The Spring Garden Waits for No One! What Happens Now?

Well this right now is one of my favorite vantage points of the garden because right now we are having a fabulous foxglove moment. I have been waiting for them all season long. They are finally here. They still have more unfolding to do but I think they look absolutely beautiful running up and down Lemon Lane and then kind of sprinkled in the west bed amongst the roses, the white it's a breeze rose, the hydrangeas that are getting ready to pop, the butterfly candy that's getting ready to pop. Let's just say there's a lot of stuff getting ready to happen. I can't believe how quickly things are exploding. It's amazing to me. We've had some pretty good rain. We've had some really warm temperatures. It's going to cool down later this week which I am thrilled about because it's been hovering around 90 if not exceeding 90 and it needs to cool down for this stuff to last. So today on our Wednesday Walkabout I want to show you some of the beauties that have showed up at the party since you were here last. I want to show you what's on my plate. I've got some pruning to do. I want to turn some things that are looking like small shrubs into small trees. Let's see what else. We've got deadheading to do. As always that's pretty much a non-stop activity and then I want to show you a few surprises that have absolutely delighted me. So what do you say? Let's do a Walkabout. Well we've already shot the segment that you guys are going to see this weekend about planting movable fragrance and in this case it's an absolutely gorgeous Diamond Inspire Gardenia and I've got my first bloom. It just opened up this morning. It will be right here when just imagine what it will be like when all of this is in full bloom and I'm sitting here on the social patio and there's a slight breeze moving from east to west and I am here to capture it and let me tell you right now the scent on this is absolutely incredible and if you are looking for a gardenia recently I've seen a number of the gardenias in Southern Living Plant Collection I've seen them at Lowe's. So this is my surprise number one what I saw when I came out this morning. Surprise number two is yes is I had kind of forgotten about the pumpkins that had germinated and I transplanted kind of threw them over here I didn't know what I was going to do with them and so I thought okay this is a little mini garden risk worth taking if it works fine if it doesn't I have no idea what variety it is I have no idea how big it will get but I do think it will be fun at least for a while and to delight the kiddos to let it continue to grow and grow up this meadow to tour it'll be kind of fun to see what it does if I can get a bloom on it before it reaches the top at which point it may be annoying me and I decide to I decide to just rip the whole thing out but you know what for the moment it will be something fun for me to look forward to absolutely every day and so it's just kind of a fun thing I think you guys were absolutely correct when you told me that that was probably some kind of Chinese orchid and yes that we didn't know what they were and actually as I recall I did dig one of those up when I was at my friend Gail's house I just it didn't appear last year and it decided to wait until this year which made it all the more welcome because it was unexpected now something that was expected was that I took a number let me get over in here I took a number of cuttings from the Sedum autumn joy and I just stuck them in the ground and look they have already rooted and they already have little flower heads on them so if one works we'll just do another one and in case you missed that segment all I did was kind of drill a hole yeah just wonderful just kind of drilled a hole in the soil removed some of the bottom leaves stuck it in there didn't have to do anything and it will in short order make another plant just like this one and see this one here look at that that's amazing absolutely amazing it just seems like a miracle so while this was expected it is nevertheless very much appreciated so let's take a break here and I want to show you some other things that have just really exploded this week well all of my pinching paid off my taiga clematis is absolutely growing beautifully look at that it is so cool it almost looks like a passion flower though I like this one a lot better this is one of the clematis this also is in the southern living plant collection but trust me I would have had a third a quarter as many blooms if I had not done that pinching procedure and let me see if I can show you an example yes right here see where I pinched this one I've got a branch here with a bloom and I've got a branch here with a bloom and that is the value of pinching and I continue to do that and I imagine by next year the continued pinching will mean it will completely it will a neighbor it startled me too it will come it will completely scale this arborvitae and it will be it will completely cover this and I'm continuing to pinch because I want there to be some kind of confluence of bloom between this purple and maybe some of the white that will come out from the encore azaleas in the foreground or even the moon dance hydrangeas so I think that's really really wonderful now speaking of purple yes these are hydrangeas in in the foreground now speaking of purple look at how this ajuga which I adore continues to spread now some of you asked one of the questions in a comment was do I have to deadhead this no I do not have to but I will do it once it's pretty much finished its color because that will encourage it to spread even more and I want to it to spread as much as possible if it begins to become something of a slug here a thug not a slug a thug here then I don't care because I will just divide it up and I will plant it in the back where I want more of it to be so when it's in bloom and I've got the purple going on down here and the purple going on up here that is just simply a wonderful thing it's also over on this side this one is not as large I