Plants I grew: What worked, what didn't

oh hi hey this video was sponsored by squarespace thanks squarespace hi everyone so one of the things that i do every year not necessarily on paper but at least sort of mentally is go through what worked in the garden the year before and what didn't so that i have a better idea of what things i want to repeat or what things need a little bit of attention i need to take a different look at so i thought instead of just sort of letting this roll around in my brain i would spew it out to the camera and share with you some of my thoughts specifically on some of the plants that i grew for the first time this year and some of the plants and combinations that were new or different or interesting to me for some reason because i thought it might be helpful to you and i do get questions all the time of what did you think about explant so i'm gonna start with senecio angel wings this was a major feature in my garden this year i bought maybe 15 of them 12 of them something like that it's not an inexpensive plant it is a form of dusty miller with these great broad leaves that are almost white like gray to white they they are truly white or gray flowers or leaves they have hardly any green to them so they are really a statement now i planted these both in a section of the circle garden as well as in the dahlia border right along the front of the house they ended up doing very very well for me in the circle garden that part of the circle garden worked out really well and i was very happy with how that went and actually that senecio angel wings i think it's hearty to zone seven um it put up it looked good for a very long time it's probably just within the past couple of weeks that it really just sort of pooped out and froze out so it's interesting to me so if you are in a little bit warmer zone that might be something to really think about because you might be able to keep over winter that right in the ground maybe i love the plant i would be happy to grow it again i don't think i gave it the best shot where it was um you might be better in a container for me i don't know we'll see it's also not dissimilar to one of my favorite plants that i grow from seed area with it which is salvia argentia in that that also has kind of a big bold silvery leaf although that is more on the green side sort of sage green side than the cenicio is so i see a lot of a little bit of overlap in how i might be able to use those in my garden and certainly growing the salvia argentia from seed is a much less expensive option than buying those which were i mean most places were selling those for about 12 bucks a piece it was an investment the next plant as long as i'm thinking about the circle garden that kind of comes to mind is that in one of those sections of the circle garden and i'll just back up briefly to remind you if you guys haven't seen me plant up the circle garden before is i've essentially broken that circle garden into quadrants and each quadrant is broken into three sections so there are 12 that's how you do the math there are 12 sections in that garden and i try to mass plant those sections with either one plant or a combination of a couple of plants that tie in together for a bolder look and one of those sections i tried this year i planted some calendula and i forget which one it was it was one of the more pastel looking ones it didn't work out great kalenja is such a beautiful flower but i think it was not well suited to a more refined area i mean kalanchoe is a little it's a little out there you know it wants to look a little wild it seems like it should be it didn't really bloom super well for me it was very hard to it was kind of floppy it didn't sort of stay i didn't really stay on top of the dead heading with it because it was hard to get in there so i won't do that again i mean calendula is great it just wasn't the right application for it at all the next one that was new for me last year was this plant jewels of opar i planted that because i saw it everywhere at longwood gardens when i went there in 2019 and uh jewels of oakbar is so cool it's uh like a succulent it's got these succulent leaves on it that are chartreuse and it puts up these wiry little stems with tiny tiny tiny little flowers on that are kind of red and pink and purplish they almost look like little peppercorns on the end of a tiny little wire and i had been told ahead of time that once you plant jewels of opar you will always have jules vulpar because apparently it is a heavy reseeder and i knew that going into it i was okay with that so i grew it i actually started it inside in cells planted it out it was so great i loved it i also had that in a section of the um of the circle garden and it worked that worked out really well there it just took a little bit to get going at once i think it wants a lot of heat and of course we have such cool summers here that it takes a while to get to that heat but i kind of sprinkle it all over the garden i will not be planting more this year because i'm assuming it will reseed for me um so we'll see how the reseeding goes but i thought that was a charming little plant to add to the garden and low growing so you don't have to worry about it taking over somewhere then on the not so great side i planted a ton of great quaking grass which is a brisa maxima and i started that from seed as well and planted that out and it didn't do great in the ground at all for me in one spot first of all where it grew i loved how it looked it's got these knotting little heads i am a sucker for movement in the garden and i just love that sort of playful knotting thing well for one thing the rabbits loved it they just decimated the stuff that i grew right in front and center of the patio garden which was a bummer because i kind of had that hole there for the rest of the year and i tried to fill it in with various things but it was kind of always there and then in another spot i grew it was over by the garage i like to line a little bit of the path with the same thing over by the garage so i did that there and