Garden 6 of 12 the "Maidens Garden"/Making Gazpacho!

well good morning from hop along hollow this is jerry i wanted to do a couple little updates on last the last video first of all i wanted to show you how this rose has been reviving this was the one that i thought had some sort of a disease but it seems to be recuperating really nicely except that there are a few bugs eating it and those would be aphids well we'll take care of that pretty quick also take a look at the little hollyhocks that are just going up wild in the garden these are the sabrina you get a much better look at the sabrina hollyhock now that it's in full brook bloom i almost think i like these better than the full-size hollyhocks they're not quite so majestic but they certainly put out a lot of blooms i had to show you this hollyhock that just grew in the middle of the sidewalk must have been a little stray seed from off the porch when i was putting them in the trays and it's about six foot tall actually probably seven foot tall yeah towering over my head but what a beauty she is just look at that yeah the big ones are pretty majestic i must say here's the bedrick's potter patch with the yellow evening primrose starting out it's bloom and everything's growing pretty nicely though fox glove are not as tall as they should have been but the biennials this is their first year so i'm surprised they even bloomed but next year they'll be bigger so this is looking pretty good right now i wanted to show you an experiment i conducted on my fox glove when they first got a stem full of buds i chopped it off right there to see what would happen and what happened was it started to do what most plants do it filled out beneath that cut and instead of getting one spiral of bloom i'm getting one two three four spirals of blooms now grounded it's not that majestic and tall but i'm getting a lot more flowers and i did it on almost all of these foxglove here on this hill and every single one of them is producing many many different stems of foxglove so it was an experiment that actually worked out pretty well so here's another one where i cut off the main blooming stem and out of that are branching five separate blooming stems now they don't get as tall and majestic as they normally would but you get a lot more flowers this way and they're just shorter the plants will be much shorter video we left off here at the front yard garden and i'm back here just to show you the beautiful queen ansel lace in full bloom it's looking so beautiful this is why i love it in the garden yes it takes over yes it's a wildflower yes some may consider it a weed but i don't i don't think anything's a weed if you love it in your garden we're not really going to concentrate on this garden today i just wanted to show you the queen anne's lace and that things are growing pretty nicely in here thus far penstemons the dahlias beatrice we've even got a few little lupins here in the front i just stuff my gardens full because when this grows i just want every square inch to be taken up with plants and that does happen in the gardens and that's fine with me because it does choke out the weeds i just wanted to give you a nice look at how gorgeous and wonderful those bell flowers are doing they're starting to open up not really blue more like purple but that'll do that works out too for me so this bed is still covered in wire but i'll be able to remove that wire very soon i could just trust my dogs not to lay in here today's challenge is this long thin garden bed that runs along another path outside the protege at the back of the house now the only thing in this garden at the moment is the willow bush which i've pruned down quite a bit because i want more sun in here this was producing a little bit too much shade for what i want and then i also have a row of sedum here which i liberated from the beatrix potter patch before i put that in so i have a nice sedum hedge here which will grow nicely and then i have all this space which right now is full of creeping jenny and that's it just creeping jenny and the remains of what was the low tunnel which i took down used it over the winter but i don't need it anymore so what am i going to do with this long section i just have to think about that when you're clearing out weeds especially persistent ones to create a new garden bed make sure that you get the roots this is creeping jenny and it's one of our most persistent ground covers that comes into every single garden that i have and it's beautiful they sell it in garden centers but it really does take over this garden or every other garden if i don't keep it in check so when i'm digging it up even the slightest little little bits of root like that will create more creeping jenny so it's very tedious to get in here and try to get all the roots and i never will get all the roots there's just not a chance that i can but at least i can minimize the problem when they start to come back another way to do this is to do the no dig method where you just cover your soil with cardboard and just let all the under growth just die and then cover that in compost but in this case i've got a really terrible clay bed here and i'm really trying to work in some sand and compost into this soil because it just doesn't drain