GARDEN CHANGES: Then & Now

[Music] [Music] well we are going to do something really unusual today so many of you have asked me if i had pictures of my garden over time what it used to look like and i don't have a lot of those because when we first started this gardener when i first started it it that was pre-digital so the the early phases of it are largely in hard copy images and i came across a a portfolio portfolio of them the other day and i thought it would be fun for us to look back when and then contrast it with what it looks like now so stuart's going to have to do some editing on this aren't you stuart but hopefully it will make some sense so my overall question of the day then is tell me which way you liked it more now sometimes these were intentional changes i made and i'll try to explain as we go from vignette to vignette why it changed sometimes the changes were intentional sometimes they were forced by mother nature or for some other reason but i will definitely give you the rationale for why it looks the way it does now versus why it looked the way it did back when these most of these photos were taken in i think 2005 and 2008 the date is some on the is some of the on some of the images that stuart is going to scan the date is on there and we'll try to leave that on there so you guys can kind of compare and contrast and i'll also try to mention like please note that such and such wasn't here yet and that was back in 2005. that is helpful to me because i don't remember the year i planted some of these i didn't have very good record keeping okay so let's get started so let's start out with this first long vista of my backyard it has changed considerably and you may not notice that unless you really hold one image up against the other but in the old image number one sadly yes all of those electrical wires utility wires are still there but you'll also notice that in the background there is a huge tree i believe that was an elm tree and it was on the neighbor's side it is not there any longer it was a beautiful tree and i think it got a lot of storm damage so one of the previous owners that lived in that house they took that tree down which is you can kind of imagine really changed uh the microclimate and such in my in my own landscape now in the corner where that utility pole is there at one time was a blue atlas cedar and it's not huge in this picture but over time it got quite large it also died in a year where we had very very intense heat and then we had very intense cold but it was there for quite a while and it helped camouflage that ugly utility pole it is no longer there note also how the width of the grass so in the picture the old picture that was taken april 25th of 2005 you'll notice that the lawn was much wider and here it really narrows and it was also back when i had long or i had real grass but notice that the grass is trenched and the edge is just like it was when it was real grass now it is that faux turf and that's one of the reasons i selected the company that i did uh with this this product was because they were able to replicate the look that i had in the past this was also when my boys were younger stuart we might kind of start walking around now this was also when my boys were younger and they had more room to play and we would hubs and i would sit on the bench over here which which some of you now think needs to be moved because it's so overgrown in that area but i still i still like it it's more of a garden ornament than actually something that's utilitarian at least at this stage of the growing season and my kids would play out here notice the absence of all of this brick border that did not used to be here and i added it later and i think it adds a real textural component you can see where the white ditzia was which is right here and in the picture you can see that it's in bloom and in front of that white ditzia you see a mound of gold and that was this area in here and at one time this was all gold money wart and it would look great in the spring but then it would start getting really buggy and it would be overgrown and it was became a maintenance issue so i removed all of it and laid down this herringbone pattern of brick as kind of a brick throw rug in the foreground of the bench and then as i was doing the border for it it kind of gave me the inspiration to continue with this brick border all around the perimeter of the garden and it's one of my favorite features now you'll also notice i think you can tell at the in the very bottom of the shot around where it shows the date you can see that there was no brick border over here it just went directly into flagstone so i like the way it looks much more finished and it looks like one more continuous line you'll also notice that in this area over here this redbud tree was not there i'm having to consult the picture as well you guys the redbud tree was not here and there used to be a huge mass of roses that literally climbed the studio and i'll just i'll talk about that a little bit more when we look at a different picture but i really liked the way that this redbud tree which by the way you guys i did not plant it was a volunteer i just noticed where it was as i noticed the redbud tree over here and i liked the way they flanked either side of the studio i did not plant them i just noticed their presence and i started to prune them up so there would be this kind of bauer effect over this porch that goes into the studio in the back but neither one of them was there you'll also notice back here this is kind of fun for me too you guys fun for me too you'll notice that back here and stuart we might need to just have this photo up on there for reference yeah i'll continually go back and forth too okay and this is kind of a trial and error thing so hopefully this will work but you'll notice back in here i used to have two large evergreens two very pointed