Heidi's Home Garden Tour 🌼 Annuals Planted & Perennials Blooming

This is probably the latest we have ever planted up our landscape here. Hi, I'm Heidi from Garden Crossings and today we will be taking a tour through my home gardens and showing you the annuals that we got planted up and we're going to also take a look at any of the perennials or shrubs that are currently blooming. I love it when I come home from work and the landscape's just all like mysteriously planted up. It's a wonderful thing. Because we are so busy at the greenhouse these days, working 13 plus hour days, to get in our own landscape, there's just no time for it. So there are some things that we like to hire out and one of them is getting the annuals planted. Whenever I get home from work, as I mentioned, I'm working 13 hour days right now. It is always dark and not the time to do it. So I stayed home from work this morning so I'd be able to get out in the gardens and show you just exactly what we have planted up. So let's go ahead and take a walk through the gardens. Before we head out to where the annuals are planted, I do want to show you some of the perennials. Now as mentioned, we are not in the gardens at all yet this time of year. So there does tend to be a little bit of weed and a little bit of mess, but I think you probably all can relate a little bit with not having perfect gardens. And if you do have a perfect garden, we are hiring and I would love to hire you as my landscaper. So let's go ahead and take a peek at some of the beautiful colors that are early on in the garden. So there's a lot of columbine blooming right now. I love columbine because I feel like it's just one of those iconic early spring flowers. This variety here, I honestly, I don't even know what it is anymore. This has been in the garden for probably 20 plus years and one thing you'll notice is there's a lot of color variation. We started off with the darker one and then the darker pink one and somehow that lighter pink reversion made its way into the garden. I'm going to kind of flip over these flowers a little bit so you can kind of see the flower form. A little bit different than some of the other ones out there. A little bit tighter flower, more just singular in color. I love columbine, but one thing I will tell you is when these flowers are done and it goes to seed, it's a love-hate relationship. You will love it if you want to sprinkle those seeds in your garden and have columbine everywhere. You will hate it if those seeds get sprinkled in your garden because it will cause columbine to be everywhere. I like to take the seeds and sprinkle them out by our creek bank because that way if they seed, they're in a place where they can go crazy and just be kind of that wild natural look. We also have some amsonia that's starting to bloom. This is another old variety of amsonia. I believe it's called like ice blue. It's just starting to open. It's got really nice soft blue flowers on it. One thing with this particular variety of amsonia is it is a spreader. So if you look, you'll see how it is kind of spreading its way through the garden bed, which as long as it kind of stays right here, I'm fine with it. But we do come through and pull those out every so many years when it starts to really take over and do more than what I want it to in the area. We've got some of the paint the town dianthus also. There's a lot of weeds in there right now like grass weed, but whatever. It still looks pretty from a distance and adds just a really nice splash of color. One thing I did notice is over the years this was a solid border of the paint the town dianthus and you can kind of see how it's kind of fizzled out in certain areas and the reason why is the areas where it's fizzled out are lower lying areas. So water kind of sits there and the dianthus didn't like the fact that there was that low sitting water and I think it just kind of rotted out. We have a lot of salvia also blooming right now. We've got the beautiful white profusion. We've got some of the perfect profusion, the lighter blue, and you can see there's a lot of columbine back in there and that's because it all just kind of happily seeded itself out into the garden. Now right now it's an appropriate amount, but if we let those things keep seeding it's going to feel like it just took over the garden space. Here's another one just right up front and center. I mean they are kind of pretty don't you think, but right place right plant. I say that a lot right place right plant. We also have some nepeta's cat's pajamas that are blooming. I love nepeta cat's pajamas because it's a long blooming perennial. It will bloom throughout the summer and if you feel like it ever stops blooming you just give it a little light trim and it'll be right back at it You will notice I got out in the garden and planted some alstroemeria. This was done late at night but this is the summer heat alstroemeria from Proven Winners. Beautiful red blooms. This will probably get about three foot tall as the summer continues to go on. I put two of them here in this garden so I think I'm going to really like that and I like that purple and the red together. I think that looks really very pretty. The hostas definitely have opened up in our fully beautiful right now. I love mixing the hostas. We're going to head out back to the hosta bed too as we make our way, but this is just another little piece of shade in the garden because I don't have a ton of shade so I kind of utilize it you know any place I can. But you'll notice how we've got a lot of different colors and textures. A lot of these are the bigger hostas and I did that just to kind of fill in this space in the garden. Also in the very back