very well as is so i'm not using the no dig method here but i have used it in several of the other gardens over the years i'm curious what you have in your garden that is a persistent vine or weed or whatever you want to term it ours are creeping jenny for sure creeping jenny violets i have a love-hate relationship with violets they are beautiful with heart-shaped leaves and beautiful little purple spring flowers but my goodness they have a they have a tendency to just plant themselves everywhere they're easy to pull up that's the good thing about the violets it's just a matter of trying to get up as many roots as you can and turning your soil in this case into some really nice well-draining soil not too many plants like to grow in clay not everything needs a very nutritious soil though either so some plants just thrive on bad soil now in case you're unfamiliar with these plants let me show you you might have them in your garden too here is the lovely creeping jenny and it just travels around along the ground in moist areas sun areas i mean it's pretty happy no matter where it is it produces tiny little yellow flowers and it actually is a beautiful ground cover but you really have to keep this under control if you want your garden to thrive this is another one that we get a lot of this is uh the wild wild strawberry and i think these are rather pretty they do produce the little red strawberries i don't have too much trouble with letting these grow in the gardens and of course they are wild strawberries with tiny white flowers and they like it basically in the shade and then we have the ever-present creeping charlie and the creeping charlie is oh has a wonderful scent it's part of the mint family and you know what mints like to do so this one has many different names it was imported from europe for a purpose i can't remember why i wrote about it on my blog one time but it's got many different names ground ivy creeping charlie uh robin's run and several others the good thing about creeping charlie is the roots are really shallow so this is easy to pull much easier than the creeping journey and then of course we've got the beautiful violet with the heart-shaped leaves the little purple flowers and they grow by rhythms but they also produce a lot of seed and i'd say that they're 100 viable because they find them everywhere i actually don't hate these in the garden i think that sometimes you have to make friends with some of these plants because unless you're growing a formal garden your garden is not going to be perfect but you can use these to your advantage because they are lovely in sort of a living mulch under your plants but they also pull up quite easily so i'm starting here with a nice clear patch but i'm pretty sure that within just a few weeks these plants will be coming back into this garden so it's just something that you live with you don't have to fret over it they're not going to kill your other plants they might try to overpower them but just don't let them there you see let's look at all that clay it just rained and you can see how it's just hanging onto all that water but if you work in the compost very nicely you can get some nice rich well-drained soil to plant anything in and plants will really appreciate that there are the maidens preparing the soil for me you see this is what they love to do when you put down fresh compost so basically i put it down i let them do their thing they get the soil nice and fluffy and then it's easy to put in seeds and and new bedding plants and then after that i have to protect the soil from them so that's why i put up all those barricades they're just temporary once gardens are established the chickens have absolutely no interest in them at all edie is the orange one here and she had these beautiful eyeliner eyes like an egyptian when she was a chiclet they were just incredible of course she's lost them now because they're surrounded by the red but she looked just like a little egyptian princess when i moved into this property 30 years ago this old wheelbarrow was back in the hollow just with a bunch of other garbage i have no idea how old it is it's pretty rusty and rotten but i thought it would look great with sweet potatoes in it so it has a special place in this garden and then along the edge here our golden squash and one hollyhock i've just guessed from last year a little surviving hollyhock i think it's black i hope so here we have some more sweet peas so this is going to be a very interesting garden bed with fruits vegetables and of course glorious flowers annuals and perennials mentioned my lack of blueberry expertise in the last video because i wasn't getting any blueberries off that particular bush and you all gave me lots of good advice many of you said you have to have more than one blueberry bush and it's preferable if it's a different kind well actually there are five dwarf blueberry bushes in that protege so that wasn't the problem it could be that the soil wasn't acidic enough but then on the other hand i always put a lot of compost in my soil so i decided that i would get some more blueberries because i'm determined to have a good blueberry production maybe it won't be this year but next year so we got five blueberry plants and within 10 feet of