Garden Tour - Pollinator Heaven

[Music] welcome to heart tube my name is jim putnam this is a continuation of a july garden tour where i'm just doing a very very detailed walk of the entire landscape this is in riley north carolina it's on two tenths of an acre very urban very urban space i've created a playlist just for these july garden tours i'm gonna link it up here in the corner if you're watching on youtube and uh i don't know if you've missed one or not this will be number three four five this is number seven and i think it's gonna end up being nine because there's so many so many different uh plants in this landscape so let's get started on today's this uh grand cascade butterfly bush was planted on this bed edge because i've got lots of pollinator plants around the bed edge of this piece of turf in the back and in the front garden space it has definitely outgrown this space it's a beautiful plant blooms like mad pollinators love it but i've got to move back a little bit further in the bed so this winter when it goes dormant i'll cut it back and move it more towards the center of the bed i'm trying to get a center piece through this bed that uh that creates a little bit of mystery for what's on the other side of the bed there's actually a path back there and i want i don't want people to easily be able to see all the plants that are back there so this belongs in the middle section uh as kind of a little bit of a screen another plant that's back here that's working properly as a screen is the white wedding hydrangeas there's three of them back here and the butterfly bush is doing a good job of of of blocking them off hurricane elsa or tropical storm elsa kind of laid them flat this year this is what happens on some of these new um varieties of hydrangeas with these just giant uh inflorescences the the big white group of flower flower-like parts the water gets on them and they can be weighted down some it doesn't happen every year but this year we did have a five-inch rain event that caused that but they still look great and they bloom for so long white wedding is a great variety it's super compact i haven't had to prune these at all since they've been since they've been in the ground we come around to the other side of the grand cascade butterfly bush there are a couple lucanthimum here or shasta daisies this one's called real charmer look at the amount of yellow that's in this variety it starts out very yellow like this and then slowly but surely gets whiter and whiter great plants super low maintenance easy you know that's a kind of a plant and forget sort of perennial the bed edge continuing along this way is lined with angelonia i've got angelonia in several different spaces in the yard i notice in the morning that i really don't see pollinators on the angelonia right now they're on some salvia that you'll see in a minute seems to be later in the day that the angelonia becomes one of their favorites one thing that's interesting um about the angelonia i talked about this with the pentas in the last video is how little maintenance these actually are they're they were pruned one time uh when they were put in the ground they were lightly pruned so they would fill out and get bushier like they have and then these flower spikes last so long that you really don't have to come back in here and do hardly any maintenance at all on angelonia i highly recommend this is an annual flower uh just because you can plant it and forget it uh the so honestly the soil that's been put in here along the bed edge is just in my mulched bed there was some compost originally added but it wasn't it wasn't overly prepped and it's only been fertilized one time so uh you know again angelonia i highly recommend for your for your annual pro annual summer flowering projects um there's three azaleas along the front uh right here that are this is autumn star uh autumn sunburst uh these are encore azaleas they're budding back up to bloom again and uh it won't be long before i start to see some more color on these uh this one has uh it's kind of a pinkish color with a with a with a white edge but the white edge is slightly smaller than this new one called autumn starburst which i have two of behind it i think the two of these actually look great together starburst has a has a the white band on the flower is uh bigger so they have variegated flowers that's what i'm trying to say there's five encore azaleas in this space uh and they bloom for a very very long time they bloomed for weeks and weeks and weeks in the spring and again they're butted up ready to bloom again just little evergreen low doming things i gotta have i have so many uh flowering perennials and annuals in this landscape that i gotta have something that's just green so that in january something is out here and so these fit the bill perfectly plus they bloom multiple times a year so kind of a perfect uh kind of a perfect selection for that to my right this is a dwarf joe pie weed i showed if you watched the i think the third video from the front garden space i showed the the regular joe pie weed which was over my head in the front yard that's over six feet tall this one has nothing's been done to it all season and it's right at three feet in height every one of the every bit of the growth has flowers on it and there's a bee sleeping right here on the back of that one we can see right there and once these flowers open they have not they're just starting to open if you've never seen what happens on joe pie weed when the flowers are completely open they just absolutely go wild for them to to the right of it is a viburnum this is a native viburnum called viburnum nudem the flowers were here earlier in the season it's actually grown a foot and a half this thing was bought in a one quart pot and was was maybe maybe 12 inches tall something like that or less and it's grown this much in a year and a half again here's where it had flowered and then this is the there were berries where the flowers had formed i think the the birds have probably made off with the majority of them at this point but that's the that's the reason that i plant these things uh in the landscape because the flowers are great for the pollinators the the uh berries are great for the uh for the birds there's some turinia planted down here below i've got annuals planted here and there we'll do the back path on the next tour video i'm just going to kind of stick to the you know to the larger things down the middle the middle of this bed uh for now this uh tree right here is a kyananthus ratusas or chinese fringe tree but this variety is called tokyo tower kind of the appropriate plant for this week with the tokyo olympics going on this is a festive uh chinese fringe tree so it