hello friends welcome to gardening with creekside i am jenny and today we're going to take a little
tour of the front of our house we have all sorts of fun both containers and hanging baskets
and some a flower bed in the landscape obviously that i want to show you so here
we are at the front of our house we have a very kind of traditional southern house so
first what we're going to do is start over here in the flower bed that is off to the
left of our front porch so let's go over here now we were over here last time
and it was october i was just looking at this video the other day um when we planted this dwarf
blue atlas cedar this is a hortsman so it's not going to get massive i know there are the
large full-size blue atlas cedars this is a dwarf so just keep that in mind
it's doing great it clearly loves this spot because it has got tons of new growth in here
and you know me i just have to get up in here with this plant so it is doing wonderful it's
got nice thick foliage on it and all this lighter green on the edges that is all new growth so it
is loving this spot now keep in mind this bed is not on irrigation um really at this point there's
there's no need because everybody is doing great um there's just not a need for it now obviously
um we do water when it doesn't rain when it gets really warm especially my annuals but the great
thing about both the tea olives in the back and this blue atlas cedar is if you plant them at the
correct time of year then you don't have to worry about it so again we planted these in october of
last year this one the tea olives we planted the year before so let's talk about tea olives
so tea olives are back here in the back there are four of them right here tea olives are not truly
like i had somebody ask me you know oh well they produce fruit they're not that kind of
they're not that kind of olive tree it's actually a sweet osmanthus so this is a classic southern
plant and we are actually kind of on the borderline of being a little too cool for
tea olives but i know that this spot because it faces west gets really hot intense afternoon sun
even in the winter because we have this brick foundation and the heat kind of radiates off
the brick so these four tea olives are fantastic evergreen tree shrubs they're not technically a
tree they're more of a shrub that produce and in fact if jerry can get in here right quick
there are this is not the normal time but they produce these little tea tiny creamy white a
little bit of a hint of an orange blossom on them starting in the late summer early fall and
we'll go through the fall winter into early spring they produce the most glorious smell you have ever
your nose has ever smelled i tell people it's like an orange jasmine honeysuckle smell you
definitely smell tea olives before you see them so this is the idea with these tea olives is
that they will create a hedge give us some nice structure back here which they are already doing
and this window because i know some people are like freaking out because in the back there's a
window yes there is a window that is our bathroom window but to let you know also the elevation
inside is very low so these would have to get just massive before they would ever block our
view and with tea olives you actually prune them once a year you should prune them in early spring
late spring early summer we were a little late this year pruning them but you can see
all of this right here on the top is new growth so they are doing great love these tea olives sweet
osmanthus so with my hortsman my tea olives this gives us great structure year round now
in this bed this is where i have fun and this is these are my annuals obviously and as the
tea olives get bigger and as the hortsman gets bigger my space for my annuals gets smaller
but that's okay so this year we went with the salvia this is rockin play in the blues salvia
it's our first year growing it we've always done um some of the other rockin series plants in
there i love this plant i love it it is absolutely gorgeous it has a different bloom on it than say
um like the rock and deep purple or the um was that blue suede shoes so playing the blues has a
color to the leaves a little hard to tell right now because we are in the shade
and they are a little damp from the dew of the morning pollinators go nuts over
them there's a bumble bee over here who's trying to out flight jerry but he's there
the honeybees love them these will get nice and thick and full i will tell you again we are so
late this year on planting um these have only been in the ground for about gosh a month really
and so we were four to six weeks behind on when we normally plant this so these are not anywhere
near their full size but these will go all the way through the fall until we get a hard freeze
and then of course we have bubble gums here so the bubble gums are taken off doing great by the
end of the season they will have this whole space covered so they are doing magnificent
this year was kind of my year of the bubble gum as far as the landscape here at the house
and in the front it just is the classic it's the standard you just cannot beat bubble gum
in my opinion remember this vista series from proven winners is fantastic for the landscape
large containers so this is the bed um again i'm loving it and it is doing fantastic now
we've been here before remember last year jackson and i were here trimming this one and the black
snake was in there so these are boxwoods this is the time of year that we need to prune them but
we've talked about this before we've got a couple of yellow jacket nests
in the ground over here and when jerry and i were doing we were out here one day there's