these are the other blueberry plants which are different so they these say they're self-pollinating but who knows these are um what are they called emerald emerald blueberries i'm going to take this section here which was growing raspberries but i'm moving the raspberries to another place this is full sun all day long i'm going to fix this soil with peat and compost that should make it pretty acidic and i've also got three comfreys growing in here so i think that this should be a pretty good area for blueberries well here we go again now you understand why i need wire protectors everywhere so tomorrow after i've got this entire thing planted i'll put a wire fence all the way around it until it's established when it's established they won't even want to go into it they won't care anymore now we've got a nice cleaned out bed beautiful soil sunny location it's perfect canvas or watercolor paper to create your new garden or my new garden in this case so let's just say you're starting a new garden and you want to know what to do with it well there's just a couple of things you have to think about do you want your garden to have a theme do you want a formal garden or a country garden or a cottage garden is it an herb garden a vegetable garden or a combination of all will it be a rose garden there's just so many places to go from here and that's where the fun comes in and the planning because it is good to get out a pad of paper and decide what plants you want to put in here and what is it that you're trying to accomplish in this particular space whatever your space is i'm not a formal garden person so this is definitely a country cottage garden as always but i still have a plan i still have goals and something i want to do i don't just want to haphazardly throw plants in hither and thither i mean once they're in there they will do what they want and that's fine but i do want to start out with some sort of an idea of what's going to go on in this garden obviously with my using the timbers here and the old wheelbarrow and the bee haven and the old horse troughs and so on and so forth as containers for gardens i am more of a rustic style old world style garden and i've already got a few plants in there because i didn't remove them they were the uh rutabaga back there which you can see brightly colored i've got the hollyhock which was existing already and other than that i've got a few things that i've already put in and i've decided on what i want to accomplish so what do you want seeds do you want to use some seeds do you want some perennials annuals you want roots uh you want a plant that is going to be happy in its circumstances so if it's a shade lover you certainly don't want to put it in a sun-loving spot but most plants really do want the sun and so you have so many opportunities and so many choices available another major choice that you're going to make is your colors are you wanting bright colors yellows reds oranges do you want the blues the pinks the pastels the whites or do you want a combination of all so thinking about bloom time color height soil conditions and everything that i have in this particular spot i write down every plant and then i decide how i'm going to incorporate it into the garden of course you could chuckle those plants and just decide to turn your patch into a wildflower garden which is pretty easy to do stuff a bag or a can of wildflower seed and just sprinkle your whole patch with wildflower seed i must confess i only bought this wildflower seed because i loved the graphics on the cam i just thought it was so funny and i don't know what i'm going to do with it i'm definitely going to keep the can and maybe i'll toss this wildflower seed on the slope garden which is pretty much a wild garden anyway so what i decided for this garden is drama i want a really dramatic looking garden by using deep rich reds for one thing and to get the reds i'm using the cherry brandy rutabekia that deep red dianthus also known as sweet william and that 80 inch velvet queen sunflower those are my dark dark red colors but i'm mixing them with something a little unusual pale pastel colors such as zinnias pale zinnias yarrow forget-me-nots a very pale bergamot and a very pale penstemon and then this is not in the garden but this is the color of some fantastic zinnias that i found which are just a pale yellow and some are white and some are actually green zinnias and those i planted as seed and then also the little yellow cosmos are sort of this color too so this is going to be a lot of similar colors such as the pinks and the lavenders but because the leaves and the stems and the heights and the flower shapes are different this would just make a beautiful medley of harmonious confusion one of my very very favorite things and then i didn't plant love in a mist but i did plant some blue sea holly and i planted it right behind a pom-pom honeycomb uh dahlia this is not it but it's very much this color and so i thought these two colors together should be absolutely striking and of course the height of the sunflowers you've got to have sunflowers 80 inches for the sunflowers up a bit up against the back wall i had collected a lot of meat seed from my last garden last year so i was very happy to have that red dianthus