there that is an Aurelia Sun King. We added that in just to add in a little bit of different texture to this little space because as you can see it's very heavily hostaed. There are some hellebore but they're covered at this point. And then I did at one time put some astilbe in this area as well but you can see this astilbe no longer is present because the hostas pretty much just covered it all up. Now this area of the garden for those who have watched for years are like oh this is Heidi's Alstroemeria Inca ice corner. Yes well if you remember the last two years or so this this whole area that looks all dug up right now this was all Alstroemeria Inca ice. Last year the year before the whole center of it died out and what had happened is there was a chunk kind of nestled in right there tucked into that hosta and there was another chunk that was right here at the edge of the grass and then this whole area here was all open. So when I got out and planted those those summer heat Alstroemeria I came out here and I dug up the Inca ice. There was two chunks of it. I dug it up. One of them I planted back in the garden so I set it back here just a little bit and then I did the summer heat in front of it because I like talking about the Inca ice but because it's not available no more everybody wonders and wants so I thought let's put one in here that we can actually talk about and that is available. So we'll have a light peachy and this dark red planted in this area and I think it'll look nice. One thing I did find out though with digging up that Alstroemeria is that they have kind of a shallow root system and they're very delicate so it was hard to dig a clump out and keep it all looking like together. It kind of fell apart so I'm hoping and praying that that actually takes and that I didn't just kill it. I did take the other clump to the greenhouse and broke it apart and planted it so I'm hoping I'll be able to get a few more plants of it by dividing it up and hoping it takes and will root out and fill out in the greenhouse. This here this is a Wajilla. This is the snippet lime Wajilla which is unfortunately no longer on the market but it's got beautiful pink blooms nice chartreuse green foliage. I love the pop of the yellowy green in this garden because you can see there's a lot of darker green and by adding that lighter green in it just kind of creates a little bit of contrast. So we have matching shrubs there's another one here on the other side and that too is just just starting to open up not a lot of color yet but just a nice a nice shrub to have in this garden to add some of that early season shrub color in. Hosta Sege. Man this hosta has been here for over 25 years and it just continues year after year to get bigger and to be just more beautiful. We intentionally planted it between this little walkway thing because I knew it would fill in that space and just kind of be like a little framework I guess for the hosta so it's looking really pretty. I do have a few of the Allium bulbs sprinkled throughout this is the Allium Gigantica. I love these big huge blooms this is a bulb this is not like a I mean it's a plant yes it's a plant but it comes from a bulb these big huge blooms and it only blooms in the spring or late spring so not like the Allium Millennium which is more of a summer bloomer. We'll take a little walk around here you'll see there's a little bit of planting of the Nepeta cat's pajamas in there. I also say I have some of the Proven Winners Bleeding Heart which is for sun or for shade and this is another perennial if you're looking for one that blooms all summer long this one here is an all summer long bloomer which not a lot of perennials can do that. We've got a little bit of a Clematis bloom going here this is Crystal Fountain and it's definitely not getting enough sun the shrubs are getting too big now at this point and are kind of blocking it but I love those semi-double blooms there are the Crystal Fountain Clematis and it's just such a pretty color too. If you haven't grown Clematis in your garden I would highly encourage it I know a lot of people are a little bit scared and intimidated by Clematis but I don't know there's no need to be they are just such a beautiful addition that adds that columnar or vertical height into the garden. The bed here the circle bed I always call it the dwarf bloomerang purple maybe these are pink lilacs I forget which color they are now are blooming these are compact variety again unfortunately they have been discontinued but they're part of that bloomerang series which is known for its re-blooming ability usually the spring bloom is the most prolific like what we're seeing right now but it does bloom throughout the summer as well and whenever you can get gorgeous lilac blooms further than the spring season you can enjoy that scent in the summer or even later on in the summer I think it is so wonderful. Also in this bed we lined it with sun patience this year we did something different we did the compact purple candy for many many many years we had the sun patient compact red which I loved and I thought you know what let's change it up this year and let's put a different color in the red looks so pretty with our atlas roses but I don't know sometimes I like to change things we'll see next year I might be backing into the red but for this year it's the purple candy this here is the wajilla this is the maimone purple and look at those beautiful blooms now it should be blooming fully right now it's not because we trimmed it last fall these bloom off of the old growth and by trimming it last fall we essentially removed all the old growth but there must have been just a few little branches in there that were still part