columnar evergreens they almost look like italian cypress but they were blue point junipers which i can't remember if they were removed or if they died i can't remember but there was a blue point juniper and eventually i i just removed them i think it was probably about the corner here but it was it was these original blue point junipers back from 2005 that started sending out all the all of the babies one of which turned into this topiary so i think that's i think that's kind of a fun it's really kind of a fun thing a little bit of garden history and garden anthropology you'll also notice that in front of the studio which would be over in here there's a mound of yellow and for the longest time i had a huge mound of golden oregano oregano aria and i had that in here and it was so happy for many many many years and finally i think that the quality of the soil just it it just couldn't prosper any longer but i still love it and i do look for it because i would like to use it in different containers and things it looks from a distance very much like golden money work but it's not the in this image you'll see that it's a very chartreusey color over the summer it would also revert to green and was a little bit more of a maintenance issue and so i i didn't put it back i just continued this area with flagstone brick and gravel and then you can see even back then i loved the way this boston ivy hello stuart just waving to stuart um how this boston ivy crowd at the base crawled across the base of the step and i still like that and i just kind of contain it and now because the rose is no longer on this wall i allow it to climb up this wall and i do keep it contained this is not virginia creeper this is that boston ivy so let's see what other changes are here this area over here you'll see if you look at the picture it's on the left there used to be a rose that climbed up this trellis in the back and when there wasn't so much shade that rose did great it was a grew true jiggle rose which now has a minor presence on the side arbor but you may have wondered why i had this lattice there there also at one time was some clematis that climbed up it both the clematis finally after many years expired due to clematis wilt and this tall and very beautiful globular arbor vita here i had a series of three of those just underneath this this lattice work and i planted them there to hide the ugly legs of the roses they were supposed to be a dwarf a variety obviously it was not a dwarf variety as i learned i removed two of them and then i proved what pruned what was a tiny shrub up into a large tree and i have to say that i love this now because it needed an evergreen presence and visual weight it is wonderful in the wintertime and it also gives now the boxwood and things that grow underneath it in the understory it gives them a little bit of protection so i think that accounts for most everything in this picture stuart you want to move on to the next one let's do it okay okay probably the most dramatic difference in this photo is the large leaning tree and you'll notice this was taken in 2006 when i still had real grass this was taken in 2006 and you'll see that leaning tree where now approximately stuart if you can kind of come over this way now there's a red bud and i used to have two river birches there that one trunk you see was originally part of a triple trunk river birch that was there and what are we talking about now okay right here this tree right here okay okay on this picture and i'll put that on the screen for right there okay that used to be in this area a triple trunk river birch and over time in different weather events we lost two of the triple trunks and this was the remaining one and ultimately it also had to come down because of storm storm damage so in its place i decided to just let a redbud grow because the red redbud is native it obviously wanted to be there it planted itself and over time it grew up to be this shape so in 2006 at least there wasn't a redbud there and there is now the other thing to point out is you'll notice that i used to have this is the same table i've got different chairs there now i used to have an umbrella there and i don't have an umbrella anymore because this area is largely shaded and i don't need it but just right off the edge of the table and the point of the umbrella you can see where i planted a blue a blue atlas cedar and look at how much that blue atlas cedar has grown where's that line where did the grass end the grass ended about right here and then i added this additional space out to here so i would have a complete contour of this bed in one continuous line so another thing that's different is you'll notice that a lot of my trim the studio doors and some of the trim to my french doors and to my kitchen window it used to be painted white and when we had it repainted i had it painted in this darker gray partly because that was a much more english look and also because the white color was just really difficult to maintain it was a lot more high maintenance primarily though it was an aesthetic decision because it looked a lot more english so when i did research on tudor houses i wanted it to look much more much more english than it was the other thing to look at and stuart's going to put up two different pictures there's one in 2006 and this tree here with these beautiful i love this tree and i love the way the boston ivy climbs it this one was a volunteer and you can see right next to the pot that you see in the picture it's just a little baby in 2006 and then here is the second picture that's more more of a close-up shot you can see how much it has grown between two thousand and six was the original picture and in 2008 it has grown considerably so that's how much growth a redbud can put on in two years and at this point the one on this side has not yet made an appearance so interestingly this one grew