Late Spring Shade Garden Tour // Best Hostas // Best Plants For Shade

[Music] [Music] all right so it's june 1st and i thought i'd give you guys a little bit of an in-depth tour of my shade garden a little update to my other shade garden video which was pretty popular but i'm going to go through a lot of the haases i have the names and some hosta shade plant companions so first i wanted to start with my shade garden which is under planted um under a crab apple tree and it is a pretty mature a crab apple tree and it also has an oak tree that's got to be at least 25 feet tall um farther up so these plants do really amazingly well underneath them there's no real competition for roots or um any i don't know there's no real drawback except that the crab apple flowers and drops its flowers and they get stuck in my hosta leaves so i'm literally all season long i'm pulling these like clumps of dead crab apple flowers out of them and trying to clean up the garden but you'll see as we go through but anyway first thing i want to start off is on the corner here i have japanese hikoni grass it's just an all green variety great texture plant this is like great for dry shade this is about as big as it gets this is a mature clump um and i am able to divide off and slice off if i need to in the spring if it gets out of control or if it just gets too big for its spot but that is a great shade plant does tolerate a little bit of sun but loves the shade uh moving back this giant this has been in the garden since i put this shade garden in it's um hosta saggy and this is what i mean about the crab apple things it's so annoying they clog up the leaves but this has gotten huge it's beautiful it's tall it's got to be three feet tall and probably a good four feet wide if i'm any good at measuring or estimating but it is such a beautiful plant and i love that it's upright it's kind of an upright vase shaped pasta in the front this is just sort of a filler plant but it's called longwort and you guys are probably familiar with this variety it has the um this leaf and it has you know yellow or i'm sorry not yellow blue and pink flowers but this one is opal splash it's a little more tidy and less invasive than that traditional variety but it's beautiful and once this has flowered which it's kind of out at the end of its life i'm going to shear it back and then it'll come in and mound up nicely so it'll it'll actually neaten up a little bit as the season goes on this is jack frost brunnera this gets those little blue forget-me-not flowers here's a couple right here it's kind of done blooming but they're so cute and sweet and i love the blue against the silvery pattern leaf this little baby hosta was added it's not a baby but it's a youngin and there's another one here that's similar to it one of those is hosta euros ers i'm not sure which one and i don't know the name of the other one so i apologize for that but in front of it is a gorgeous plant also good for dry shade and i mean we'll tolerate dry shade well has like this pinky bronze new leaf color and it gets these little spider like flowers in the spring so they're just so cute i love the shape of the leaf i love everything about that plant super easy i don't have to do anything to that at all it just does its thing and is happy this hosta stands out pretty well this is hot kiss it's kind of bluish green on the edges has a white little creamy thin line margin creamy yellow center good substance great grower highly recommend that one that is a looker of a hosta in the back i have more filler hostas i have so sweet which the flowers are fragrant so i have three filler hostas in the back one two three and an ark and those the hummingbird loves the flowers on those that's all i can say um paul's glory is one layer in front of that the darker green corrugated pasta and then i have three sections of gold standard another great filler brightener like you know that kind of limey green it really helps the shade garden like stand out and contrast between normal green shade plants so i like that these have different shades and textures and they just look and combine really well a good blue hosta is halcyon which is here this you know these under here don't get very much sun at all and they hold that blue color especially halcyon they hold that blue color really well uh a slow grower but a beautiful hosta is andrew this one i love this it reminds me of like jeans for some reason like that color the blue and the green i don't know why that comes to my brain but anyway it's a beautiful hosta slow as molasses but you know what these are quite a few years old they still some of them only have one eye or two eyes but they're starting to get larger leaves on them so i'm hopeful i'm not giving up on that because i love that hosta and japanese painted ferns another good companion plant good for texture good to catch crabapple flowers when they die and drop but beautiful has pink veining in some of them let's see what else and then more as we move up i repeated hakone grass only this time in gold this is all gold and it's pretty and i don't know about you guys but i love like this is like a soft plant and it's got good texture it's like anybody else like pet their plants that make me weird i'm a pansy you want to pet me later yeah sure um back there is um dreamweaver that's another large hosta these are kind of two-year-old plants but they have a really cool center like that streaky yellow center and those will fill out really well and i have a pierce here this was a gift from a friend who tried to grow it in her yard and it kind of pouted it wasn't really happy but for some reason is loving that spot so i'm gonna cross my fingers that i do well with it uh the gold leaf bleeding heart i love bleeding hearts they always spread i'm sure if you're familiar with the traditional ones or even this one uh i had one clump itself sewed a second clump and now it's getting really wide and obnoxious so i do have to like at some point start corralling this one because it's like wanting to take over but it is pretty in the spring it's good early color um tolerates sun shade and filtered light so that's really good and you still get a good amount of flowers a couple other hostas so we have some minis down here dragon tails which is sort of being shaded i have to move him i think he needs a better spot but he's cute there's a couple minis in here uh one