of the old growth that are giving us those beautiful pink blooms every few years or so I feel like if the shrubs start getting too big or bigger than what I want them to get we do go through and trim them in the fall we know we're going to be sacrificing the blooms but that's okay sometimes you just have to get in there and do that because if the size of the plant doesn't fit the location you got to do something about it so every couple years maybe you'll have to sacrifice the blooms to get your shrubs dialed back down to the size that you're looking for in your garden now this is the atlas rose and this past winter we have a lot of dead growth on these atlas roses so I'm going to have to have if the landscapers come here I'll have to have them come and trim out all of this dead wood because nothing's going to come on that it's not like oh that's the old growth it's gonna it's gonna get some leaves on it at this point it's not like that just has to go away so that'll have to get trimmed out and that'll keep the plant looking a lot fresher and cleaner as well we're going to check out over here too there's another one that did kind of that same thing a lot of dead going on so we'll have to get that all trimmed off as well last year I don't know about you but last year it was a pretty funky winter it was really wintry here in zone 6a Michigan and it got cold early and then it got warm again and then in the January it was really cold lots of snow that just stayed so sometimes that can be a problem because if you get snow and it melts and you get snow and it melts at least your plants are getting watered you know through the winter but when you get that snow pack and it doesn't melt the plant sometimes they can be harmed by that because they're not getting the water they need another problem is is when you get cold your plants they kind of go into sleep mode and then when it gets warm like so if you get a warm spell after a cold spell the plant doesn't tell itself like hey we're warm again we need to feed ourself essentially and that can sometimes kill off plants as well because they're just again not getting the proper nutrition because they went to sleep and didn't have time I guess to wake back up in the butterfly garden we do have this line with white sun patients and we will always have this lined with white sun patients I did try doing something different one year and absolutely did not love it so back to white it is and they are just so pretty especially at night they kind of shine in the night kind of create that moon glow look we've got the butterfly bush and we were talking about this the other day at the garden center with some customers they wondered what to do about this so this is the miss molly butterfly bush and you can see how there's all those dead twigs a lot of times in Michigan our butterfly bush do not come back off the old growth they come back from the base of the plant so because at this point in the season I'm not seeing any green on these twigs these twigs will also all have to get trimmed back now to be honest if I did see growth on these twigs I probably still would trim them back because I feel like the bush looks better when all of the growth comes from the base it's just it's got a more compact tighter habit opposed to if we let it come off of those old twigs it feels a little bit more I would say scrappy looking just a little bit more unruly I guess would be a good way of putting it got another alien bulb blooming there and in the background let's take a peek at what else we've got going here I love those alien bulbs they're just so pretty I just I love the whimsy feel they add to the garden behind it we have the sonic bloom pink wajilla and I had the gardeners trim this way back last year and you can see it is blooming again this spring this plant will bloom up to three times a season here in Michigan depending on how warm our fall gets so that's kind of fun to just seeing this continually bloom throughout the summer amsonia storm cloud is just about done with flowering here in my garden you can see there's still a little bit of color going on but even when this is done blooming I love the foliage and the stems see how they're so dark like this is just a pretty plant even when the flowers are finished for the season we've got another salvia in there the violet perfusion you'll notice I have a tomato cage in the middle of my garden so why well I just planted a delphinium the other night when I got home and so the delphinium's down in there a lot of times delphinium gets so tall they crack so I like to put a tomato cage or something similar if you have it and just let them grow up it and that helps support it a little bit I do have another one I'll be showing in a minute that is further along because it was in the garden for many years I planted some kufia vermilionaire here in this pot because I do like to attract butterflies and hummingbirds into this garden we call this our butterfly garden so it's appropriate to put plants in that the butterflies like I love lupine too so the lupine's not blooming yet but I love the foliage of lupine there's just something so I don't know something so magical about it I love how it looks like a flower even though it's you know obviously not I think our birdhouses are all they're all full there's no room in the end which is fun to see the birds I think we might have just seen one fly out I don't know if it got in the frame or not but I love that the birds enjoy the birdhouses and here in the garden here's another delphinium and the tomato cage is there in the center of it so obviously the whole plant didn't fit in the tomato cage but at least some of it did and that will help support those tall