up to approximate the size of its twin on the other edge of the porch in short order so there's almost pretty much complete symmetry there you'll also notice let's see what else is different here stuart you'll also notice that there used to be in this area right here i used to have two lounge chairs that matched this furniture and [Music] i ultimately removed them because in the summer time it's just typically too hot to ever really lounge here we never we seldom ever used them and so i gave them to a nephew who had a rooftop a rooftop patio i gave those away and that was when about that time is when i introduced the topiary here which have become a very significant signature touch in my garden i think and instead of and it also used to be that this area right here stopped at about right here and i wanted to create this bistro area after i had to have some major plumbing work done through here they had to dig all of this up so i explain expanded this area i put in more matching herringbone brick to match what was over in front of the garden bench and moved some chairs over in here and created what i call the bistro area now and the redbud tree that is here now also at one time was a triple trunk river birch to match the one that was on the other side but they both died and it used to be river birch trees were a very popular triple trunk tree that was planted in oklahoma when i first started the garden yeah they were very very popular they are an absolutely gorgeous tree and for a while they were a recommended tree in oklahoma no longer because they come down in the ice and the high winds they're beautiful but i ended up going with a native that planted itself and i just knew that i liked the presence of a tree there based on what was there in the past that i had originally planted so now instead of the river birch i just have a ceiling of red bud yeah that's one of the differences i saw is there's not anywhere near as much of a canopy kind of over over this whole area which is why i had an umbrella and i also let me see let me look at this picture back then i don't think i don't think this maple was here either so now the maple that protects this terra hydrangea it now comes over and kind of closes the ceiling from this side now before the horrific ice storm we had last year this it was almost completely covered yeah and and actually as sad as i am that i lost a lot of that coverage i do about midday which it is right now i get enough light on my table that i can have some of my topiaries that that like higher light instead of too much shade so stuart should we move on to the next category well this is one of the most dramatic changes i think and that is this whole bed of hydrangeas when i first started to grow these hydrangeas first of all there was a lot more light over here and believe it or not hydrangeas the the mop head hydrangeas that bloom in in the purple and the pink and the blue and the deeper hues they need pretty much more sun than you would think to actually put on intense color so that's one of the reasons it looks so different because now this area is largely shady but primarily the reason that they don't look this way anymore and that the the ones that i do have and that's another reason for example right here the ones that are blooming are in a paler color instead of a darker color because this area is shadier but the other reason is there's not such profuse bloom is because this whole area used to consist of all mop head hydrangeas that bloomed on old wood and it never used to be a problem that we would get a very early hard freeze or a very very late hard freeze to kill out the buds and all of these gorgeous flowers over the past 15 years the al the hydrangeas that bloomed on all wood barel they they froze out every single year they quit reliably blooming something i had taken for granted and then they just quit doing that because of of hard freezes either very early or very late in the year so i started putting in varieties you'll notice there's no white ones in in this image i started putting in varieties that bloomed on new wood like the annabelle that's getting ready to bloom over there and then these other varieties that you can see here they're starting to come into bloom and these also bloom on new wood hard late freezes actually can also be a problem for them but not nearly as severely so so these are going to start you can see lots of buds can you see buds on them there stuart yeah these are going to be a little bit later and they do bloom in more shade so they won't have the intensity of the color which actually i in in terms of how they resonate with the rest of this stand i like the paler color with the white blooms that are going to be massive and the white of the oak leaf hydrangea instead of those real vibrant deeper more intense colors because it's a little bit softer and a little bit um makes more of a whisper here is something that this year has been such a problem more than ever i'm gonna move it before it does any damage this year we haven't had a lot a lot of bugs um but boy one bug we have had are earwigs let me know if you live in the oklahoma area if you've had a lot more earwigs my creative coordinator carrie she said oh my gosh this year the earwigs have just been terrible she's the bug whisperer and she said they've been really terrible so let's move on to the next area though this one i think was pretty dramatic this area probably changed very dramatically and i have named this spot oh the exuberance of youth because i so loved my protege in the back that when this area was very very sunny i thought oh wouldn't it be nice to have a small kitchen garden right off of my kitchen and the back stairs and i put in a tiny second protege with clipped box wood because at that time that was how i defined it and i grew all sorts of little herbs and things in there there was at one time a climbing