and i've got yellow dwarf lemon cosmos which i have used up now and this is the purple hyacinth vein and i'm wondering where could i use that possibly i could put that on the cattle panel but i've also got little bitty sugar pumpkins growing up that cattle panel so you can't have too many flowers in your garden and if you mix and match colors and you experiment a little bit you might come up with some fantastic color combinations and you know if you don't like them together you can always dig up the plant and move it somewhere else i do that all the time so we'll see what happens in this garden i'm thinking it could be a pretty dramatic garden and i really i just can't wait to see what happens in here this end all along the back we will have those deep velvet queen sunflowers going as tall as 80 inches in front of those zinnias bergamot and in front of that rudbeckia and then in the very front we're going to have a lot of the little dwarf pale yellow cosmos and the deep red sweet william so what i mostly found it in here are seeds so that's why it looks very barren right now but i also had several roots that i put in and several little baby plants that i had grown in the little greenhouses in order to prevent the wild birds from coming and eating all the seeds that i planted in here i am using black sunflower seeds as a decoy here this bird feeder here and many other feeders in the yard just to keep them away from my garden seeds while they get a chance to germinate hello boys and girls this is lydia solomon and stella bye bye so from henceforth this will be known as the maiden's garden the maidens being the hands because they helped cultivate the garden and because some of the flowers that i planted are very much like their colors especially that sunflower looks just like fruity this is demelza and there are a few little white flowers in there for peggy bishop's flower and a few white zinnias well it's been a few days since we put this garden bed in and it looks like well it looks like an empty garden bed pretty much just remember this is how they all start out even the great gardens of the world start out as an empty patch and sometimes we have a tendency to compare our gardens with other peoples and our gardens often fall far short of those glorious world famous gardens that we see online or that we have all visited so it's great to get inspiration from other people's gardens and wonder at how glorious they are and sometimes we tend to think well i'll never be able to have a garden like that but you know what don't compare your garden to anybody else's you put as much love and tenderness and care in your garden as anybody else the most famous gardeners of the world just remember no matter whether you have a tiny little patch of plants a window box or a vast vast acreage full of flowers your garden is a personal thing and if we compare our gardens to other peoples we will always be unhappy because let's face it and fall short of our expectations of what our garden should do but let's just take joy in the fact that it always surprises us and this little somewhat barren patch right now is doing all sorts of wonderful things right now i mean i get close down in here and i can see those little cosmo seeds germinating and and back there we have so many sunflowers germinating and zinnias germinating and i mean i am as guilty as anybody and looking at a marvelous and incredible garden and thinking ah i could never have a garden like that but i don't have to have a garden like that just love your garden that you have gardens don't have to be all things to all people in other words we don't have to have a cutting garden and a dried flower garden and an herb garden and a rose garden we don't have to have all those things if you've just got a small space concentrate on one plant do you love succulents just look up everything you can about succulents plant a succulent garden you can do those in pots or maybe you love a particular plant such as penstemon there are so many pen stems you could just have a garden full of penstemons and roses so concentrate on what you love and create the garden of your dreams not somebody else's so [Music] so [Music] so all right so [Music] uh [Music] so [Music] so hello missing a simple country bouquet on your table really makes a difference it's just a few picked flowers fresh from the garden easily displayed in any kind of a vase or jar doesn't have to be anything elaborate or fancy but it really makes a difference on the table today's dinnerware is port mirian or part marion botanical gardens made in england we've showed this before it's just each plate has a beautiful rendition of a garden flower telling you the classical name for it and the scientific name here we have the garden lilac or the saringa vulgaris i like the garden lilac better if you love soup but it's really hot outside gazpacho is the way to go this is really delicious this is a little bit spicy and it's actually served cold so it's just cold vegetable soup with black beans and ham and a little bit of spice you can make it as spicy as you like so it's so refreshing and so delicious and so healthy i found the recipe for this in an old magazine that i had and it was just full of soup recipes if you like really substantial