blooms once they emerge you're also seeing the structure in the garden of the shrubs and how we trimmed them back last fall so this here is the firelight hydrangea this got trimmed up really nicely typically I do like to come through and a lot of my shrubs I like to trim them in the fall every yeah like I said every couple years or so some I do every year this one here it's almost kind of starting to take on a little bit of a tree form I don't even know if I should say tree because tree has a singular trunk where there's multi trunks going on there this one's creating that beautiful canopy at the top with a lot of the branching at the bottom showing and it's kind of pretty I think to see kind of that intertwining of the branching even without there being leaves on it so I don't know we'll see how this goes I don't think we're going to get any any leaves at the bottom this year and I kind of like that look actually and what that might also do is create opportunity for more sunlight to get in and around that plant so that we could plant more plants this is the back side of the sonic boom pink and this kind of looked like it got a little bit of a hack job on it last year I know this year I won't be doing anything about it but this is something when you start seeing your shrubs starting to look like this shrubs are not a permanent fixture in the garden trees yeah trees they're more permanent right but shrubs it's okay you can replace your shrubs in your landscape or in your garden they're not a permanent fixture and think about that too if you have a house that you've got all this ratty shrub landscape that's you know 30 40 50 years old and you don't like it it's not permanent you can remove it and you can move on with something fresh and new looking so that shrub I am thinking is going to get on the chopping block one of these days because it's not looking so nice in my opinion anymore I feel like with our garden here at the house this is just being very honest and transparent a lot of our attention goes into the gardens at the greenhouse because that's where many many people are able to see them every single day back when we had more time and we're home more often we were able to put more time and energy into our home garden where now we're just constantly always working and the home gardens get the neglect I like to show the gardens to you because I think there's a lot to learn from these gardens because they are older gardens that have not been upkept and maintained and I feel like maybe a lot of people can resonate with that maybe you were into your gardens you know years back but you just can't get out into them anymore I don't know for us it's we want to focus on what the most people can see and that's at the greenhouse so if you're ever in the area stop to the greenhouse and check out our beautiful trial gardens there they're full of annuals perennials and shrubs this here is the hosta corner of my garden besides under my deck this is about the only shade spot I have and you can see how we went just crazy with planting all different types of hostas in here big hostas small hostas greens blues yellows and even white hostas or white edged hostas and I just love how it creates such a beautiful patchwork of color in this space now they're open some of them still have a lot more opening to do so I'm thinking as we continue through the summer we will see less and less of the mulch that's underneath of them and more and more foliage and it'll just be a solid mass of beautiful foliage color now that we're to the back here of the garden we did a line of sun patients compact red candy this is a new color out here for us this year and I think that's going to look really pretty that bright pinky it's called red but it's more pinky magenta and I think that will pop really nicely there's still a little bit of shade going on in the area we're in right now but we're heading into more of a sunnier spot one thing you'll notice is there is a lot of yellow or chartreuse that's represented in this area of the garden and I very intentionally have planted a lot of chartreuse things out here because when we're in the house when these plants are just emerging or even honestly right now it is those yellow pops that are what really stand out from a distance so I love to see all the yellow pops of color even though it's not flower color I love to see that foliage color when I'm standing in the house another amsonia storm cloud there again it's almost finished with its flowers but there's still just a little bit of color going on there and I had one planted in the garden and I loved it so much that I planted another two so we've got a total of three of these right now out in all of the garden beds one thing I want to point out to you this is a rookie mistake and I should have known better but this what you're seeing here everywhere this is all anemone so anemone is a great beautiful plant but anemone runs and it is running everywhere so we had a planting over there and we had a planting here and you can see how it's just spreading throughout the garden it is very pretty in the fall though so I will say when your garden maybe is a little bit lackluster for color and the anemone starts blooming these are pink anemone they do look really pretty so the back of this garden here is a little bit of an area where it can be a little bit more let's say cottage garden feel meaning like just stuff you know all intermingled and mixed in match that's okay this is more of that cottage messy in a good way garden look making our way through it's not a lot of color up here yet there's another amsonia back there that's the other storm cloud that we have there's a phyllic term back here that is going