are you looking to create a container that will take you through
four seasons well join me as i show you how i created this fantastic topiary
out of a sunshine ligustrum that will give us absolutely gorgeous color
year-round stay tuned
hello friends welcome to gardening with creekside i am jenny and today we are
going to create a container that we can leave
outside year round that will give us gorgeous
color and interest no matter what the season may be here
we have this gorgeous blue cobalt pot containers a ceramic glaze pot you
know how much i love my blue pots and in it i have this gorgeous sunshine
ligustrum sunshine ligustrums are a fantastic
evergreen shrub from the southern living plant
collection they are gorgeous yellow lime green
color that stays this year round it is a full sun plant that is extremely hardy
you will notice here on the tag it has all that great information on it
with the sunshine ligustrums you need to make sure that it has as much sun as you
can give it so that way it keeps its yellow color
here at crete side nursery we get tons of customers looking to create a
container that will give them year-round interest
that they don't have to fuss over too much
so i got some inspiration from a fellow youtuber linda vater
who a couple of years ago created a topiary out of the sunshine
ligustrum but i'm going to take it one step further and we're going to
under plant it with some fall winter annuals remember we are north carolina
zone 7b so for us pansies are a great natural choice now for some of our folks
up in the north or out west you may say well jenny pansies for us
are a spring summer plant well maybe so but here in
the south they do fantastic for us in fall winter
and then early spring because they do like it cool for us in late spring into
early summer it just gets way too hot and we can't do them
so what i did is i took a sunshine ligustrum
the other day and i went ahead and pruned it up it was just in its free
form shape i took the clippers the sthil
hedge trimmers i love these things they're just really
light and easy to use but very effective and i simply went along and trimmed it
up i got my basic shape with those trimmers
you don't have an electric trimmer or a gas power trimmer you can also use your
pruning shears that might make it a little bit easier
but basically you're going to go kind of wider at the bottom
and then come to a point at the top almost like a little bit of a christmas
tree and then i just took my good
clippers right here and i really came in and i wanted to make sure that
underneath it had lots of room so back here i still
have a couple of little branches that are out and hanging out
and i want to go ahead and take those away because
this is where the pansies are going to go and i don't want it to get in the way
so we're going to look over here oh see right here this is a perfect example
right here see these guys we want to go ahead and
take that out so that way that the pansies
and all the other fall annuals have lots of room for them to grow
up and that the sunlight can get to them i'm going to put these over here and
just trim it up now let your eyes be the guide and it's
okay it takes a little practice and you'll be
just fine so when i went ahead and got this nice big
pot you want to use a pot that's as big as you can possibly do
because this was a three gallon shrub that we've put in here so you want to
have lots of room for your roots to grow and develop and hang out because you
could leave this in here for a year or two or so until it outgrows the pot
so use the biggest pot that your space will
allow use really premium potting soil here i
use the espoma organic potting soil it has wonderful
earthworm castings some Mycorrhizae fungi in there all sorts of great
nutrients for these plants so use a high quality don't
get chintzy on your dirt use good high quality soil
so now it's just planted in there when you're planting your
shrub you want to make sure that your root ball
is not too high you don't want the root ball sticking up
in the pot because um when it gets water it could
you know shed away too much so we have it just even right here
and then i'm just going to come in here and i'm going to take my annuals so what
i have are two different colors of pansies
i've got this beautiful purple pansy and then
i also have this glorious white i love purple and white together
just a really pretty color they both have a little bit of a yellow dot in the
center of them so it brings a little bit of a nudge to the
sunshine ligustrum so what we're going to do is i'm going
to plant and this is this is where you just get creative okay
so you just have fun with this there is no like absolute you have to do it one
way or another you don't so i'm going to pop pop a purple
pop a purple in there then i'm gonna pop some white
so i'm gonna do three pansies and then i'm gonna use
some chocolate creeping jenny this is really fun so i've got
purple
and then a white
over here so you can choose any kind of color scheme
that you want like again it's just it's your total personal preference there is
no right way wrong way to do it now the
chocolate creeping jenny is a really fun because it is going to be my trailer
here and it has just a neat it has a green
the older leaves are nice and green the stalks are
a nice kind of a burgundy-ish color and then the new leaves are a nice
almost that chocolate color so it'll bring a nice little bit of a contrast
to the container so we're going to come over here
and the great thing about this pot obviously is that you're going to see it
all the way around so you can see it from all sides
and it's going to be just as pretty from one side
as it is to the next
so we're just going to continue our pattern around here
and get these guys planted
all right the container is all planted now we've got the great sunshine
ligustrum here as the topiary we have got some beautiful white pansies
some purple pansies and then of course the chocolate creeping
jenny the sunshine ligustrum the creeping jenny
those can stay in the container year round the pansies
you can swap out in the spring you can put some petunias in there you could put
some torenia you could put all sorts of different trailing
flowering annuals in there for the spring and the summer
really it's whatever is up to you and that you want to do or if you just want
to keep it as a topiary and the creeping jenny go for that again
there are no wrong answers this is just kind of an idea a method
and then you get to create it how that you want it to look
for your home but i hope this has given you some
inspiration some ideas to use at your house
i hope this has been helpful for you if it has please make sure that you like
this video subscribe to gardening with creekside we
will see y'all next time have a fantastic day bye friends