rose that grew up the fence which way back when i just left natural and at a certain point i decided to stain it this dark bronzy brown color and you guys are going to ask me what color this is and we will try to put the lid to the formula of the paint can stuart let's try to remember we'll put that in the community tab so you guys keep checking the community tab and then i decided to add a couple of more redbuds because again i wanted this canopy to be complete these two i actually planted because the others were so mature and i kind of wanted to emulate the same degree of maturity and i wanted it to be an entire ceiling over this area and so i just pruned them like i pruned the others stuart if you want to kind of do a sweep around there which is just opening up the branching so that there's good air flow through there you can see i this is one of my favorite views of the garden from where i'm standing right here stuart looking back to the lights not great but looking back to the boxwood orbs and the gorgeous hydrangeas i love this and then the contours and the architecture of of the redbud tree and so this area just it just got a lot shadier and i it was this was way too much work and i was so naive thinking oh i can keep up with all of this when i had two small children and i realized no i didn't and it also looked too busy and those yes those were there exactly as they are exactly as they are those were there and there used to be in front of them again before it got too shady in front of them there were two large conical boxwoods which now live in the back in the potage i transplanted them because they got oversized for this space and and so then i just let this kind of devolve i added more brick i added some stepping stones and i let this kind of devolve into a much shadier kind of natural garden because i wanted the consistency of the boxwood balls when you first came in the gate i added these boxwood balls to repeat and kind of continue the flow of them through the garden and they can handle this amount of shade and they also kind of define this space and i just like this area it's just ground cover it has lots of things that go to seed the yellow columbine the purple columbine in here there is a little bit of purple adenophora which used to bloom a little more heavily now it's a little bit shadier in here but i don't mind and then because it kind of had a woodland vibe when i lost a lot of the trunks to my oak tree in front i just placed some of them over here because i just kind of like the way they look and now this is where i have my terracotta pots and i it's kind of a nice shady area to select my container of choice and this whole area is just quieter and i like the fact that when you come in the gate it's very shady and it creates this kind of arbor stuart if you look up you can see that there's this it's kind of a pergola or a living arbor they blend you can really see how they they interact yes they interact so where this blood good red maple then intertwines and creates this wonderful canopy as you come through the gate and i loved that look how solid the shade is you can look down yeah the saw the shade is almost solid now and it also shades a section of the driveway that can get very very brutally hot so it makes more of a pleasant entrance that this entire area in the summer is more shady as you go into the backyard and i really really like that so um this was something that i did envision and i'll be darned if it actually didn't come to fruition so there's two more pictures for you to look at and oh and by the way here is a tip this was a very old fence and it was up to oh it was probably about this tall and the top of it had gotten just oh it just had started to erode away squirrels had done some damage on it but i didn't want the expense of completely replacing the fence so i came up with this idea of just putting some horizontal boards here cutting off the fence to about this height putting the horizontal boards on and then adding a layer of lattice and then topping it off with some fill some uh finials and and and then also having a surface at the top so what this did was i didn't have to completely replace my fence this was an inexpensive solution and it worked both when it was still naturally starting to age naturally but also it looks great i think after it after it was darkened up and i really like the way it looks okay let's go on to the next area so stewart is trying to replicate this shot exactly so you can't see my head right now but this is the corner on the north end of the studio and you can see that there's a lot of color there uh in many ways more color than i have now and most of it comes from perennials so there's some stokeesia in there there's some lilies there's some veronica there's some daylilies there it looks like i might even have some yellow lantana in there there's a lot more there's just a lot more perennials and as part of my less maintenance uh kind of part of my garden manifesto i decided to have more blooming shrubs and then i also just wanted my my color to come from the containers and also those perennials were just a lot more to maintain so i had a couple of boxwood balls in there they really grew up there used to be a tiny one right here and it got destroyed in a storm but you can notice in some of the studio pictures that the large pots are still here on either end of of the porch that leads into the studio and only the contents have changed also you'll notice how much shadier it is over here this used to be a full sun aspect and now it's considerably more shady and that's another reason that there's not a lot of perennials in here because there's not enough sun to support them and what sun they get is really at the end of the day a running theme more shade yeah a running theme more shade and i really i really like that and i think it adds to the intimacy of the garden and i