Hillside Beauty 🌱 The Garden of Ellie Gilbert: 2021 Reader Garden Award Winner 🌱 Talk & Tour

[Music] it's a beautiful morning here in plymouth massachusetts and i have the great pleasure of being here with ellie gilbert and she's going to tell us about how she established this really really just pretty garden here hi ellie hi thanks for having us here so beautiful i'm glad you came i'm delighted to be able to show you what i've done with my garden we came here in about 2001 in a newly built house this backyard was a virtual sand pit it was nothing but sand a steep and featureless hill nothing on it just a couple of scrub pines down there in the in the distance and so we decided to start by building a patio my husband's the hardscape man he put in the patio and then i started putting some plants around it and it kept growing and growing of course i love gardening so it was a pleasure to be working out here and developing all of this um but then but there was still the hillside there's still the hill that's right and i knew something had to be done with that because i was really concerned about erosion oh right yeah it was so steep and so sandy so i started by um this was an undeveloped area so there were a lot of woods around and there were birch saplings growing all through the woods and i dug up several of them and i knew because they had a very widespread root system that may might help hold the hill oh right so i planted several of them at the top of the hill and they probably were only maybe two three feet tall at the time and now look at and now look at them right this is 18 20 years later they've really gotten huge it's a great backbone for the garden and i love birches yeah yeah all year round yeah they have something to offer yep they're really pretty so the birches were first they were first and then i added the uh junipers because i knew they also would be good ground cover and help hold the hill and just kept there's my friend again the little rabbit not my friend anymore this summer they really felt bad but anyway they um they started holding the hill and uh and then i began using some of the same plants i had here in the patio on the hill garden and i wanted to keep some symmetry between the two gardens so you've got some repetition and yeah we have these uh so these ground covered geraniums right those are geranium carmina and um and they do so well yeah they do they spread and they last quite a while they bloom for maybe three four weeks oh wow yeah so that's that's really nice and i just they're they're so tidy and their leaves are compact and it's just it's just a nice it's perfect on this hillside and in the in the border over on the other side as well it's really pretty i like the repetition as i said yeah well i tried to do that that was part of my design was to um establish a pattern of plants and then repeat it all along the hill so that it would give us sort of a sense of rhythm it's really good and the lines and the curves and the curves i'm all about soft flowing curves no rectangles or sharp angles it doesn't appeal to me it's just really a comfortable pleasant place to walk through yeah and uh so the other thing that you mentioned to me a little bit ago was the steps on the hillside yes and so those were kind of also part of your husband's project right right we unearthed a bunch of stones when we were trying to build the patio and plant for some of these shrubs and so we kept them in a pile on the top and because the hill is so steep it wasn't easy to get up there just to do anything so he started by building the stone steps and then that was the first place i started putting in some shrubs and perennials on either side of it well i love the way they're sort of just nestled into the plants on the outside it's a really really pretty look uh so what's the secret to gardening and sand what's your that's your secret to gardening compost lots and lots of compost because it's wonderful drainage but there's not much nourishment in the sand so my husband built me a compost bin and that was one of the first things he put in when we moved here because he knew i would be gardening smart and uh and so i had always a source of uh materials and everything i planted i had to build a hole that was much bigger than i would normally have fill it with as much compost as i could so that the roots had something to grab onto yeah and then so do you feed what's your feeding look like is the car i use no i i do a top dressing of compost around a lot of things but i do use an organic fertilizer um okay and uh once a year once a year in the spring just one feeding a granular just sprinkle it around sprinkle it around well everything seems to be pretty happy with that program yeah luckily yeah this has been a good year after the garden has it oh good there have been years that i don't know something is always a banner year for a plant right this year it was the the lilacs and the roses and it looks like this year my hostas not my hostas my hydrangeas are going to do well yeah they look they look we're a little before hydrangea seasoning right but i see yeah that's gonna be a good summer um and uh so then in addition to your patio garden and your hillside you also have a shade garden up at the top at the top of the hill right let's go take a look up there okay so these are the steps we were just talking about right right i just love them they're built in so nicely to the hillside and yeah it's just well my husband asked for that specifically he said i really want you to plant some things that'll sort of drape over the edges because they do have sort of a box like um when they were warm when they were new yeah right and now they just look like they've been here for been forever exactly yeah it's really nice yeah and so these spireas are blooming now yes is it gold