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