honestly do not miss the color from the perennials oh and i'm so glad you said that stewart this is so important to point out as you're answering these questions and you look at the how it was in the past versus how it is now and which you like better let me also point out that whenever these photos were taken it was they were probably taken right before or right after a garden tour so it looked its very best at that point in time today i'm not garden tour ready or anything this is just how it looks today and i prioritized long-term everyday good looks over sporadic good looks and perfection for a very short period of time so this area right here will pretty much look this way all summer long the image of this corner as it was looked that way for about a week let's move on to the next one well this area has really changed i used to call this area the rose bower area because it was just filled in the springtime with a massive just a massive explosion of climbing old blush roses that grew and filled this entire corner they crawled across the top of the studio for a while i used to have a telephone line telephone cord that came from the utility pole to the corner of the studio and i would even let it crawl on the on the uh telephone line and cross the yard and then where that ended a zephyr and druin rose began and covered the arbor what is his name zephyr and druin a beautiful fragrant rose one of my favorite roses and there used to be an arbor right here and it would it would climb that arbor and again it was when it was spectacular it was spectacular and especially it looked very i think it looked very italian or very english because of the counterpoint of the tall junipers i remember always wondering when i first started working with you why you had trellises on your roof well i had and that's because thank you for pouring that out that's because the climbing old blush rose used to climb on the trellis and i would secure it to the trellis now for multiple reasons the rosie bower is no more again when you're looking at this you think oh my gosh these images that is absolutely spectacular i definitely liked it better back then keep in mind it only looked that way for maybe two weeks max and after that it was a tangled mess of rose bushes that i then had to contend with um climb on the roof to get them to secure cut back when they started to impale people and impede progress into the protege but more importantly the zephyr and druin after many many years it suffered rose rosette which then infected the climbing old blush i took out the zephyr and druin i took out the original climbing old blush but it had layered itself and re-propagated so i still have it and i love that and now it just crawls across as it begins to mature it will continue to crawl across the picket fence here that had to be replaced let me see if i get this only bloom for two weeks but they're a huge pain afterwards yes because tulips only bloom for two weeks but not as huge a pain after no and tulips bloom for longer than that the progression of bloom is longer than that but when you have a massive roses like that it seems short to me this year well because the tulips as with the roses it all depends on the weather so so if i had had those same roses this year stuart they bloom in early april if i had those same roses they would have lasted probably about a week if a week because the winds were so strong that they would bloom and then the weather was in the 90s and so so they just wouldn't have their good looks for any period of time at all but the work the maintenance the black spot uh the japanese beetles the powdery mildew that was a gift that kept on giving all through the year and so for me i like now the fact that what is here now again looks like this pretty much the entire growing season i do have a spot of roses that bloom instead of the rows that i rose that i had to maintain growing on the side of the studio i now have this ivy which then crawls up the trellis on the roof this is far easier to maintain it likes the shadier aspect as well it has the same english look but it doesn't have all of the drawbacks the other thing is when i planted this rose i was probably in my early 30s i ain't in my early 30s anymore i used to literally get on top of that roof i don't want to get on top of the roof anymore at my age and so because of that it was kind of one of those good things bad things once i realized once it was gone i don't know that i missed it the other major thing that a lot of you will go back and forth on this because i know a lot of you really miss the arbor that was here and it's in if you stuart misses it it was in lots of the images of of my book um but finally after being here for so long it just began to decay and it had to be replaced and when we replaced it i or when we had to rebuild this fence in these posts i decided i didn't want it back for a number of different reasons um it was a little bit of an impediment to move from one space into the next space because there were four piers here for the the trellis itself it really i think it impeded air flow it made it difficult to get a wheelbarrow in and out and then it but primarily what it did was obstruct the vista the long view from up closer to the house all the way through and back into the protege so now stuart i can stand here at this point in the garden the rose isn't there any longer the arbor isn't there any longer and when i round this curve right here in fact i'm going to have you come all the way over here i figured you might but i wasn't sure if you don't mind not at all and by the way you guys when you watch this i know this is a long long video you might want to break it up into stages but i i have wanted to do this so many people have requested okay look at that beautiful vista now you can see all the way back into the protege you can see the alliums you can see the finials it