flame gold flame and when they first start to leaf out they are a fireball they have these red orange gold leaves that eventually turn a nice soft green and then in june i'll come these purple blossoms they're perfect yeah they look terrific yeah this hillside and i like the the repetition that you have down though as you look down the yeah purple and pink those are my colors so you add soft colors as a matter of fact you even if you go in my closet you'll see lots of pinks and purples that seems to be a color that i really love blue oh yeah so soft and they go it all goes with the house so well and the style um the style here yeah and then you have some pops of yellow with your uh yeah well sometimes you know those those were a gift from a neighbor we did a little exchange of plants and it's an evening primrose and it it's kind of a cheerful color i think it's especially by the green door over there it's it's really a nice pop of color um and so and as the season progresses so we start the year with pinks and purple purples right and around about july as those sort of go by out come the shasta daisies the white my blue hydrangeas um your choreography is more yellow uh-huh and then some day lilies and daylilies right exactly yeah it's really uh really you know i did plant with the idea that something just something would be in bloom all season long and it goes all the way into october or late october is there a lot of sedums a lot of ornamental grasses zebra grass in the patio right penstemon here on the hill that's very sweet um well it's so well designed and what is what a smart design so you were also telling me about um how you plan for the year and you start a list i start a list i'm already into my plans for 2022. yeah i uh so really organized and uh thoughtful in your design at my age i have to keep notes i can't remember from one week to the other what my plans were so your great organization and uh careful planning really shows here yeah thank you this is a great view of the rest of the garden from up here oh yeah so pretty yeah and uh so now you have your shade garden up here right we had all of these oaks these were here um okay and they do provide an awful lot of shade yeah so i decided that well the right place right plant in the right place would be shade plants so uh so you've got some hostas lots of a still bees hooker painted fern autumn fern just a mix of some little shade loving and some little roti little uh azaleas yeah nice oh so pretty and so what are some of the challenges that you face up here besides sand besides sand yeah the same thing with that everything had to be planted in lots of compost my other challenge is the fact that our irrigation system waters the lawn and but it only reaches the crest of the hill which is not quite not quite enough exactly so when these you know we're going through a dry spell i have to lug a hose or watering cans and do all of this by hand to the top yeah yeah so that's that's something so um this garden is just meticulously taken care of i can tell what's what's your routine for that well in the spring i hand edge all of the garden and then we apply mulch we usually get about five six yards of mulch each year okay because i do have gardens all around the side of the house and an island garden out front so it takes a lot of mulch but a good layer of mulch really helps keep the weeds down and and so it's just a matter of every morning i take a stroll through pick up anything that's popping up that shouldn't be there right and uh that kind of keeps it manageable yeah you know right you never went exactly exactly just spend an hour or two a day in maintenance just strolling through and enjoying it and yeah and that is my favorite time of the day is in the morning i usually take a walk through and and it's so peaceful you know you hear the birds chirping the light and the birds oh yeah it really is just such a great view of the garden from up here yeah that's exactly why we put that bench here so that we could sit down and take a look smart and actually it's a place where i sit down and say oh i think i need to move that and i need to move those you're developing your to-do list from up here exactly that's good well now i want to try the bench you notice the uh the fox gloves from up here that i hadn't noticed so much from down below yeah do those reseed for you or yeah do you no no once they're there i uh i make sure that i don't mulch around anything that i want to reseed oh okay so of course they're biennial so whatever is falling this year won't bloom until another year from now right but um there's always some some little rosettes that are developing nice and so you have the fox glove and the uh the likeness or the the campion the rose campions and i also i have forget-me-nots that reseed heavily so i always make sure that where they are i don't put a heavy layer of mulch so that the seeds have a chance to pop up again makes sense well ellie this has been just delightful oh i have i'm so delighted you came i love to share my garden with people oh it's so beautiful and you're so interesting to talk to we could sit here all day thank you so much okay thank you [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] hi i'm jack from garden gate magazine i hope you enjoyed our video be sure to check out our youtube channel and press the bell to get notified each time we upload a new video you'll get content with useful gardening tips design ideas and how-to help for all levels of gardeners follow us on all our social platforms and visit our shop see the list below thanks for watching

Channel: Garden Gate Magazine

Views: 160,194

Keywords: garden, gardens, flowers, blooms, nature, backyard, plants, planting

Id: QsT55lLj_AI

Length: 13min 35sec (815 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 01 2021