a yellowjacket nest because they put their nest in the ground there's one under this boxwood and
there's also one in the next boxwood so jenny's not going to be trimming these box woods until the
yellow jackets are gone they're normally pretty fine unless you disturb them and definitely if i
were to take the hedge trimmers out here and start trimming on these boxwoods they would not be happy
and jenny would get torn up so we had the boxwoods it took us a couple of years to get this right
i know some people have strong feelings about boxwoods it's kind of like you either love
them or you hate them these have worked great for our house these have been in the ground
gosh 11 11 12 years they've been they've done fantastic we prune them once a year
again this is the time of year for us to prune them here in north carolina they just do great
they're not on irrigation we don't fertilize them just your mouth low maintenance we literally prune
them once a year and that's it and they give us great structure year-round and really kind
of anchor our house now the hanging baskets the hanging baskets um are i just i they're simple
they're not real complicated but they're beautiful in that is diamond frost nope diamond snow
euphorbia from proven winters last year i had in these two planters i had diamond snow and they
just create this beautiful white mass of blooms that are very drought tolerant they can do sun or
shade because they these hanging baskets do not get any sun until probably two or three in the
afternoon and then they get the hot afternoon sun and they still do amazingly well again
pretty drought tolerant they are on irrigation but i just turned it on about two weeks ago um and
life happens and i would go like two weeks between watering and they still did okay but there's also
these baskets are from kinsmen so the kinsman garden company you know how much i love them
these are 16 or 20 inch baskets so they're nice and big they hold lots of potting soil
there are three diamond snows in each of these hanging baskets again i wanted them
full and these will take us all the way through again another hard free so for us that will be
november so that is what we have here coming up the steps again i'm keeping things simple this
year keeping things simple life has been crazy and complicated so we're just keeping it simple
two little these are little plastic little faux pots i think i got them at a discount store
um so nothing nothing pricey here this is the double up begonia in pink brand new this year
from proven winners we had trialed them last year and i fell madly in love with them these double up
series are just the easiest plants ever you can see how they have that beautiful foliage on them
folks that have japanese beetles japanese beetles do not like these plants so praise the lord
this is something that we do not have to worry about with the japanese beetles
just that beautiful green foliage on it you've got those sweet baby doll pink blooms
this is sun or shade so this plant again because this does not get sun till that two three o'clock
in the afternoon and then it gets the hot intense afternoon sun they do fantastic there are two
plants in this container this is probably about a 14 inch container this is not on irrigation so
and it is kind of under the eve of the house it may get a little rain if the
rain is blowing and gets on it otherwise i have to hand water it but again i'm not watering it
like every once a week maybe if i remember so they're doing great again fresh soil mulch
holds the moisture in and they're doing great so let's come on up here to the porch because
i want to give you an update on this container this is the michael carr
strawberry planter that i planted in the spring can't see the container at all so
not that i didn't believe michael when he told me when he planted petunias in it last year he said
you came to the pot and this is true so i have trimmed them before i'm really whacked them back
so they have been cut back clearly is doing great i have thought about pulling them out and doing a
different planting something more tight that you could actually see the pot probably just
going to leave that and do that next year this is the fiber optic grass so remember when we did
the urns on the back porch the patio area i talked about that the fiber optic seemed to struggle if
it ever dried out and it can't really bounce back this pot has definitely dried out a couple of
times and i think that's just the nature of the fiber optic grass which is it's not a bad thing
it's just that you have to know that it can't get dried out because it just has a hard time
bouncing back there are several other plants that we have done that i have realized that
and if you have a nice moist area or something that's on irrigation obviously fiber optic is
going to be a great choice for you but in here obviously it looks a little looks a little sad
so coming back over here we have one more thing to show you i know that some of you might be asking
this is a cotton cedar cotton yeah cotton which you would plant cotton seed in the field so this
was my granddaddy's my mama and her whole family are from like the low country south carolina
and this was my granddaddy's it um it is missing one of the arms and um but he would walk behind
it you put the cotton seeds in here the mule would hook up right here and pull it you can still see
there the the paint of the company that made it the other side actually the paint's a little bit
stronger because it hasn't wasn't has faded um excuse me but that is what this is and then two
if you notice our ceilings are blue because i'm learning what you're going to be asking me so
