so all three of those I'm going to dig out and then I'm going to leave all the tulips here and then other than that this whole area will be completely bare then I'm going to come in with some irrigation and take care of that before I place my plants I want to make sure the water is on point [Music] all right so I've got all the drip tubing run and what I ended up doing was tearing all of the old stuff out and I just connected right here with my new stuff so I cut all of the old existing stuff because it had hard water was plugging some of the emitters and it wasn't run very consistently so I just figured pulling all of it out and starting brand new is never a bad idea so it starts here and then it kind of just wraps around in a circle until it ends right here and it's actually kind of nice too because I was able to not run any drip tubing over on this part right here because I don't want any weeds to grow and once the tree Leafs out you can't even see this spot right here the next thing I do need to do I notice that I have a couple of dead branches in here so I'm going to clean this tree up and then I will place my plants and show you everything I'm gonna put in this spot so by a couple branches I mean the whole pile I got to looking at the tree and I really haven't done any maintenance on it in the past couple of years and this is what happens so I'm gonna haul all of this away and then I'm gonna place all my plants and show you what I've got alright guys so I've got three different kinds of plants in this area so I'm gonna start with my back layer first this is my taller layer this is called a ginger y9 bark beautiful beautiful bronze kind of orange a red color which is a great contrast to everything else that's going to be in this area it grows about five to six feet tall and wide and I'm backing it up to this fence because I want to utilize some of the color on the other side of the fence too so if some of the branches go in between that's even better that's perfect these are a zone three through seven so very winter hardy and they do bloom as well like late spring through early summer yeah white clusters of blooms that turn into red seed heads so very pretty interest there and it also counts as winter interest because nine barks get their name because of the pealing nature of their bark their bark is beautiful to look at in the winter time so my next layer down is a really interesting plant I'm so excited for you guys to see this this is a new one this year called stand by me clematis it's a bush type clematis instead of vining they grow about 3 feet tall 2 feet wide so this will be a stair step down from my 9 bark they have the most gorgeous purple bell shaped flowers and I think that that's gonna be a really pretty color back here zone 3 through 7 on these as well so very very winter hardy now you can see that they come with staking or stakes I should say in the pot so I'm gonna leave those on or around these plants for this year and then I might graduate to a larger sized ring next year to help support them they do benefit from being supported or once this area grows up and fills in I can probably remove all supports altogether because they'll support each other if they can kind of lean on each other a little bit they don't need to be staked but this first year since they're all baby plants I'm going to leave those on the next layer down are orange smoothie day lilies and I put a bunch over here because I really wanted to make a statement and that's another thing I wanted to talk to you about when you use too many different varieties of plants in an area it can really be distracting so it's a good idea to pick just a few varieties maybe 2 3 4 maybe at max and just mass plant em so that it just is a striking effect so I've got I don't know 9 or 10 day lilies here that bloom mid summer and then they rebloom later on in the season kind of a peachy orange bloom and these grow about 20 to 24 inches tall so this will be another stair step down from the clematis so I should have a very nice layered effect in this area both of these plants attract hummingbirds and their bloom times are a little bit staggered so this one blooms late spring through mid summer this one blooms mid summer and then again later in the season so there should be a time like a short window where they're blooming together and it should be beautiful but I'm glad that they have different bloom seasons because it'll be beautiful all all summer long I'm really excited about this area so I'm just gonna get these all in the ground and then we'll see what it looks like [Music] I think this area is gonna be so pretty as it grows in I cannot wait to see all the colors and the blooms and it does look like I kind of abruptly stopped right here but in the summertime this pagoda dogwood Leafs out and you can hardly see underneath it and I'm actually gonna have to watch this one in particular because it might get a little bit too much shade from these branches these will all be fine I may end up needing to move that one might not so we'll keep our eyes on that but the reason why I wanted to keep going here even though I kind of stopped my little project right here at this fence post was because I thought that it would be a nice kind of welcome into this area to have this same thing kind of like drawing you in and then I can start working on this area and the last thing you can do to make your area look especially awesome is to mulch it and not only does it make it look amazing it also helps suppress weeds it helps keep moisture in the soil which is really important for your plants especially that first year I just think it looks amazing the contrast between the ground and the fence and the plants everything just looks fresh and nice and I cannot wait to see it grow on and we will be doing update video see you guys throughout this season so we can show you how everything's growing and filling in and so you can see some of the blooms and I really do hope that this video was helpful for you for those of you guys who are tackling new areas in your garden thank you guys so much for watching this video and we will see you in the next one bye [Music] [Music]

Channel: Garden Answer

Views: 694,800

Rating: 4.9211655 out of 5

Keywords: Garden, Answer, Laura, Flower, gardening, gardener, beautiful, succulents, diy, grow, green, Proven, Winners, Fall, Winter, summer, spring, plant, planting, growing, plants, succulent, shrubs, shrub, bush, soil, dirt, earth

Id: VYD_nd9IEgQ

Length: 9min 19sec (559 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 10 2018