Planting a Shady Border! 💚🌿💚 // Garden Answer

hey guys how's it going so this morning we're out working in the back formal garden uh it's a little bit breezy out which is a really welcome change because it's still getting so hot i am going to be planting today which is not the best thing to do when it gets so hot outside but we're going to be working in the shade and planting shade loving plants as point of reference this is where we're working back where the boxwood hedge and the urns are we just did some maintenance back here in a video last week and we are going to be planting right under here i've really not touched this area since we moved in you can tell there's just blank spots and i don't necessarily want to grow anything super tall because the neighbors have a nice yard it's kind of a borrowed view honestly a borrowed landscape rather and i like being able to see so i don't really want to block it off but i would like to plant some things that like the shade because this is pretty much what this area looks like all the time we've got a sensation box elder tree which is actually an acer it's in the maple family so that's what's right above it let me back up so you can see it there we go isn't that a nice looking tree really should have more of these like wouldn't it look awesome to have one two three four five i think we're gonna have to get rid of this tree you guys scarlet curls willow it's always full of spider mites every single year it defoliates every summer and then it does push new leaves on those dead looking branches but i don't think i want to keep that around something that has bug issues unless you treat it with a lot of chemical so i think that that one's probably not long for this world but i'm thinking a nice big evergreen right in this section would look really nice anyway the sensation box holders i think they grow 30 to 35 feet tall maybe a 25 foot spread i could be off by you know five feet or so but that's kind of in general what they do this one's at full maturity gorgeous in the fall i can't even i think i've got pictures maybe we can throw one up on the screen if i can find one but they are phenomenal trees not bugged by anything insect wise or disease-wise and then right below it we have irises which somehow these irises which are pure white they're here and here they bloom even though they get like this is the sun they get it's kind of wild to me um so i just try to kind of keep the base of them cleaned up and we cut them back in the fall typically we've got companiola here just kind of a ground cover i mean it's really just kind of not spectacular back here at the moment i planted three bare root panties two of them one of them is getting completely gobbled up two of them came up that's their first year um there's a hearty geranium and ann falcard this is a ground cover something veronica i think and then i'm trying to eradicate that um angelica that's what we cut back in the uh maintenance video just a super beasty plant it's beautiful but it's a beast so hopefully we can reseed some grass right here well hopefully in the end we're gonna make these borders a little bit deeper but that's way out so what i've got are a bunch of hostas different varieties and virginia so all of which have really big bold leaf structure which i think is needed back here we need something that can fill in the area easily that's not fussy because i hardly ever am back here and i don't want to have to be back here that's one thing about what we want to do in terms of redesign we want to create something in this area that makes us want to be back here i mean because right now there's no seating here there's nothing like that so that's something we'll work on developing so anyway i want to put stuff back here that looks pretty we'll fill in that i don't have to fuss with so i'm going to go get all my plants isn't that a gorgeous trailer load and some of these have the potential like i've got some wula la hostas diamond lake like that one i think diamond lake it's 40 some inches wide i think it's four to five feet wide so some of these have potential to get really quite large and i think it's just a really beautiful play on leaf color and texture there are some gold coast hostas that have the bright chartreuse hudson bay have almost like an iridescent blue look to them with the lighter green creamy green center oh there's cheddar hey cheddar hey kitty kitty hey bud the virginia here which is called miss piggy i love it um other than the hard water damage because that's just what happens when we've got them in nursery containers in our greenhouse that's why our drip system is so important to us because this is just what happens so that will cease to happen once they're in the ground and being watered from underneath but i love the leaf structure love it and they do bloom like miss piggy blooms early through mid spring they set up send up stocks with big clusters of bright pink blooms but after that's done you've just got these really thick kind of leathery look at them thick leathery looking leaves they just add such a gorgeous deep green weight cheddar what are you doing bud and this one here miss piggy grows 16 to 18 inches tall and 28 to 32 inch spacing so i mean these also will spread