to be blooming soon so hopefully I'll get get back here to get that when it's flowering to show you that as well this garden back in here this is an old pond that we really haven't ran for several several years because it would just kind of go crazy so I leave it out here now because I just I think it still has kind of a I don't know a fun natural feel to it it looks like you know an old garden of the past which it is but I love all that stone and how it just kind of breaks up all the greens in this spot of the garden you can see there's so many ferns back there and they're even kind of making their way into my little daylily bed area here but I love those tall ferns they just they add a nice woodland garden feel there's a creek back there so just a nice little woodland garden feel not a lot going on in here yet so this will be something we'll have to kind of watch there's a few dianthus just starting I guess down there so that's good you can notice I put a lot of I call yard plunder in my gardens as well old rusty things that rusty bench this here is an old rusty trellis that used to have like a windmill on it but I'm using it to grow my clematis on so I just like to put little little yard plundery things in the garden just to add a little fun and a little whimsy planted a few more sun patients compact red candy here in front of the the clematis wall and this kind of lets you see what it was built out of because it's not full yet we just took some chicken wire and put it between some four by four posts about eight foot high and eight foot wide and that's what we're climbing our clematis on I think at one time I probably had 12 different clematis planted on here but the most aggressive of the batch have survived and have taken over and I think now there's about five different varieties in this bed now talking Alstroemeria we sell a lot of the ink Alstroemeria a lot of them are zone seven and eight and not hardy here in Michigan or are they these here have been in this garden for three or four years now this is all Alstroemeria and you can see too how it's spread so this is like my pleasant surprise that I planted several years ago I planted them with no intention of having them come back because again zone seven and eight were zone 6a there's no way that's going to work but it did and this is such a fun area of the garden once they start blooming they're a little bit shorter they're only about 12 to 18 inches tall so they're not the tall Alstroemeria but they're really pretty and still make an excellent cut flower so that little thing there that's actually it wasn't a windmill it was a wind spinner that's actually the top of what we just passed that the clematis were climbing on and we took it down because whenever it gets windy it doesn't spin it tips the whole thing over so we just took it down and just kind of have it set here in the garden as again another little do-diddy of fun little garden clunder Wajilla this is the wine and roses Wajilla it's starting to put on a few little flowers but there are a ton of buds going on in there so this will just be a flurry of beautiful pink once it starts putting on its full show of color limelight hydrangea this baby gets cut back about every three years to about 24 inches tall or so it gets up to about eight to ten foot and then it's like all right down with you so we'll trim it down now that obviously last year wasn't the year of trimming it down but I love this plant and this this is one that you know when we first trimmed it I'm like oh are we gonna kill it are we gonna what's gonna happen we didn't kill it and we've done it several times throughout the years trimming it back to about 24 inches and every year it just continues to come back and it's gorgeous with its big white blooms later on in the season this little area here it hasn't really woken up yet not a lot of color so this will be something we'll continue to watch as the season goes on I do want to show you too something with a hardy hibiscus a lot of people are scared that their hardy hibiscus aren't like leafing out yet or they're not you know they don't they think it's dead while your hardy hibiscus rosemallow any of those brown twigs nothing is going to come from that that's last year's growth and absolutely nothing will come from that you are seeing though the new growth poking in throughout that old woody growth and it's actually coming up pretty good here that's quite a lot of growth going on but certain times in certain areas I'll tell people you know if it's June 1st and you're still not seeing it it'll be showing any minute so be patient with your hardy hibiscus they are very slow to emerge but once they do they go to town and they always bloom on time which is around the end of July beginning of August with those giant beautiful dinner plate blooms thank you for walking through the garden with me today I know there wasn't a ton to show you yet I wanted to show you the annuals in before they start filling out because I feel like it's important to not only see the garden when it's in its prime but also to see it when it's in a work in progress as well it's something you can go back and compare how what was blooming one at what was blooming at what time number one and number two how much growth do or does a plant put on in a short time of the year so we'll be back again in about another month to do another update to see just how much those annuals have filled out to see what else is blooming but until then I'm Heidi from Garden Crossings and I would love if you would subscribe to our channel for more garden tours not only here at my home garden at the greenhouses and we'll also take you on our up north adventures as well thank you for watching