Hello friends welcome to Gardening with Creekside today we are going to take a little garden tour of
this fantastic gorgeous uh bank behind me I will say too we are hitting about noon in the afternoon
Jenny's got her sunglasses so I'm not trying to be rude but I'm gonna put my sunglasses on
because it's good for your eyes um so we'll give you ideas background on this flower bed this is
a pretty steep Bank between the retail greenhouse and the barn we installed this flower bed gosh uh
this is its fourth year I want to say that we have had it planted and it was quite a problematic area
because it is so steep we didn't have anything planted on here so you know what that means we
had lots of weeds God's grass right grown on here it was very unsightly and when our customers come
you can see that we have our parking signs here so they were pulling up and looking at a bank of weed
well that is not inspirational whatsoever Jerry and I installed this bed it was about this time
of year it was probably not the most ideal time to plant it but things were slow we had time and
we did it it has done fantastic and it is an eye catcher it is an inspiration piece because
it solves a host of problems it is on a bank it gets lots and lots of morning midday sun and then
it is in the shade it is not on irrigation so in the summertime it tends to be more dry but there
are natural springs and we get water that comes off the hill in the wintertime so in the winter
it's quite wet remember we have a French drain running at the base of this flower bed that goes
all around the barn and the greenhouse because it is so wet in the winter if we didn't have this
French drain like it would be really hard to park right here so we've got dry we've got wet we've
got a little bit of everything we planted this bed to have really of course the most interest
in the summertime because that's the height of the growing season so we're just going to walk through
this bed there is a handful of shrubs that we use and we just repeat them all the way down through
the bank so that is an idea if you've got a big space pick maybe five plants that you really love
and just use that same plant in a pattern for the whole length of that bed it makes a huge impact
from a distance so one of the first things you're going to notice of course are the supertunia Vista
bubble gums if you remember back to the video I showed you where we took hanging baskets and I
took it out of the hanging basket and planted it directly in the ground we do this every year I
think a couple years we haven't done the bubble gums but I just am a sucker for the bubble gums
because they are the most vigorous and they they are huge massive impact so this is the
one annual that is in this flower bed next we have the kaleidoscope abelia and kaleidoscopes
are in Evergreen so that is wonderful they have Kaleidoscope has multiple colors on it and it
will change throughout the growing season so this is kind of the chameleon of a plant where as the
season changes so does the color you can tell that it's wider than it is tall and I don't know
if Jerry can get in here I see a little friend do you see that big huge praying mantis right there
we love that little guy because he is going to eat any kind of bad harmful insects that
may be chewing on my plant but abelia's are typically wider than they are tall and this
is the time of year where the little blooms begin to pop out at the going into the end
of summer into fall lots of blooms on it pollinators go nuts so kaleidoscope abelia
next we have vintage Jade distillium vintage Jade distillium is going to be an evergreen again it
is wider than it is tall gorgeous glossy green leaves I have never pruned these distilliums
because with this bed I want that full coverage I want it to be nice and big it will kind of have a
little bit I don't want to say weeping but you understand what I'm saying right so it's that
wide low kind of open Habit to it distilliums will in late winter going we're really late winter they
will put Little Burgundy blooms on directly on the stem but it is not something that you see from a
big distance it's something you'd have to get up close but again in the winter time this gives me
wonderful structure between the distillium and the abelias I've got a nice green presence year-round
beautiful low maintenance nothing in this bed do the Japanese beetles like praise the Lord so you
can see like this abelia look how healthy and happy this baby is it is quite and I say large
right for an abelia this is a good size healthy plant just really bulks up and I love it now
the hydrangeas where you notice the petunias you also notice the hydrangeas these are little limes
little limes of course are Pinnacle hydrangeas that means you know they're panicles because
they have that kind of upside down ice cream cone look to them as far as their blooms panicles love
the Sun so nice you need a minimum of I would say five to six hours of direct sunlight they bloom on
New Growth every year and so in late winter going into spring we prune this let me show you how much
they grow because I think this is really important um the cut from the spring is here so this whole
thing is new see if I don't know if we can get in there there's the cut right there and we have at
least I would say two feet if not closer to three feet of New Growth so they love to be pruned you
only want to prune them though back by one third of the total size because if you do any more than
that one-third then your blooms will get very floppy even though they've got nice big blooms
on them we'll get rain they're not going to splay open and be on the ground that's because down in
there my stems are really really strong so no more than one-third of your total hydrangea size next
the big the beautiful this is Grand Cascade budlia butterfly bush hummingbirds are tweaking above me
because they're probably mad that I'm over here Grand Cascade and this is not living up to its
biggest its fullest potential because of the Tree Line If This Were to get sun on all sides
of it it would be huge Grand Cascade given its name is a more of a weeping habit of a butterfly
bush it is a beautiful nice soft lilac purple color beautiful huge blooms on it pollinators
go nuts over it every you know summer you have lots of not only butterflies but honeybees and
bumblebees and pollinators of all size and it's still going strong in late summer when we have
a lot of monarchs so the monarchs for us that we see at the nursery tend to be later in the season
and they love this Grand Cascade so we have that all of these plants going down through this area
and then there is one more they look a little bit better over here so come down here let me show you
one of the other shrubs that we have in here the evergreen shrub are these fantastic Sunshine
ligustrums we love Sunshine ligustrums because they have this beautiful yellow chartreuse color
to them they are an evergreen they have a soft texture if you would think that they would be
deciduous they're not and they just do wonderful this is definitely a full sun plant if you get
more shade it'll just turn green which is fine but that's why they're called Sunshine ligustrums is
because just that really bright pop of color and up here it just looks fantastic from the sunshine
ligustrum little lime your grand Cascade all of this goes together so we have got a beautiful
mix in this bed of Evergreens deciduous um some you know the annuals in here different types as
far as like interest in the season different habits upright weeping more upright low wide
so you're going for that mix and then the other plants that we do have in here is taking them a
little while to get going I think it's because well I don't know why it is but these are quick
fire hydrangeas so quick fires are this is the Big Daddy right another panicle but you can tell
that they have a much different Bloom on them than say a limelight or that little lime they will turn
that beautiful mauvy rose color for us they will get nice and huge and this one is showing that
have it as far as getting like nice and big so I'm five two-ish and um it's about as tall as I am
this is the biggest one but then the other two you will see are smaller again it's not on irrigation
to say that this bed is quote neglected is is an understatement because we never water it we do
try obviously we do prune and then in the late winter we do try to fertilize we're not always
the best about it so this whole fantastic flower bed is just extremely low maintenance but gorgeous
color lots of interest of course the more you cut on your butterfly bushes and your hydrangeas
because they bloom on New Growth you're going to get more flowers on them so this is a really
just a fun bed lots of Interest people love it we love it because it's so easy to take care
of they just gives you big bold colors for not only the growing season and the summer but also
has interest in the fall so hope you have found this fun interesting and informative as always
thanks so much for guarding this Creekside you all have a great day we'll see in the next video