is called teaspoon because it looks like teaspoons how appropriate and then sun mouse and this is limey i'm not sure what the name of this one is but it's cute this one is luna moff that's a really pretty one and that kind of gets very like droopy elongated leaves yeah um it's kind of changed a little bit over the years i don't know if it's just becoming mature or not but anyway that's a beautiful pasta orange marmalade here and then hosta sting is this one this was a fairly new addition this may be two years old also but it has like the sting in the center it kind of looks like has a cool pattern i guess awful lot of hostas how do you remember all the names to these i don't know so you know some of them are really standouts like when i see them i love them and i just remember the name and other ones you know like these are just you know just mini greens i have no idea what their names are so uh but some of these were ones that i purchased recently so gray ghost in the front this comes up all creamy yellow and then it has this cool like mirage of yellow and green that it changes to and it colors up for the season so i really like the name of that one i like the way that it comes out in the spring and then it changes i have a streaky hosta i have no idea what the name is streaky hassa and then autumn frost is pretty popular this one is beautiful has really good substance on the leaves um saying almost fire this came out with a bang and is not really happy we had three weeks of drought so it kind of suffered a little bit but it's now putting up new leaves and greening out a little bit so i hope this kind of gets some dim and vigor at some point i have no idea what the name of this hosta is but these blue ones these are amazing i love these so hosta elegans this is plain old elegance this thing gets super wide fills in this whole area all the way to that hosta um and we did have a drought so there i think it's a little behind and filling out but now we've been making up for it because we have we've had rain for quite a bit about a week now so it's starting to fill out and then this guy which i thought was another elegance is actually not the leaves are entirely different it's getting larger and the leaves are so much bigger than elegance so i'm excited to find out what this is are you sure that's not the same i am positive i actually thought they were in the beginning but look at the side these leaves are massive and they're in the same garden same spot it has to be honey stop it it looks just like the other one that's a bad joke i thought you were being serious and you're joking but anyway yes they look similar but they're this one is huge like the leaves are just getting it's competing for like first prize for biggest hosta in this garden i know it um what else i can show you more coney grass this is all gold again beautiful i love the texture we have painted ferns back here we have um a couple more hosta see these are like large hostas back there they're actually starting to vase up and get mature sized but i don't know what the names are i know june is underneath the tree peony back there i kind of stuck a a june in there and it's right there that's june but anyway june's pretty popular and it's a it should be because it's a standout hosta i love it what about my rhododendron back there i notice you don't like to point that out well i do but that's beautiful um this is the first year it's bloomed so dear deer usually eat the buds on it and it looks sickly and bare by the time spring comes this is the first year we fenced it in over winter and actually saved the buds even though the deer ate the leaves we actually had the buds remain so i'm excited about that how come the deer don't like look at this shade garden as a salad bar um they do the problem is well the thing is if i keep up on spraying it with that deer fence um it smells like putrefied egg it's disgusting so it smells like the septic system yeah it's horrible so honestly as long as i keep up on the spray they generally avoid it because if you ever stuck your nose on it well you know when i'm spraying it's horrible for like three hours and then it like dries but the smell is still on there even if we can't smell it it's great it's great to look at these beautiful flowers and then take a deep breath and be like yes you don't want to be out here when it when your spraying is for sure anyway but more more shade plants so this is hookura this comes in many colors people i mean they've hybridized this the heck out of this plant um but this is a pretty good one i think this one is cinnabar or circus one of those do have tomato plants growing in my hookura because our pug likes to go to the bathroom on top of my plants and he eats tomatoes out of my garden so i have tons of we can use he's doing his part yeah he's annoying but anyway so more more hookura this one look at the difference in the leaves so this is kind of like rounded um leaves and this is more star-shaped and purple there's so many varieties great for shade although i will say some varieties are a little less hearty than others i've sort of i don't know experimented with different varieties and purchased varieties that i love and not all of them come back reliably i've had a hard time with a few of them but i know now which ones will reliably come back and they sort of will get the spots in my shade garden because why waste money every year trying new ones if they don't come back it's a little frustrating but anyway this side gets a little more sun than the right side and i had we did a little bit of a revamp last year because of that because we had a big oak tree come down on the hill so it opened up a lot of sunlight but this plant can go in sun or shade it's a russian comfrey and it's not invasive this one is called axminster gold it's a clump forming one gets these cute little pink flowers in the spring and then when these stalks and flowers like start to go away and they're done blooming i'll cut these stalks to the ground and it'll mound out again like a hosta so it's not in the best spot because it's blocking the regular right now which is in full bloom i need to sort of move that but for now it's going to stay cause it's pretty and it's in flowers it's russian you said it's a russian country maybe if you gave it some vodka die back or something oh i'm sure or or it would end up sending out runner roots everywhere and i'd