think I planted two clematis over there I only planted one here but look it is blooming over here as well I have pinched it into increased production and it will be in bloom when some of these gorgeous roses right here yes they're they're hidden everywhere and then when this rose is in bloom it will be beautiful and I'll get that purple and and white so I think it will be really really spectacular okay we're going to take a break right now and wait for this front loader to go by and then we will continue our walk about it is always active at the cottage on the hill now if I can tear Stuart away from the gorgeous blooms on that terra hydrangea which by the way is the one that I brought from the other house and if he can work his way towards me this area by the way Kayla and I were talking about it yesterday this is probably one of the most unexpected and most beautiful spaces I think here at the cottage I had no idea that this would transform into such a compelling really gorgeous space and it looks gorgeous whether it's in bloom or not in the spring all of these different shades of green well needless to say I just love it love it okay here is a decision point and my first question of the day I planted two oakland hollies on either side of this door to nowhere and if you're just joining our channel the door to nowhere is basically a non-functioning door that used to go onto a porch which now goes into my master bath but right here we planted two oakland hollies which are very very happy here and they will continue to grow vertically and they can grow as tall as I let them and I might let them grow very very tall because they're not going to obscure any views from the inside because those are fake windows if this is a fake door those are fake windows to nowhere but you guys probably have already intuited what I'm going to say I have a decision point right here now immediately what potential do you see these oakland hollies having double ball topiaries so I need to see this is the natural way these have grown I planted them both here when they started to grow in this shape and they started to kind of assume this form thinking that at some point I might want to transform them into double ball topiaries now if I do that I will not do it the way I typically do it with my myrtles in other words in fact let's do it from this vantage point Stuart and by the way if you are shopping for topiaries then just look for a plant that kind of already has this growing habit so that you can see the potential of the topiary now some of my topiaries you know know that I would just clip this back stake this and I would immediately have a two tier topiary but I think what I'm going to do since I've got this outlier here I'm going to do something similar to what I did with the boxwoods that yeah yeah so what I might do is secure this to this one take this away and then have a small ball that is sitting directly on top of the other ball instead of having this space right here this is my does that make sense does that make sense question so I that's the direction that I am leaning and I think that's probably what I'm going to do or I could let them grow and just be in a conical Christmas tree form not unlike the ones that I have planted on the corners going up these steps so that's what I'm thinking about now another kind of comment here somebody asked you am I going to put railings up and down these steps and no I am not but one very very helpful follower sent me a link to two different like at least at the top of the steps short sections of a railing that I might be able to use at the top so I'm going to be looking into that the other thing that I did over on this side is and I will show you where they ended up I stole from Peter to pay Paul in the process of rebalancing my garden portfolio and I put more of those wonderful better boxwoods over here took out some of the the Nandina's and obsession Nandina's and transplanted them on the front berm so I'll show you that a little bit more but you may recall that before this was heavily obsession Nandina with just a few boxwood I really wanted more visual weight and more continuity over here so I transplanted some renaissance better boxwoods over here where that form will be appropriate for this space so what do you say Stuart let's take a break let's navigate around to the front but give guys just a little bit of a stroll as if they were walking along with me to the upper terrace well in my anticipation for what is to come I have been constantly surveying every morning I come out here and look at different seedlings and what has germinated it's one of my favorite things to do during the course of the day and those are two zinnia seedlings from zinnia's that were there last year they went to seed and I'll be darned if they haven't germinated there and they will be coming up and blooming later in the summer at least that's what I anticipate and what I am hoping something else that's kind of a disappointing surprise to me is that I had anticipated and hoped I would get lots of cleome seedlings up in here in the foreground of this second it's a breeze rose but I've seen little evidence of them and they self-seed pretty prolifically so that has surprised and disappointed me a little bit but I am seeing some of them over here so there's one right there that is huddling up against the blueberry and the butterfly candy and I may transplant that someplace else so I I'm just thinking about that and then some people love it and some people hate it yes little blueberries another surprise another surprise and then if you pan to the right right there see the other little seedling right by the rose yes that is a verbena benariensis some people love it some people hate it and I think it is wonderful you just have to learn how to contain it again no bad plants just bad uses of plants and determining okay how much work do you want to do and how much work do you not want to do now right now Stuart I can't I just can't resist you need to give them kind of a view right here this is very very