Design Ideas for Narrow Garden Spaces: Take a Tour of Rosanne's seven-foot-wide side garden.

hi i'm roseanne and welcome to my garden today i thought i'd show you the south side of our house's garden it's very interesting in that it's only seven feet wide and i hope that after you listen to this video or watch the video you'll maybe get some ideas on how to handle very narrow spaces today is uh the summer solstice the longest day of the year and we have had a late spring so some of the flowers you're about to see normally would be done by now namely the beautiful blue moon wisteria above me and the william baffin roses behind me but let's take a closer look these are the blue moon wisteria i've been growing these for about 10 years and they come back every spring beautifully the only the only issue with blue moon wisteria or wisteria for that matter is they need to be pruned very vigorously every fall i do that every fall and and every fall i think oh did i over prune them and i never do and i do believe that the heavy pruning is one of the reasons why i get such beautiful blooms every year they're just this year they're just spectacular next uh let's go into the into the garden as you can tell by looking into the garden this little south side garden we have the main hardscape feature are sandy creek sandstone pavers now these are not laid in a straight line we intentionally did them somewhat random but if you had a bird's eye view you'd see they're in a serpentine pattern and that has the illusion of giving the garden a wide it has the illusion of having the garden look wider than it is and it also allows us to plant bigger plants on each side of the path right now the william baffin roses are in full bloom and we see a lot of rose petals so let's let's go in and walk on the rose petals immediately behind me are the william baffin roses i've mentioned already they are very hardy to zone three we are in zone four here in minneapolis minnesota and they put on a spectacular pretty much one time bloom in june every year which is great because we have japanese beetles here and japanese beetles love roses they normally uh hatch or come out around the 4th of july so these roses work very well for me and that i don't i have to worry about japanese beetles eating the blooms which is what japanese beetles do and they're quite unattractive when they cluster on rose petals so these are one roses which are one kind of rose which is really good for japanese beetles i i do deadhead these when they're done blooming some people like to save the the rose hips i i don't i just prefer cutting them off and i fertilize them about three times a year early in the spring uh then right about when they're ready to bloom and and mid-summer with a rose fertilizer which is a little heavier in nitrogen than your typical flower fertilizer so uh moving on to the uh we've missed the we missed the bloom but i have a picture here to my right against the house are is a beautiful peony a white a single petaled uh white peony again it's passed and i also um cut the blooms off of those although some people let the i mean the spent buds off of them although some people like the look of that as well and then immediately to the left and they do not bloom at the same time i have gorgeous white calla lilies i do have a video on growing calla lilies and and caring for the bulbs over winter as they are not hearty in minnesota but they're spectacular annual flower and i use them heavily throughout my garden and i planted the bulbs on these uh normally i do that by may 1st or may day and then a little further back we have a crab apple tree and this crab apple is just the the sweetest little crab apple tree it's also about 14 years old so you can see how diminutive it is and early in the spring the two crab apples i have a shot the two crab apple trees we've got the red beer and behind us and i and this little one in in front of me they make a spectacular first showing and spring which is just so pleasant and again they they both fit in this very narrow lot which is which is testament to getting dwarf varieties of crab apple trees or narrow columnar type of trees and then the serpentine pattern of the path i like to use different heights in the garden uh for visual interest and a very low to the ground i have this summon substance hosta its leaves are easily you know a foot by a foot in diameter and the chartreuse color really contrasts nicely with the arborvitae the degroot spire behind me to to my right i have a turtle head plant this is native to minnesota and the bees absolutely love it it's pink and it blooms in you know mid to late july through the fall time here i have a shrub rose again the bees are swarming all over this rose they love it unfortunately come july 4th so will the japanese beetles this blooms throughout the summer and the way i handle japanese beetles i take a jar of soapy water just dish soap and literally you take your fingers and you and you flick them off and because this rose is accessible that's actually quite easy for me to do i couldn't do it with the climbing rose which is about you know 12 15 feet high also uh to my left i have a stilby a still beer really love it against the fence they get some dappled shade and the the texture of them really again contrasts nicely off the the shrub rose moving along the garden probably one of my pride and joys are our espaliered apple trees the espaliered apple trees have been here 15 years and we do get reasonable crops of apples most years this year does not look like it will be a bountiful harvest but they are williams pride apples and we planted williams pride apples one they taste great and two are they are fungal resistant they're one of the more fungal resistant so the need to spray them is not as paramount we actually planted six of the williams pride apple trees and the um the trunks are actually woven in in a pattern which is quite lovely and attractive again it's amazing that in such a small space we can have six apple trees we just we just love it we love the look and we love the fact we get to eat apples to accentuate um to have varying height we've had well the the wisteria the william baffin climbing rose we've got this uh espaliered apple trees but i also like these tall narrow arborvitae they're again the groot spire they don't take up much space but they really have an impact because of their height they also add a bit of a manicured feel to the garden which i like to stop it from being too too cluttery looking even though i like cottage gardens i do like structure in the garden and heartscape gives us structure as well as some formal plantings as well from this view you can really see how the path meanders as it opens up into our backyard some interesting things along the way are a concrete rabbit i have i have over 10 12 concrete rabbits throughout the yard we do we do name them not because they're pets but it actually helps my husband and i communicate about where you know where to put the garden statues this one is called flower girl or tall girl and i just have simple little begonias planted next to her for a little burst of color we're now in the part of the garden that's a bit shadier than what we've seen before i shaded by the red bear and crab apple tree which is which is above me uh this year for the first time i got uh and planted tiarellas tireless are just a lovely little flower that do quite well in part shade and i learned about these at going to a garden tour last summer so i hope they work out i got six seven plants and planted them throughout the garden now we're into a little wider part of the southside garden and probably one of my favorite and many people's favorite trees is this weeping mulberry behind me it also is about 15 years old and i prune it quite quite vigorously every every year or i'm afraid it would be quite large by now but you can prune these trees to keep them to the size you want and for the space i have the size is just perfect some of the other things are creeping jenny ground cover which again i love this chartreuse color of it it looks uh quite lovely i also have a stilby throughout the throughout the garden they also like part shade as the tiarella do and i i hope the tyrella do as well as the astilbe do but um probably one of the most fun things about this area of the path is a stepping stone that my husband made for me let's let's take a look at that isn't this turtle just adorable i love it the the top of it is actually mounded so that it it actually feels somewhat like a tortoise shell the the turtle faces uh due west we used a compass uh which in japanese lores the beginning are some japanese floors the beginning of life and tortoises or turtles also symbolize longevity so i thought it was a very special gift from my husband um who who likes working with stone so also i have uh vinca plants these are perennial in our climate they have little beautiful little blue flowers and i like them as a ground cover along with the irish moss or sugina subulata i have lancifolia hosta and um and again some more estobey i have another rabbit which i'd like to introduce to you and that is girl scout bunny that was a gift from a very dear friend of mine and i like i like punctuating this this statuary with little bursts of color or little annual flowers i also have growing here some rutabekia golden glow rudabeka it will not flower until august but when it does it has very large yellow flowers almost look like asters but they are rudabekia and a lovely birch tree the bark of the birch is just spectacular the white and it brightens up this very dark space i hope you've enjoyed this little tour of our south side garden and uh maybe we'll be taking away some ideas about what to do with your narrow space thanks

Channel: Rosannes Garden

Views: 774,774

Keywords: garden paths, narrow gardens, espalier, wisteria, climbing roses, garden structure, stepping stones, garden tour, inspirational garden tour, stone art, garden statuary, calla lilies, hosta, side yard gardens

Id: oZo2mVCLT3Q

Length: 13min 19sec (799 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 27 2019