have this thing overtaking my garden never know all right so the woodeel is in bloom it's got a lot of buds on it this year it's obviously gotten quite a bit more sun than usual because it doesn't really flower that much but last year it got all extra sun because of the lack of tree shade so it's happy there i do have some ruby spiders um those are the day lilies in my sun garden which i adore those should provide some bright red pop of color sometime in june july i have a clump of june hostas here i have some coneflowers that i grew from seed that you know the june is kind of overshadowing they have to move them a little bit and a hydrangea so if you guys remember i said this could be the perfect season because in the um usually in new york it blooms on old wood so all of these little buds generally start to come out and then we get late frost and it dies like the blood dies so we don't get any of the bloom this year look we have clusters and clusters of flowers they're coming we had a late frost it wasn't like terrible but it was a frost and this one none of the buds died back so i don't really know how i got lucky but this is the first time that any of my big leaf or mop head hydrangeas are going to bloom on old wood so i'm super excited this year about that i have a ruby spice back here this sort of produces more um flowers in the fall but it gets pink plumes in there they smell good but there's my ruby spice this is the maple does anybody else like pet their plants i have this like fetish especially with the grasses and anything that's like lacy and soft this is um a weeping japanese maple and actually brian purchased this guy in the sick bay at one of the local nurseries and he wasn't he had like a little a little head like this and now he's just beautiful it's taken quite a few years but he's finally starting to weep um back here i added a this is an azalea that blooms later in june um i can't remember the name of this guy but this is supposed to have white blooms later in the season instead of blooming when normal azaleas bloom the iris are obviously happy i didn't even know these were blooming isn't this terrible this is why you have to walk around your entire garden um if you have such a big one but these are so pretty these are japanese iris uh beautiful and do americans have any plants i know it seems like a lot of a lot of things are like japanese or something um shade plants i i don't know japan has a lot of shade maybe i don't know but anyway so this guy these are baptisia or false indigo and they get huge stalks of flowers very cottagey looking which i love um it's got good blooms i'm not sure why this section it doesn't have a lot of bloom but this section does kind of weird right i i don't things things always make me go hmm but that's one of them this is another plethora and you know this one's putting out new growth but it's kind of not doing all that great it doesn't feel out well and i think it doesn't get a ton of sun but peony buzz this is another one so this is another one of those big mop head hydrangeas and look i have clusters of flowers on the old wood so i'm just i'm thrilled that never happens and i said this might be the year that i actually get if we have a normal spring we might actually get some blooms on these things so i'm excited uh this is a wigila called tuxedo it's got dark foliage and then beautiful white flowers and actually before the flowers open they're pale yellow which is really cool so it's kind of like you know black and white it's called tuxedo yeah now is that it for tuxedo is it done um this like these blooms what happened is the deer ate this so the deer ate the most of the blooms and this was planted last year so it's a little small but this will start to fill out i'll have to like edge out a little bit more but did we get our deposit back after the deer ate the tuxedo no no definitely not um columbine this is a great flower to just let it do its thing it's got the prettiest i don't you know they kind of have nodding flowers but they have beautiful flowers and i have purple ones down here those look like hummingbird they're so cute yes and um you know what they just kind of do their thing and um spread wherever they want not a ton but they have this section here and it's always like a little bit of color back there and i love the shape of the flower this is the variegated dogwood praying hands it's overwintered in a pot um el nino looks good although i still have to steal your steel my third clump of el nino back out of that shade garden that you took um from me and curly fries looks happy although he's got a lot of stuff in there he's got a lot of junk in the trunk down here so i need to spend a day grooming my my shade garden but yeah so other than that i mean this still be these all have flowers on them they're coming this is kind of a plain jane green hosta so maybe i move one of the gold leaf bleeding hearts back here i don't know i gotta clean that up a little it's driving me crazy but here's maura still be and then the so sweet so that is like sort of a rundown of everything in here how it does you know the left side of the garden definitely gets um less sun and the right side obviously has more flowering things this year because we lost that oak tree but um i revamped it a little bit for more a little bit more sun-loving things and that's what happens you have to kind of move and navigate your surroundings and your climate and your little eco systems in your own gardens and figure out what works where and uh but yeah so it's shaping up nice and i can't wait to do another tour in like a month to show sort of what else is going on anyway i hope you guys enjoyed this if you have questions on any of the plants or i ramble too fast please um message me in the comments and i'll try to get back to you as quick as i can and yeah i hope you enjoyed the tour hasta la vista baby [Music] you

Channel: Guiding Green Thumbs

Views: 74,745

Keywords: Shade garden ideas, Garden Answers, Planting a Hosta Garden, Hosta plants, Shade garden plants, Best perennial shade plants, Garden advice, Gardening ideas, Shade-Loving Plants, Planting ideas, Garden coach, Perennial garden designs, Planting Perrenials, Perennials Every Garden Should Have, Succulent planters, End of May Garden Tour, Garden tours

Id: AfbdJSV_j4k

Length: 21min 21sec (1281 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 05 2021