depending on where you navigate you can see the contours of the boxwood you can see the pickets of the fence when that rose was there in this picture you could see none of that and in the winter and in the summer it was just green now i have much better air circulation and i can see all the way back through here to my dove coat to what's going on in the protege and the other thing that i love about it is it seems like a much larger space than it seemed before it seemed like it was kind of cramped and kind of pushed up against the east side fence now it feels much more spacious a much larger area and i think a little bit more befitting the grandeur of of my house so let's move on to the protege itself and wrap this up now this is going to be a pretty dramatic change and i have to say in looking at this older picture it really really was beautiful at this point in time again this point in time didn't last very long and i am more about the long term right now but you can definitely see a number of different changes first of all the absence of the rose it's not here any longer the arbor is not here any longer and also and this was something i really equivocated on once i put up these posts and i'd kind of like your input on this i decided not to put you'll see that there's a gate a gate into the protege that used to be here and the reason it was here and i love the gate because i designed it to so that the pickets were tall and then they got shorter and then they got tall again and i loved that and i had a little ornament that my mom had given me that i hung on it and i the reason i had that gate it was added later after the arbor was built because we had a tiny little dog then and the dog would get in here and then could get out and so i had to do something to contain her to this area of the garden so we called it a billy gate because i had a dog named after billy holliday my favorite singer and we called it a billy gate we lost billy so there was no longer really a reason to have it here and again i just because there's so much warping in gates um as the weather changes and they tend to not open as easily over time they tend to begin to sag i just decided that i didn't want that frustration again more ease and so i didn't enclose this and i have to say i really like the fact that it's open it makes ingress and egress that much easier and i also like the way now that these large pots which used to be conical boxwood which just really began they just got way too mature and had to be replaced now i can have two dramatic pots here as a point of entry now right now you'll notice that it doesn't look nearly as cluttered in this old picture as it does now that's because i'm in a state of transition moving pots around and it's more of a workspace than it is just a beautiful photo shoot ready area again these were taken just prior to either a magazine shoot or a garden tour so these look perfect right now even though it doesn't look perfect i still think it looks really beautiful some of the other images i want to show you you could notice in the back that we did i did stain the fence to match that dark color and i like it much better it tends to just recede instead of standing out that fence has now pretty much been obscured by the growth of the nandina behind it and also the ivy which grows on it which gives it a very english look and i can contain it and i also grew just to give a little punch of yellow there's a small leaved golden fortuney euannomous that grows up one of those posts so and then i put two there used to be some in-ground boxwoods there these were there because i transplanted them from the front area i showed you near the back porch over time i wanted to move those and i have two pots that now punctuate the corner again too many pots it's too busy right now everything is in a state of flux but what amazes stuart is how how much the boxwood has grown and that was why i had to take some drastic measures to reduce its size remove the boxwood balls on the ends you used to be able to walk through them you can't anymore i widened the brick path that goes into the center there used to be in the interior at juxtaposition points i used to have some golden fortuney euanomous it's not there anymore because it would get scale and i removed it i when the boys were little i would grow different things in the middle i grew uh baby boo pumpkins one year and jack be little pumpkins and my kids got great delight out of that but again that was a lot of work and then probably the biggest difference is in is in this border here and it used to be filled with climbing uh dawn roses with lots of larkspur with tons of perennials with lots of poppies and there wasn't anything in here to ground this space pretty much once that show was finished i had to come in here pull out all the puppies pull out all the larkspur because they were just dead and brown the roses just were a mess and as much as i love dawn roses pink dawn roses they are they are a prickly bear and they were very difficult to wrestle with and i just decided that i liked and then i was this virginia creeper would start to entangle in them and i would just spend hours out here trying to get it to look presentable i don't have to do any of that anymore now there are fixtures in here my alliums there's different things that come up every year and even before i've put in any of my summer seasonal color it still looks pretty nice doesn't it absolutely it still looks pretty nice and i've done very very little to it i haven't even pruned the boxwood cones that are punctuate either end i haven't even done that yet and i also like the columnar contrast of these uh emerald green arbor vitas and yes you guys have also commented excuse me i just hit my mic you guys have also commented that you like the way the ivy looks across the top and i do too i really like that but again it's very very high