we may be nearing the end of summer but it is never too early to start thinking
and dreaming about next year's flower garden
stay with me as i walk you through step by step of how to do it
hey friends welcome to gardening with creekside i am jenny and today we are
going to tackle one of my most favorite parts of
gardening dreaming and planning for next year's
garden we are here at our shade garden that we
have been at several times this year already it is
the middle of august things are lush and happy
most things we've had some things that kind of petered out but that's all right
but what we're going to do today is i'm going to walk you through step by step
of how to plan and improve your flower garden
for next year one maybe you're a brand new gardener you've never gone through a
whole year's cycle of gardening or two maybe you are
an experienced gardener and you're just looking for
a few helpful tips and hints for next year
so i am going to walk you through on how to plan
or improve a flower garden for next year now i'm going to go ahead and tell you
that we're going to go through a lot of steps and at the end of this video we're
going to have a lot of great graphics that list all the steps and all
the hints and all the details so make sure
that you watch all the way through because those will be great
screens to do screenshots and add them to your notes
as you're planning your space so one thing that i can really recommend
for you to do is to get a garden journal get a cute little notebook
it can be however it is that you want it to look it could be
just a simple you know spiral bound notebook for school
or it can be a really cute fancy little notebook but i want you to get a garden
journal that you're going to keep with you for
now and hopefully for years to come and in this garden
journal you are going to make notes of ideas and dreams you're going to put
down plants that interest you you're going to
put down oh i'm going to do this in this area or
you can even put in don't do this again so it's just a way
to help you remember things that you want to do in your
garden because i don't know about you but i if i don't write it down
i feel like those things are always circulating in my brain and then
my brain gets all jumbled up and i always forget things so if i write it
down then that way i can just release it i
don't have to try to remember it so step one get a garden journal number
two you need to figure out what is the space
that you are going to be focusing on now of course you can have multiple
spaces but we're just going to pick one space so for example we're here
at the you know shade garden in front of our out right outside of our kitchen
so my space one i can be thinking of my window boxes that could be its own
space that my thought process is going to so i
have the window box here and i have one over there so am i just
thinking about the window boxes or am i just focused on this area here
or is it the whole length of the bed so whatever your space
is maybe it's just a container maybe it's a section of a bed maybe it's a
whole you know new area whatever it is first
define your space two i want you to go through
especially this time of year and i want you to pay very close attention to the
amount of sun that that space gets because the
amount of sun is extremely important when we're
picking out plants for your area it does matter how much
sun you get so as a general rule do you get four
hours or less of sun that's considered shade
do you get four to six hours of sun that's considered part sun part shade or
do you get more than six hours that is considered
full sun because if you were to put a hosta
which is a shade part shade plant typically a shade plant if you were to
put it in a full sun section it is going to fry
and it is going to die i don't care what kind of gardener you
are you could be the most elite gardener ever it's not going to survive
vice versa if you take a full sun plant let's say i
take lantana loves the sun if i stick it in deep shade
it is going to do terrible so there are no bad plants but there is
there is a bad placement of the plants so you need to know your sun
then after you have picked out your space
you know your sun then you are going to look at and figure out what is my goal
with this area do i want to create a perennial
shade garden and then you're going to decide
on some plants that are going to go in there the best way you can do that is
following social media there are tons and tons and tons of ideas out there on
social media pinterest oh my goodness pinterest is
like a black hole for gardeners because you can just type in
shade garden and you get you know 10 000 ideas um go ahead and follow plant
companies proven winters, southern living plants, monrovia there's tons of
different plant companies out there that are
really active on social media that are constantly putting out
plant highlights garden spaces those kinds of things of course
the youtube and there is facebook all sorts of things you can
just go to any of those social medias and start typing in gardening and lots
of ideas will come up when you are there i don't know if you
know this but on social media you can actually save post so
with creekside nursery especially in the winter we do
a ton every day i am doing a post on a a different plant maybe it's an annual
it could be a perennial a shrub whatever you can keep those ideas again
if you cannot remember everything which i don't know
if anybody can remember everything so on facebook you can go and simply
click those three little buttons at the top
and you can save the post instagram there's a little flag
click the little flag and it saves it you can then go and create
boards like little areas like little file folders that you're sending things
maybe it's for window boxes maybe it's a shade perennial maybe it's a container
garden maybe it's full sun you know a pollinator garden so you
can create different folders within that and save
those ideas so when spring comes and you're ready to
actually start buying plants you can go back and pull those up and
look at those so once you get some ideas on the plants
that you want to put in there i would highly recommend maybe you are a
creative genius i personally do not think that in
some areas of my life i am a creative genius but guess what
i have a person in my life that is so in fact when i was planning this bed
last year i called my christine actually i facetimed her and i was like okay
christine there's something going on over here and
i need some help because she has this great artistic eye
you don't the person that you're talking to they don't have to know plants but