muffins and you like um a really grainy whole grain bread these are delicious and they're really good because of that milled corn flour now if you like it a little more fine then use a different kind of corn flour but these are just very healthy and filling really really great and i got the recipe from the essential home ground flour book by sue becker and we're drinking strawberry banana smoothies with our meal today nice and cold on ice and this beautiful beautiful casserole dish is from you know my favorite portugal pottery maker bordalo pinero back to this little space in the morning when the lights a little bit different and i'll show you a little bit about this courtyard space and the garden that i'm going to be working on next here we are the next morning in the same garden spot and i'm going to take a look at my courtyard floor and i'm going to say wow this is a lumpy bumpy courtyard but it's something i've come to appreciate it doesn't have to be perfection for me i love perfectly imperfect especially for an old house like this so these old bricks were laid in between this concrete slabs which was broken up concrete that was laid here in the 1960s so this is 60 year old concrete and i like that i don't mind the cracks i don't mind the stains i don't have to have a perfect cobblestone courtyard here it's just learning to love what you've got and work with what you've got you've got on hand and just being imaginative and creative with your space you can really learn to appreciate what you've got whether it's a small garden plot or just a crazy courtyard like this every time i come outside i add a couple more sprigs of flowers to that vase so now it's got little sabrina hollyhocks larkspur fox glove nigellopods and a couple little sweet peas in there so it seems to get a little bit fuller every time i film it i alluded last in the last video to a project that i've been working on for a few years and as many of you know i make my living as an artist i have many outlets for my artwork as far as medium i do fiber needle felted fiber animals i also do painted paper cutting and and schnitt i do scratched eggs i also do story books and i had been working on a storybook which is actually a garden book for beginner children gardeners for the last couple years i've been doing the illustrations whenever time permitted the initial idea was to use the the animals that live here in hop along hollow as my little gardeners this is covered in plastic because it is sprinkling outside so here you see the maidens in the garden i call this ladies and lavender but the initial idea for the book was to teach kids the basics of gardening and what i call hop-along holoscaping but my ideas have evolved over the years because i wouldn't want this to just be a children's book and it's not just a gardening book because there are millions of gardening books out there done by master gardeners and real professionals unlike myself so i want this to be something very very very different and unique by combining my love of gardening which is a hobby and my profession as an artist i wanted to do some full color illustrations great big illustrations because i like to do big books with all the gardeners being animals the professional gardeners in my book are the animals that live here in avalon hollow so fiona goose feathers and bushki bushy bottom hop along jack and all the i'm maidens to give tips and tricks in how to create a hop-along holoscaping garden so i'll be incorporating many of the animals here hop along hollow both wild and domestic so i've actually steered away from the idea of just making this a story book for children or how to book for children i want it to be an everybody book for amateur gardeners for kids and for anybody it should be a garden book that would appeal to anybody that loves animals flowers gardens and an old approach to gardening and landscaping combination of original artwork these will all be painted of course and photographs from the gardens here from start to finish realistic things that you can actually copy and apply to your own garden you're anything like me you already have dozens and dozens and dozens of garden books put out by the very very best gardeners but what would you like to see in a garden book that you haven't seen before that's my question for you or is there anything new in the world of gardening books i don't know i'm certainly going to explore it i'll be incorporating all of our favorite cottage flowers our antique flowers that we love how to grow them especially if you're a beginner gardener i've always intended for this piece to be the book cover and the title of the book will most likely be hop along holoscaping long road ahead and finishing up the painting on these illustrations and getting all the photographs together but in the meantime i really would like your input on the sort of ideas that you'd like to see in a gardening book so from hop along hollow this is jerry and we'll see you next time in this little garden right here bye

Channel: Jeri Landers of Hopalong Hollow

Views: 13,979

Rating: 4.9828029 out of 5

Keywords: storybook illustration, nature, farm, garden, animals

Id: N3N1pyyNu4Y

Length: 38min 20sec (2300 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 10 2021