it didn't do well it didn't get enough water over there i don't water that area really at all it's kind of you're on your own over there and i think it got particularly dry along the path there so it just sort of dried out quickly but i kind of liked the dried stems i thought it looked kind of nice but it i mean the dried stems were better than looking at nothing i mean even that flower is beautiful grass is even beautiful when it's dry and so i left them and in about october i look down and that whole area is covered with little grass shoots coming up so i think i created a total nightmare for myself i think that thing reseeded even though it didn't do that well i think it reseeded all over the place so i will have to keep an eye out i mean like all over the place so i think i may have created a nightmare for myself with that now i've talked about the pagoda dogwoods that i planted in the driveway containers about a billion times in videos so i'm not going to go into that you guys know that i swapped out roses in those containers for those pagoda dogwoods it was a two thumbs up change looks so good they are they thrived in those containers what i think i might do though is that i've always planted those containers with um a couple of plants that kind of drape and do the whole thing and this past year i did what did i do i did uh variegated licorice plant and something blue i don't remember what it was i think i did the lobelia again it was lobelia and i i do love that combination i think this year i'm going to maybe go just really simple and just plant one flower all in the base i did see somewhere in a british garden where they had planted i think at the base of olive trees it was fleabane which is the short little like daisy type flowers they're not my favorite to me they look they're a little closer to me of looking like weeds in that situation so but i might do something like that like a short little daisy type flower in there or just one mass planting of something in there and keep that really simple because the trees are beautiful enough to stand on their own as far as i'm concerned so speaking of containers uh the garage container this year what i call the trough by the garage was even though the main plant in it did not perform for me which was sis discolor that's often called rex begonia vine that's this beautiful shade loving vine with these great leaves on it that are like purple and silver and they're crazy but the rest of the container was the best as far as i'm concerned the best that container has ever looked so i used in there i used plectranthus and the one i used was called longwood silver i have grown one called silver shield before silver shield is far more common at least in my opinion and to me i saw no difference between longwood silver and silver shield so whatever the difference was it wasn't enough to make me go hunt out long with silver again i'll just do silver shield that plant does so well for me over there it just it's very very good plant and then i just did begonias in there i did three of the bossa nova series of begonias and i think those are uh bolivians begonia boliviances the ones that have kind of pointy flowers um it looked beautiful next the as long as we're on planters i'll finish up the last planter which was the urn in the middle of the garden this is sort of to me the spotlight container of the garden one because that's what we look at all the time but two because it's such a focal point in that garden it's it's big it's tall it stands above i plant it so that whatever's in it grows above everything else in the garden it looks a little out of proportion early in the season before all the plants in that garden get a little taller it does look like a giant pot on top of a stand um but whatever i put up with a little bit of awkwardness and now i've got some alliums that come up in front of it that kind of balance that height a little bit now as you guys probably know that that urn broke so i am on the search for a new planter there and i've got some some good ideas of what's going to happen there probably going to get a bigger one which means more plants and i loved that combination last year um so that was a tropicana canna in there actually two that i grew in a separate nursery pot and then sunk the nursery pot into the container and then planted everything else and then uh transcendentia uh palada which is the um purple heart around that and i did have some ogon grass in there too but it it got eaten by the purple hearts so that was a waste of waste of money such pretty grass too so what i loved about it is that it was super simple and so i think the thing i learned from that container this year was to that especially if you're going to put that container in what is a very busy part of the garden because that garden is part of the garden that i fill up with all kinds of dahlias and there's other things growing in there it's it's busy it is not it is a riot of color and a and highly textured to the point where it's too much i mean like we're definitely walking the line there so having that container ultimately be very simple with just the canna and just the um and just the purple heart was a really good look so i won't do that again because once again i don't want to do the same thing two years in a row but i will keep that in mind and try to keep that container simple because big and simple i think makes a big statement and i think that's what's needed in that garden the last thing i want to touch on is vines i think we're going to be talking a lot about vines this year because once again my love of vines is i find them fascinating to grow and i just get more excited about them every year you put these little seeds in a pot and you kind of nothing much happens nothing much happens and then it gets hot out and they go not like how is a plant growing that much if i was going to stick a camera a longer exposure camera on any plant and make like you know a time lapse video of it growing it would be one of those vines because i swear they can grow like a foot a day it is