grows very vertical and you can see all the growth that's happened on it since i planted it it was about this tall when i planted it last year and it's you know six and a half feet now there's a few limbs down here at the bottom that i'll eventually take off and clean the trunk up just a bit but it blooms just like regular chinese french tree or slightly different than a native there's a native french tree as well but this one fits my little two tenths of an acre a lot uh because it's up upright and narrow which you know i need on a lot of plants you'll see lots of plants that are selected because they're they're very upright uh and you know very very vertical there's a hydrangea that went in here this is uh this one has not been released it's a hybrid uh hydrangea white flowering hydrangea called princess bride i think this is going to be great selling plant i will eventually do a video on this so be on the lookout for that this is going to be a this is going to be a big introduction coming up from the southern living plant collection the abelia uh right here is called um uh miss lemon uh this is uh i talk about these variegated abelia all the time there's such great landscape additions uh there's a bee sleeping on this one here as well uh there's such great additions to the garden uh but the flowers don't really show up this thing's blooming like mad and i think if you stood back you wouldn't know that it was actually flowering but the bees are all over it they absolutely love the flowers on these abelia this is another thing that's planted here so something looks so something looks the same year round it's just a great little low doming evergreen variegated plant it also has the side benefit of blooming and attracting pollinators to the landscape behind the hydrangea there is uh some sahara rudbeckia or black-eyed susans this one starts out kind of a bright pretty bright yellow color and then it you can get shades of rust colors you will we'll see that when we get to the other side of the redbud over here some of these come back for me and some don't but i can do these from seed every year they're really pretty easy and and bloom in the first season the uh pollinators love the fl open flowers and then the birds i love the seeds on them so i leave the uh leave the flowers on them uh for the birds later in the season i've got giant marigolds uh back here they did from seed i showed some in the last video i've got a rabbit problem and the rabbits are so into these giant marigolds i have no idea but i strip the foliage off the entire bottom and make them kind of make them kind of floppy i just broke i just broke this one you can see how just kind of floppy these are it was laying right here on this uh on this gardenia but you can see out in this space for whatever reason they like to go into that circle and eat the marigolds they haven't really killed hardly any of them they're still there they could come back out of it if i can get the rabbit situation under control but they're actually actually spraying a rabbit rabbit spray on them and they still they just can't get enough of these marigolds for some reason i have no idea i have no idea why the gardenia that's in this space is called diamond spire this is an upright narrow growing gardenia buddy lee introduced same person did all the encore azaleas it bloomed heavily in the spring and now here we are in july and you can see uh how many flower buds this thing actually has i'm probably a week away from it being back in full full flower again super interesting foliage super interesting growth habit grows like no other gardenia that i have ever seen so really really interesting of course evergreen and then fragrant flowers as well there's a container kind of hidden back here that uh actually needs a little bit of work it's got some alyssum in it that was done from seed some nasturtiums that were done from seed and it has a variegated boxwood uh marigold is not part of it but it looks kind of nice in the over top of the uh the variegated boxwood this variegated box wood i'm turning into a two ball uh topiary still working on that moving back out here to the bed edge there are several more agapanthus planted in this space i think almost every one of these tour videos has included agapanthus they have lots of different varieties some smaller growing some larger growing some that are barely hardy here and some that are very hearty here but i do love agapanthus the bees you know absolutely love them uh they're constantly they're constantly digging around in them uh there's one uh on that purple flower there pretty much two flies on the top of it as well but uh there's always always always pollinator activity around uh all of these uh agapanthus this uh salvia here is called love and wishes uh it's a kind of a wine color got the beautiful calyxes like i've been talking about the part holds the flower uh this is a hummingbird favorite uh for sure and a bee favorite uh they work this one pretty much all day this variety can get pretty big and it's uh likely an annual here for me but they're worth buying um you know i can generally speaking get one of these for four or five dollars and nothing's going to outperform it during the summer time this thing will just it never stops flowering through the entire summer perhaps the biggest performer uh in the garden um kind of just planted these for the first time mid to late summer last year and then um kind of had to seek them out this season this is summer jules white and summer jules pink salvia and you can see from this video that in my my question and answer videos i've been putting the chair right here just so people could see all of this action behind me uh this thing just grows like crazy you can cut these in half once every two weeks if you want to uh and uh they just keep coming back out of it keep flowering keep flowering and the bees just go crazy and it's pretty much sun up the sun down it almost looks like these are just moving uh there's so many bees on them uh all day long which is just kind of fun to watch this is a great little spot in the garden just to come and just and just watch but those are uh summer jewels white and summer jewels pink let's see behind it there is a container a low container that has mint in it so i do i am growing some mint but i keep it in a container it's not really decorative in any way so it's just kind of hidden back there but if i want mint um it is here but again don't put your mint in the ground because it will uh it'll go crazy behind the summer jewels salvia are some everillo carrocks this gold um grass i've got a few weeds i got a few weeds here that have popped up in this we'll get take care of that while we're filming uh there's three