they can say you know what you need something tall over here or you
got a lot of green going on i need something
maybe a dark like a dark purple or you need some white or you need a lime green
you need some sort of color contrast or all of your leaves are the exact same
shape you need something with a different texture
so when you can consult your creative artistic
stylish friend they can help you come up with some ideas
of the different elements in a bed because as you can see
what makes a bed so interesting is the different shades of color
the different textures you know this diamond
frost is really light and airy the hydrangea is really
dense so you can have some different textures in there so consult your
friends they are fantastic even if they don't know plants it's okay
we since we are at the end of the summer fall is gonna be quickly approaching
and the fall is a fantastic time to go ahead and start working in your
flower garden so one fall is a great time to plant
shrubs and perennials so if you know that you're going to be adding
in a shrub let's say you know you're going to add in a hydrangea or a
gardenia or a tea olive whatever it is that
you're adding into your space the fall is the perfect time to go ahead
and plant that because it has all winter for its roots
to get established so your shrubs and your perennials it is
great in the fall to go ahead and establish them
even if they are dormant when it comes springtime they will come
alive fall is also a most excellent time to move existing plants
that you have in your bed so for example i am already
thinking of this space for next year one
i have three lady in red ferns right here
and they are great and they are loving life and they are very healthy
but if you will notice that they are taller than my hydrangea
is and this space right here just seems really kind of crowded
so i already know that i am going to move those
possibly to the back because they are tall i also notice that right in this
area i've got a lot of green going on like
there wasn't there there are astilbes and when they bloomed they
were gorgeous but when they only bloom for a certain amount of time and now
it's just a lot of green like i need some different
heights and textures back here so i'm going to have to kind of rearrange some
things back here also back here this ghost fern is
getting overtaken by these sun kings so this is going to
have to be taken out because i would love
for these two sun kings to grow together and make one
massive plant so i'm already thinking where am i going to move these things
because the fall is the perfect time to do it i want to do it in the fall
and not necessarily in the spring because it's just easier on the
plant to get established into their new home also go ahead and start if you have
an existing garden think of what has been a great success
my blue browallia love them i mean absolutely
fantastic plants they have done great in my window boxes
they have done fantastic in the landscape they are just
amazing there are some things that i want to change
i have diamond frost up here on the front now
the diamond frost has done wonderful it has done really really well
but it has gotten bigger in the space than what i
originally kind of in my brain envisioned so what i'm thinking for next
year is instead of diamond frost i'm going to do diamond snow so it'll be a
little bit shorter still nice and white it can do
that sun to shade and it'll still bring that same color
but maybe not quite as tall and airy but much more compact
so i'm working on thinking about that my window boxes i love my window boxes
but in this one i had three caladiums my poor little double impatiens they
are gone they got smothered they never stood a chance the
caladiums just took over i have white browallia in there it's gone
too so next year instead of doing three
caladiums maybe i just do one in the middle and something
different or i do two on the outside and something in the middle i haven't
quite figured that out yet but i know that i'm gonna have to tweak that
just a little bit so go ahead and start thinking of that
what i'm gonna do is because i cannot remember one i do have this video as a
record but if you don't have a youtube channel or social media or whatever
um take your phone and just walk through and take
pictures take a video of your space right now
because in three four five months from now you're probably going to forget
exactly what things look like right now so you're not going to be able to change
it so go ahead and be thinking about that
now this is one step further maybe you're not there yet and it's okay
do you want to have a certain color scheme like is there
some gardeners and i can fall under this category at certain times
i want to do in this space you know all green and white or i want to do
really hot bold colors or i'm going for cool colors
so if you have an idea of kind of your color scheme
go ahead and start thinking about that because it will help determine
what plants you put in there so if you're looking for your reds and your
oranges and your yellows then you're probably not going to want
to look at you know a pale pink so think about that if you want to
if that just blows your mind too much just don't even worry about it
it's totally fine and the last thing i want to say is
this bed it is 16 years in the making this bed did not come about by itself
just overnight we have redone this bed so many times and my mama and i have
moved plants in here back and forth and in and
out things have been successful and grown
things have done horrible and died but just know that that is the
fun of gardening is that it's always changing
you're always dreaming of next year you're always dreaming of the
possibilities that are to come that is the absolute joy of gardening
and in january and february when it's just
nasty and it gets dark at five o'clock you know you can be inside
and be dreaming of plants for next year that is just the joy of gardening
so don't stress out if you want to create a space
it's okay we are here to help the gardening community
as a whole is very helpful so if you have any questions you know
feel free to reach out to a local gardener your local nursery center
take them pictures of your space and ask for help because i know that they are
willing to help you again i hope you have found this
informative make sure you stay tuned because all
those lists are going to be coming up about
your checklist of what you can do to help you have
a plan a great flower garden for next year
make sure you like this video subscribe to garnet with creekside y'all have a
fantastic day and we will see you next time bye