unbelievable how much they grow so two that stand out for me this year purple hyacinth bean that is a beautiful vine it's also a total beast but that is a beautiful vine i put that in the window box this year lots of people were skeptical about that and i understand that it's a wild and crazy vine it gets big it got wild and crazy and i sort of liked it i mean by the time you get to the end of summer that window box looks like the jungle is attached to the side of my house and i accept that and i'm okay with that but a lot of people thought that that hyacinth beam was just a just a disaster in there i didn't mind it it's such a pretty one the flowers on it are gorgeous and worth they look very sweet ps kind of to me very much worth cutting and doing some of that beautiful um dark purple foliage on that so while i won't be putting that in the window box this year i probably want to give some thought about where i can use that because it's just it's such a good plant and so easy to grow the other one is and let's just say this is an all-star i think i've talked about it already so i won't go into it too much but it's purple belvine and i'm going to give you the botanical name for it because a lot of people are getting confused about it rightfully so because i keep calling it purple belvine so it's rotochitin i am looking at a piece of paper rotochitin astro sanguineus is the botanical name on that it's from mexico it has small leaves these great bell flowers which are very rude for a period of their development it is it's very x-rated um and then they open up to these to these dangling little literally they look like bells they're so cool now i grew those in the containers um on the deck where i have them going up the posts and what they did was they went to the top of the strings i had and then they started coming back down now if i had extended those strings across the pergola it would have followed those strings which is what i should have done but it's good to know when a vine does that because where the purple hyacinth being like went off in search of something to stick on to which was in the in the window box it attached to the rose trellis near it it attached to kind of worked its way up underneath the siding of the house in one spot i mean it was searching for a place to be the purple bell vine went up and when it ran out of somewhere to grab onto it came back down so there was actually like almost like this waterfall effect and that's really cool because that means when you grow it in a container you don't have to worry about it going nuts it's just going to kind of stick to your trellis and really cover it in flowers my understanding is that it wants a little bit of shade and since the one that grew in the shadier part of the deck just as well as or even better maybe as the one that's in a little sunnier spot i would say that bears it out i would really love to grow that in the window box this year i think it's not going to work i think the window box which is south facing high full sun against a white house is probably going to just cook it to death so i as much as i want that to work i'm probably not going to do that we'll have to think about that a little bit in any case i will grow purple belvine for a really long time and i'm sure it'll probably go in these containers again by the deck but that was such a great performer so if you're up for trying something new try that one we might do some videos planting that we'll see but i will just tell you it's one you have to be patient on the germination time on it is on the back of the packet i'm not kidding you anytime between 12 and 40 days so basically you stick it in a pot and then i guess you basically just hope for the best and at some point it pops up i do think it was all of 40 days i remember at some point thinking well that didn't work and then it did and it came up so it's one you gotta put your patience pants on for that one because um it's it could take a while and all those tropical annual vines so most of these annual vines um that will grow from seed and get to become an enormous plant in one season are tropical so keep in mind they don't really start getting going until it gets sunny and or excuse me until it gets really warm my sun helps but they just sort of poke around and kind of suffer a lot of them don't love to be transplanted so what i do because it'd be way too late to start them from seed i think to direct sow them into pots and that wouldn't work with as much as i pack pots full of things so i do plant them in at least four inch pots not like a little cell i plant them in like at least four inch pots hopefully a big enough pot that they can live in there until they get transplanted to wherever they're going okay so that is basically all the new stuff or some of the sort of notable things that are going through my head right now as i'm planning out what goes in this year's garden of course i've got seed catalogs coming in like crazy plant catalogs coming in from crazy like crazy and it helps me a lot to just sort of do a little bit of an analysis of how things work last year before i go nuts and just buy all the things and go well what am i going to do now so a quick shout out to the sponsor of this video and that is squarespace squarespace gives people a really beautiful and powerful online platform where you can create your own website and i have in fact created a website on squarespace uh three or so years ago when mr much more patience started his own business i hopped onto squarespace and created his business website for him which i will tell you was key because we got that up and running very quickly it was very easy to do and it gave him a professional online 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Channel: The Impatient Gardener

Views: 52,188

Keywords: squarespace, plants, success, gardening, purple bell vine, calendula, senecio angel wings, gardens, perennials, container gardening, the impatient gardener

Id: wyjgBmgRShk

Length: 19min 29sec (1169 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 13 2021