maintenance my neighbor to the back is going to replace their fence so it may go bye-bye for a while but as you all know it's very very tenacious and it will probably come back i just i never knew the potential to have to be small that's why it amazes me so much to see those images that at that at one time i planted all and by the way you guys i i planted this into this design i just eyeballed it and i planted one gallon wintergreen boxwoods and on about 15 inch centers after i was in barnsley house i talk a lot about that in my book and i planted it on 15 inch centers and it doesn't look fabulous right now but it still looks pretty good and as it continues to grow out it will look even better and this is kind of the beginning of the summer season so pretty soon these will all be filled with vegetables and things and the reason that i didn't plant too much spring stuff in some of them is because i want as much sun as possible to hit the center boxwood and the perimeter of the outside boxwood because i want it to fill in and recover so there are times no i was not going to somebody said well maybe you should just take it all out and replant it no first of all i have an emotional attachment to this number two it may not be perfect anymore but it's still beautiful number three that would be a huge expense and number four i would still be waiting another two years for it to all grow together like this so i am willing to put up for one year where it looks kind of clunky and and you know kind of like an awkward teenager than to tear it out and have it start all over again i think it is beautiful regardless and i love the way it captures the light it still makes me smile almost the same way it did the first time i didn't know it was here and i saw the rest of the yard and thought you know this is great and then you come back around the corner and realize oh my gosh this is this is all back here still does it today and and i love the way that it's it's enclosed i talk a lot about that in the book if you want to see more pictures of what it looked like back then then definitely get a copy of my book and you can compare it to real time but i i loved it as much then as i do now actually i think i love it more now because it's so much easier to maintain and i've replaced so many perennials that were high maintenance with blooming shrubs and evergreens it looks ten times better all year round than then rather looking perfect for just nanoseconds in time and it has the other thing i love about it is it has evolved and kind of parallels the evolution of my family myself as a gardener and as i age along with it so that concludes our garden design makeover that was before this is now and i'll be so curious what you guys have to say stuart i know it's going to be a little bit of a challenge for you to get all of these stills up it's going to be fun but hopefully you guys have enjoyed this please make sure to let me know if you enjoyed it if you're just if you're not a follower make sure to subscribe if you are a follower um and you want to become a member with some additional perks in addition to just all of these free videos then you want to join do that on your computer by going to my main page on youtube and stuart have we forgotten anything else there is one other thing if you've made it to the end i'm going to be speaking of my book i'm going to do a book signing at plant people this weekend from 1 to 3 in midtown and i would love to see you there and also be ready next wednesday we're gonna do our first live wednesday walkabout in the evening at 6 central standard time get your glass of wine or your cup of coffee or your cup of tea or your iced tea whatever your beverage of choice is and we can walk around together so there you go a very long and i think very special episode for you guys and here you go here's your outfit of the day my sunglasses kind of have that john lennon vibe and i got these online they're just inexpensive ones my earrings are these wonderful silver hoops i like these so much and by the way you guys i don't know if i've ever mentioned these are not heavy at all they're very lightweight so they're yeah they look heavy i think but they're they're hollow so they're not heavy at all um my fun overalls i got these online and stuart we need to put up a link but i got these online they are so comfortable and as much as i love my denim overalls they're a little bit heavier these are so lightweight so they are perfect for summer and you could wear all sorts of fun tops over them i just really really like them and i especially like them because they have pockets my boots these are some new boots from hi-c new to me they're patent leather boots again i love this brand so much because you can just get in and out of them so easily without even having to touch them and another thing i like about them is the top is really soft so it doesn't cut into your skin these i probably i will save these my patent leather boots for sunday just like when you were a kid and you saved your patent leather shoes for church on sunday i will probably save these for i pray gardening and wear some different icy boots when i'm working out working out in the garden but they also come in in red and yellow and i just think they're adorable so there you go there's my outfit of the day

Channel: Linda Vater

Views: 71,101

Keywords: potagerblog, Linda Vader, garden life, garden designer, garden landscape design, garden design, garden media, gardening, Linda Vater, southern gardening, thrifting, Garden Answer, boxwood, topiary, garden tour, evergreens, favorite plants, garden center, Oklahoma gardening, garden, lifestyle tips, garden lifestyle, Organization, habit formation, good habits, habit stacking, habit pairing, healthy aging, style over 40, style over 50, style over 60, healthy living

Id: I3LgS5kwL9g

Length: 51min 43sec (3103 seconds)

Published: Sat May 28 2022