out quite wide and i thought they might make a really beautiful bank right here maybe with some chartreuse colored hostas right behind them i think that could be a really nice look a few of the other things i have in here we've got a wild rose hooker i do have more of these in the greenhouse i'm not actually sure if i want to add a color back here though i kind of like the serene look of just having different shades of green but we'll just see i brought it out here to try it there's some wee hostas right here that have the nice curly leaves uh what other hosta did i not mention i think that's what i've got at the moment the other great things about these plants are how tough they are so i think the hostas are all zone three through nine the virginia is a zone four through nine and uh they're just incredibly low maintenance so hostas the only two things that i do with them well i guess three we do come along in the spring and fertilize them but that's just kind of part of the routine along with everything else we cut them back in the fall and we deadhead them about mid-summer the rest of my hostas are blooming right now some of the blooms i leave up the ones that are really fragrant and some of them i actually deadhead before they i even let them bloom because i don't really care for the blooms on hostas that much and then the virginia is an evergreen i had it in my last garden or it's at least a semi evergreen in the really cold climates you may need to do some cleanup kind of like helleborus you may need to clean them up and possibly cut them back in the early spring and let them push new growth otherwise in more mild climates they may just stay beautiful all winter for you but the only thing other thing we'll do with those is fertilize them in the spring and then deadhead them when they're done blooming like late spring i don't even know how i'm going to lay these out exactly so i'm just going to mess with it and i'll show you before i start planting [Music] all right i think it's going to be so pretty the hard part about planting these types of plants is that i know they get really big so i don't want to overcrowd but at the same time i want to pack the area full so it's gorgeous from day one please tell me i am not the only one who struggles with that so let's take a closer look underneath this tree in this little bump out we've got three gold coast hostas i think that's a really pretty break in the deeper green color so it'll kind of provide that bright pop they grow about 30 inches tall so they'll be my back layer behind our miss piggy virginia which grows 16 to 18 inches tall so i think that'll be a really nice layered look this needs to bump out just a little bit but these plants right here will definitely fill in this area like there will be no room eventually for anything else to space them a little bit better geez so in this long narrow section i've got the bigger hostas toward the back the smaller growing ones toward the front and then i just capped each end with a hooker i tried every other with the hookah and i just am not a fan of that look kind of the checkerboard look i like big drifts of things and then little accents so that's kind of what i came up with now the hostas i have in the back empress wu wu lala diamond lake all get pretty good size so wu lala and empress who want to go three to four feet tall and they'll get about that wide maybe maybe even wider if their conditions are ideal and they're getting enough water diamond light grows about 17 inches tall and three feet wide so i mean knowing that they take years and years to get to that size and a really consistent source of water i can try to keep them on the smaller size by side by just giving them average moisture and so forth um but i don't know i think in the end it's just going to be this mass of bold texture and it's going to be gorgeous so in the center i have the empress wu hosta which i think is the biggest known hosta in the land like on the market as far as i know and then very similar to it are the wu lalas which are kind of the same but they've got variegation so there's one here and one on the other side in between we've got the diamond lakes which have more of in the end like a pointier leaf and they take on more of an icy blue texture or color geez and then we hostas in the front which grow 11 to 18 inches tall they will spread out and they will fill in this whole edge and in the end i'm okay if they're even kind of like coming out from underneath the bigger hostas i think they're a gorgeous gorgeous texture and then over here even though there are some plants there's like a ground cover sedum in here and i don't know how it survives like this is the amount of sun it gets it's like a little bit of dappled through the morning and then shade and somehow it survives i'm actually going to plant hostas right in the middle of the sedum so these are the hudson bay i absolutely love these they're more of a stockier leaf like shorter and more squat and they grow about two feet tall and they'll spread out about two feet so they'll fill in like just be gorgeous right in here right in back i think these are pretty pistachio hookers going to clean those up today too they need a little bit of attention okay i brought