i'm just going to go ahead and try to tell you what's going on here so our ceilings are painted
a light blue and honor a little wink and a nudge because if you are ever been to charleston south
carolina or savannah georgia you've probably noticed that the vast majority of the historic
homes have these what they call hate blue ceilings so it's a very light blue color
it really originally came about that um with the gullah people that this kind of superstition that
the the haunting spirits couldn't get into the house anyway that's why they called it haint blue
then it kind of evolved in that wasp don't build their nest because they think it's
the sky and so they don't build their nest again true not true we just like the blue
we were really we love the whole charleston architecture and colors and so
that is why we have a blue paint blue ceiling now the last one i want to show you is this aqua pot
so we have um this is the sister aquapot to the ones that are at the pergola so the ones that the
pergola are the large ones this is the medium the other medium is what has the the big large
bubble gum at the entrance at the gate so this is the falling blue aquapot from proven winters
it's gorgeous this spot obviously is under the porch it gets no rain that's
why aquapot is perfect here because it's self watering it can take care of itself
this gets complete shade until late afternoon like five o'clock then it will get an hour or
two of that intense sun so i plant this as a shade container even though it gets some
hot afternoon sun for a small amount of time remember shade is four hours of sun or less
so these have clearly done really well here so what we have is in the back are calladiums
these are ones again that classic caladiums sent us this is rose glow there are
they're jam-packed in here so just gorgeous they filled in quite quickly doing amazingly well they
um just they're loving life remember caladiums do fantastic in the heat and humidity of the south so
that's what we have there in the back then here this this beautiful specimen this is pegasus
pegasus begonia again these are all annuals shade loving foliage begonia from proven winters now
you might be saying well jenny your pegasus is bigger than your begonia i mean your caladiums
but the begonias in the front but according to the tags they're supposed to be the same size
pegasus of course you can tell it's growing towards the sun is a little bit more vigorous
and under here believe it or not there are some white um these are the i think uh sunfinity white
white infinity white patients impatience beautiful white pure white bloom on them
there's three in here pegasus is taking it over it's fine it's not a big deal now if pegasus
continues to grow and get really big all i can simply do if it drives me crazy is turn the pot
that's the beautiful thing about a pot is that you can rotate it so if this gets bigger and i want it
to the side or i want it in the back i can simply do that right now i'm just going to kind of let it
go and see what happens again this pot will take us all the way through to the fall because these
will all do great until we get a freeze and then they'll just be removed and taken out and i'll
leave this pretty much blank for the winter i do take all the water out of the aqua pot and fill it
with greenery but there's not actually going to be a plant planted in here i think that kind of
takes i think that's everything i do want to show you though so when we do our front porch chats
obviously we sit here on our front porch right i want to show you though what we're looking at when
we're doing these chats or from our front porch so the sun is coming up clearly but we have these are
our three crape myrtles these are the natchez crepe myrtles underneath them that is in all
their glory right now are the summerrific hibiscus from walters gardens and proven winners the one
that you see probably the most predominantly is cherry cheesecake they have been here for
five six seven years and unfortunately the cherry cheesecake has been discontinued
but it is absolutely one of our favorites it gets just these gorgeous light pink blooms on it with
a really dark center just fantastic obviously these are perennials they come back every year
and then down i'm closer to the field side maybe you can see there is the cranberry crush which
is a nice deep red and then way beyond that if you can see that is the new bed that jerry put
in with all of our fantastic summer help and you can you see those limelights blooming somebody had
asked why we did limelights instead of like maybe like the new limelight prime or why do we choose
limelights we chose limelights because those are the big daddies those are the big daddy classics
you cannot go with them wrong you cannot go wrong with a limelight because they just get huge they
have massive balloons on them and just sitting here i mean this they were just planted like a
month ago as a three gallon and they have already just taken off blooms are gorgeous they are going
to be magnificent especially like next year and in the coming years because they'll be huge and full
and just glorious so i hope you have enjoyed this little update of our front porch garden tour um i
know you've been here before but maybe you haven't seen the whole big picture so this is kind of a
big picture video just to kind of show you what's going on we've got the hummingbird feeder behind
me i heard somebody get murr you always know when they're coming like i can hear them before um
i think he flew off but anyway as always thank you so much for guarding me with
creekside you all have a fantastic day and we'll see in the next video bye friends