exciting you guys of the ambassador alliums oh yeah look at those they're starting to show purple they are a perfect color echo yeah to the salvia that's yeah to the salvia that's behind them and then if you look over in the distance by the way I am replacing some of these smaller flagstones with larger pieces look at this I hadn't looked at these for a while and I came out here the other day look at how big these blooms are this is a deer doloris it's a southern living hydrangea these are all white wedding in the back but look at those buds and I am surprised that I have buds that are this big this early in the year particularly since we had a hard freeze there's also some deer doloris that are over there a budding almond's edge and those have big buds on them too so this is absolutely going to be spectacular and it's the only thing I think that keeps me from being so sad when one thing stops so these things that have come into bloom really kind of assuage my grief over all the tulips that are gone because right now look I've got the fox glove I've got the salvia I've got the roses do kind of a glimpse over there across the walkway and look at how beautiful that is so I've got all of that to look forward to so it makes me not so sad about the passing of whatever was at its peak likewise when these things subside and they're not so glorious anymore I'll continue to deadhead them for increased bloom later on and continue bloom later on but then I have all of these hydrangeas to look forward to and after that I have all of the butterfly candy and the annuals to look forward to and that is the beauty of sequential planting planting so that there is always something you have to look forward to which continues I think to motivate me throughout the course of the season even when it gets hot but also just gives me something to look forward to every single day so let's take another break here and I want to show you a couple more things okay in the foreground of the upper terrace the is really starting to come on full force just in time to accompany the pincushion flower or the the scabiosa that I planted and which I continue to deadhead now this I really want to deadhead frequently here is a deadheading tip sometimes when you've got wiry stems like this it's very easy to inadvertently cut off a new bud and not cut off the old spent bloom so on this wiry flower stem I'm just tugging on it and by tugging on it it makes it very apparent to me which one needs to come off because that's putting tension on that particular stem helping me identify it see here now someone asked me when you deadhead do you have to take it all the way down to the base you don't really have to it will still encourage increased bloom if you don't but if you don't like to see those spent stems then yes you might want to take it all the way to the base and on scabiosa I typically do so let's move over here and talk about some more because that is a form of pruning deadheading is a form of pruning but now let's talk about something that is a drastic form of pruning and that is something you guys know I love to do and that is thinning out and raising up the canopy of different shrubs to transform them into small trees so my target of choice today is this an magnolia now it is gorgeous and I do love it but right now it's starting to really obstruct what I can see behind it and I want to be able to see through it the other thing is now as stuff begins to get very very lush things can lose their form and so the reason that I like to prune these types of plants and really thin them out and give them more architecture is because I like that look against the fluffy overgrown nature of some of the perennials so in this one I'm having to make some decisions and look here it continues to put out blooms yeah it continues to put out this color which is just just wonderful but I'm so you may say okay well how do you decide what you want to do well I'm deciding what I want to do based on the intention I have for this and the intention I have for this is that I want it to look like a small tree so I'm going to start at the bottom and I'm going to start limbing it up now on these kinds of projects I do like to use these battery operated works turbo pruners because they just make short work of what it is I want to do so down here for example I want to remove this one it's growing low it's obstructing the growth of the better boxwood below it and it is making this look like a great big shrub instead of a small tree so I'm going to take this and I'm going to prune it watching my fingers right at the base right at where this branch met the trunks do it were you able to get that kind of okay so so here's a small version right here I'm going to take that out this one looks kind of like a sucker and then in here so see this branch right here yes okay look what happens when I remove it immediately you can see the trunk form of this tree you can see through it and it begins to look like a tree and not like a shrub so I'm going to follow this all the way to the base to the trunk and then right at where that branch meets the trunk I'm going to take it off there's a little bit of a delay here on these printers which is a good thing because it it gives you an opportunity to kind of assess what you're doing and not cut your fingers off okay I've got another one down here I'm going to be pruning this one out tiny snowball now once I really remove the ones that are that I want to remove then I can go back here and I can come back in later and some of these that I didn't get exactly flush to the trunk I can come back and I can do that later because now I've got better visibility oh that was a that was a satisfying one wasn't it yes you could see it really well yes yeah so see immediately what it does and the other thing is what does this do this gives me great material for cut flowers for arrangements that I might want to bring inside I continually look and assess okay is it doing what I want it to do in terms of getting the appropriate shape and form and yes it is so I