the big auger out i'm hopeful that i'm going to be able to dig holes easily underneath these trees i don't know i clearly haven't planted much around them so most of the trees around here they kind of go straight down and i don't have a lot of problems running into roots but these are untested so we're gonna give this a shot and there it is big auger starter fertilizer should be able to whip this out pretty quick [Music] all done and it looks so much better than the nothing that was here i can't wait till next spring because i think once the hostas have a chance to come back with fresh leaves with no hard water damage in fact i had just gone through the greenhouse and cleaned all of the hostas up because they tend to dry out quicker in their containers of course and then they get dry tips and things like that so i can't wait to see them like really nicely shaped because like the wee host a little hedge right up here that one's really small and so until that one kind of catches up with the others it's going to look a little funny also i forgot right in the middle of the day we get a little slice of sun in between these two tree canopies for about an hour so those two or three hostas that get a little bit more sun should be totally fine i also ran drip to the area so i tapped in this back bed has two runs of brown drip tubing that has the emitters every 18 inches i tapped into it with a t right here ran it along the back side of all the virginia and then i popped in with a one gallon per hour emitter and ran an individual tube back to each one of the three hostas that way i didn't have to run another whole run of drip tubing i don't think that would have been necessary so that's how this area is watered and then i mulched on top of it so it looks nice and tidy and then in this area even though there's the two drip tube tubes in this area it's i think still connected to the grass sprinklers that's the only area we haven't been able to separate it yet so this spot actually does not run for very long so i popped an individual emitter in for each one of these plants a one gallon per hour emitter so that each one of these can be watered individually as well as the area around it and i think they'll be very happy with that and then i was going to plant the hudson bay hostas right here and i started to um dig that hole and there's just huge roots i mean you guys know it willows um just yeah i decided just to leave the sedum there it looks peaceful and nice i cleaned up the hookahs just a little bit i mean i could fuss for hours and get every single you know damaged leaf off i think that these aren't receiving quite enough water so that's an area i probably need to run some more drip as well i ended up tucking the hostas down this way right underneath look at this poor grass the elderberry comes out so far it blocks the sprinkler see that so the sprinkler comes this way and then it blocks the water on the other side so this side we need to hand water that's just you know one of the things we should just expand the flower bed anyway i had planted or a dug rather three holes this way and i was going to tuck something behind and then i realized this spot actually gets quite a bit of sun because this isn't you know like a tree hanging over it it'll get shaded a little bit in the afternoon so i ended up doing a little trio of the hudson bays right in there which i think is going to be very sweet a nice little filler in this area and then i can put something else right here and here's how it looks from this side super happy with it you guys it's going to be pretty because i'll have the huge hostas the blue hostas the variegated hostas a little bit of red we get the strappy leaved grass texture with irises back in there and then we get the deep green of the virginia and the bright pop of gold with the coast-to-coast hostas out of all the areas i needed to work on i'm super happy that this is one of them what a great project on a really hot summer day to work in the shade and plant some things that won't shock i don't think too bad just because i'm not exposing them i'm actually putting them in more shade than they were in in the greenhouse because we've got 50 shade cloth in there it's just a very nice diffused sun so it really is protecting to sun to shade plants rather but this is going to be shadier darker than it is in there so i think they're going to be really happy and they're going to have very consistent water in the greenhouse they tend to dry out because you know depending on what time of day we can get in there to water and if it's super windy one day from the next they can they do tend to dry out super excited to show you guys this area as it fills in like next year i think it's going to be awesome with the fresh hostas it's just going to be great anyway thank you guys so much for watching and we will see you in the next video bye

Channel: Garden Answer

Views: 283,535

Keywords: Garden, Answer, Laura, Flower, gardening, gardener, beautiful, succulents, diy, grow, green, Proven, Winners, Fall, Winter, summer, spring, plant, planting, growing, plants, succulent, shrubs, shrub, bush, soil, dirt, earth

Id: MLYGBbfIFmM

Length: 15min 53sec (953 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 10 2021