everillo carex uh just beautiful um gold additions once the salvia dies back to the ground in the fall these will be the winter standout in the garden there's a verbena bonariensis here this one was done from seed last year and but it's a big performer in the garden gets powdery mildew down in the middle of it it just does uh i don't care uh never stops blooming the pollinators are on it all day long the hummingbirds come and sample the flowers as the seed matures on it i've got i got gold finches taking the seed so a plant that's just kind of offering something all day long there is a very buried uh a very buried laura petalum back here again this will be another winter standout uh in the landscape this is purple daydream i gotta be on that here uh a lower petal called purple daydream it's a dwarf only gets about two feet tall but about as wide as you'll ever want it to get again it's going to look great in my winter garden with some pins he's planted in front of it for now it's taken second fiddle to this uh this stand of uh of salvia let's see what else we got probably one of my top questions on this channel is if i have this red salvia behind me in any video it's what's that red plant what's that red plant this is saucy red salvia this is a southern living plant collection one definitely um most likely an annual marginally hardy here in my area but i'm just going to treat it as an annual try to find it each season again it's a southern living plant collection one it blooms this bright red all season long and it's never a time that hummingbirds not coming over here and uh and uh other than when i'm out here disturbing them uh and the bees are on them all day long the celosia that's planted around the edge is that fresh look celosia and this was a mix it's got the orange and the yellow and that reddish color those are got there's hardly anything easier and again the bees absolutely love love that celosia there's some spilanthes in this spot this is a uh some people call these toothache plants a great performer in the garden really i actually i got these by accident i mean i knew what they were but i didn't i don't know that i meant to put them on the cart but they've looked they've done they performed great in the garden there's some medicinal purpose for that plant in india i believe but just a great flowering addition in the garden and then there's some kufia planted out here on the edge these are mainly here for the for the hummingbirds again i think there's four or five varieties of kofi in the landscape this year but these will perform great right up through october um and uh right up until the hummingbirds are leaving so i slid a little further back in the bed and i'm going to wrap the video up right here with these last five or six things one thing i'd like to point out is there's a celosia in this spot that is a volunteer these things will seed themselves just letting you know if you use celosia it will return the next year and i've got it where it's come up in a few spots and i've left it in other spots where i've uh where i've pulled it out like it was a weed but sometimes it comes up in just the perfect spot that one probably not so much it'll it'll end up being eliminated but in the front garden space i've got several that are just going you know they came up they came up on their own they look great this shrub in front of me is called um this is a laura petalum this is a green foliage lore petal and most of the lord petulum uh the other two varieties that you've seen in the landscape are have purple leaves this one has green leaves and it has white flowers and it's a dwarf this is a dwarf white flowering larapetalum again it's called emerald snow it's actually about to get a few flowers on it it actually has one that's um kinda open there it's a that's just kind of a small version of a flower on these uh they have those uh frilly flowers that uh you know are typical to all laura petalum but they're white on a green plant again this is one of those things that's in the landscape to make sure that in the winter time it looks like something out here there's butterfly weed planted in several places i had it in the front yard i've got it here i've got them behind me in with more flowers on them this one's butted back up it's got the seed pods here uh there's no more life that you can invite into your garden uh than using uh butterfly weed you get the pollinators you get um you know you'll eventually i'll eventually have the monarch butterflies on here there's just so much life that you bring into a garden um with uh any uh with the sclepius this is a sclepious tuberosa there's a lantana planted here that's called ham and eggs this one will go absolutely wild in a single season i'll have to cut it a couple times before the end of the season but uh nothing blooms more or heavier than this one this one is considered hardy in my area but sometimes they don't come back uh in the first year if it comes back for the first time uh it'll always come back that's what i've always found with these uh marginal uh lantana if i can get them back one time they'll come back every year there's more of the koofia planted uh in a spot here that little corner just kind of repeats itself um from the koofia to the uh uh spilanthes um to the um celosia and then um again back to the splenthes and and the koofia um that's how that that that's how that corner is supposed to be last plant i'll point out you know is this dwarf pitosporum which is doing exactly what i wanted it to do in this space which was again give me something uh low compact evergreen and unchanging this one will flower in the spring when it matures a little bit the dwarfs pitosporum are a little slower to to flower or present splat flowers they are fragrant again not really growing it for the fragrant flowers that they get just this perfect little low dome in the midst of all the other chaos that is uh that is this bed honestly i'm going to pick up and head this direction in the next video and along the back path and i don't think i've really ever shown the back path before it's really the most incomplete area of the landscape but we'll see it in the next video thank you guys for following along with these don't forget to subscribe to the channel and again i put all of these videos into a playlist if you want to go back and catch up thanks for watching

Channel: HortTube with Jim Putnam

Views: 19,042

Rating: 4.9654841 out of 5

Keywords: gardening inspiration, garden design, pollinator garden, garden tour, honey bee, pollinator plants, garden tours, pollinator garden design, pollinator garden tour, beneficial insects

Id: O5vFuXAsFJ8

Length: 21min 50sec (1310 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 29 2021