I won't let make you guys hang out with me during the entirety of this pruning Stuart do you think we've done enough to give people an idea of what we're doing get that one down there now you're probably saying well what about this one well that's exactly it right what about do this that's what about this one okay at this one it's a decision point and I really don't want it growing this way because that will take up real estate on the social patio but I it's a really good branch and I don't want to take it off completely so what I'm going to do here taking that off again I can come back and get these nubs a little bit more effectively later so I don't want to take this off but I do want one to maybe start growing that way so see the juncture right here of this branch to this main branch that is where I'm going to make my cut because this one will start growing up this way because it's got more vertical momentum than this one that's growing down so that is what I am doing today and I will finish this process like right here here's one that whether I was wanting to do this this process or not I would do because this one is broken and I don't want it to be diseased because a broken branch can be a vector or a place where disease can infiltrate so you'll see I'll continue to do up the plant itself and once I get it done we will of course show you so let's take a snapshot right here Stuart a snapshot in time so I can show everyone later kind of a before and after of where we left off and where we will come back and then I'll show you some final things and let you guys get on with your day now in addition to influencing the shape by pruning some things up I also want to influence its shape horizontally in other words I want this branch to start kind of growing out this way and apart from this one instead of them both growing vertically and practically parallel to one another that way it again gives the impression that it's a small tree and also gives me visibility and transparency through it so I'm going to accomplish that and I just picked this up this may not be the ideal implement to use but I'm going to do that by putting a spacer in here and that can be a piece of wood it could be you know something probably a little bit more permanent than what I've got here but by putting a spacer in then it will it will encourage the growth in this direction at this angle instead of just completely vertically like it was before so that way I can influence its shape by pruning it up vertically and horizontally by putting in appropriate spacers to make it grow out and have more of a chalice shape an open chalice shape than the goblet shape it naturally wants to grow in so I think that's I think that's important in terms of not letting your plants boss you I'm going to boss this and try to try to influence how it grows now while I'm doing that I don't want to overlook the fact that it has just wonderful seed heads look at that and aren't they just so pretty and so textured they almost look like I don't know a little animal or something they're just very very very dear okay so that was it how you raise a shrub in the way it should grow and I've got one more thing and then we're going to call it a day okay see this basket here filled with all of these pansies I have pulled out that are pretty much spent there's still a lot of good dirt on these pansies and there's also still a lot of benefit in the pansy foliage itself that will rot down and be a source of nitrogen but importantly for me it is going to serve a purpose and I'll show you what I mean so come around this way don't judge me this is my work area it has yet to really be cleaned up though I guess it's not too bad we all have to have our workspaces so if you follow me here so many of you have asked what am I going to put in this urn because before I had a topiary that I wanted to place somewhere else and so when I look out my kitchen window I want to make sure that I've got something to look at and I love this olive urn here so right now I just have paper in here I could even use some of it but what I'm going to do is I'm going to fill this up it's just got debris in here right now I'm going to fill this up with all of that pansy litter I should say I guess the remains of the day of the pansy and viola show and I'm going to fill this up and then once I do I'll have to put just a smaller amount of soil in there and then I'm going to fill it with these shade loving utopia ewes these are southern living plant I haven't used them here at the cottage before now but this will be a wonderful solution I'll put a couple of these in here and it will be beautiful not only in the summer but also in the winter I think it'll be really gorgeous especially if I adorn the pot with some red berries and things so I think that's going to be kind of fun so that was my last thing I wanted to show you that indeed I will have a focal point when I look out this window as soon as I get around to it and maybe I'll do that this afternoon after we finish up our shooting so thank you guys for hanging out with me on this Wednesday Walkabout you've got your question of the day do I or do I not topiary the hollies into double ball form and a couple of other housekeeping things if this Saturday I believe it's at one o'clock I'm going to be signing books at commonplace books so if you don't have a journal if you don't have the elegant and edible garden if you don't have the box set you can get those there or you can bring your own copy and we can visit a little bit while I sign it and oh also something really exciting I know you guys will be glad to hear and that is on Friday Lord willing we're going to be going over to our friend John Turman's home and we're going to take a look at his garden he too has made some changes resulting from some weather events and we're going to take a stroll through his garden and see what's going on there and let's just say do a Friday Walkabout at his house at the Spanish Bungalow so there you go you guys have a great Wednesday and we will see you this weekend.