The Garden Progress Continues! New Plants & Pruning

On these Friday videos, all season we've been talking about some things we've had going on in the garden or plans we had going on in the garden. And this week will be no different, but we're also going to throw in some plants, some interesting plants that are in the ground and a few plants we got from the rare plant auction at the plant symposium last week. So we'll cover those things. Put a lot of plants into the native garden this week. You can see in this footage of just how many, I think there's like 50 new plants in the native garden now. We put another 10 native, some of them just fit better over here in the garden on this side. So they went in over here. So lots of, lots of planting has occurred this week. I think we thought we were probably done with the big planting. But our friend, Steve Castorani brought us a bunch of stuff from America, the American beauties brand and got those in the ground. And it is really filled that garden out. It looks so much better. And I think as you're watching this, the following Friday folks are going to be here in the garden. So those of you that are coming, you'll get to see, we'll get to see that. The Sestrum parkii, which we moved out here, I guess last year is coming into full flower. It generally is flower, you know, it will flower the rest of the summer. One of the hummingbird, hummingbird's favorite plants out here in the garden, despite not having a red, you know, red flowers, it has that perfect tubular flower that fits them absolutely perfectly. I love how this plant is up tall and narrow like this, because when you do have things visiting it like that, you can really see it in the garden. We had it hidden over there in another corner, has a really funky smell to it. We've talked about it quite a bit where I kind of, it's peanut butter and burnt rubber, I guess would be the, the combination of that smell. I get more peanut butter stuff, gets more burnt rubber from it. Typically it's, it's a suckering shrub. And so when it comes, but when it comes up in the spring, you just cut down to about six or eight or 10 suckers that you want to keep. And then boom, there it is. It doesn't necessarily die back every winter, but this past winter, it was cold enough that it died back once it's root hardy. It's super, super reliable. The reason that we started this video here, because I'm excited, we've got a flower coming on our native agave. This is agave virginica. These are native, they're native to North Carolina, but fairly rare to find them. But there are little pockets all the way up to Illinois and down to Mexico and, you know, in the Eastern part of the country. This one has a flower spike on it. This thing needs very, to be very, very well drained. This plant has been a lot of different names over time. And so it's been Manfreda virginica, and it had another species name for a while. It's been, it's been several things. Again, it's been Manfreda, it's been agave, and then several different species names, combinations with that. But it's an Eastern agave. It's not a, you know, a true agave in the sense that it dies when it flowers. So that's kind of nice. I would hate to have planted this last year and then have the flower spike the first season and then have it die. That does occasionally happen with agaves here in the Eastern part of the country, that they can very quickly come to flower and then, and then be gone. But so this one will bloom many times in its lifetime and will get, can potentially get multiple spikes on it. It's got an aloe look to it. So it's a, you know, it's a very fleshy, a very fleshy leaf that, I mean, if I told you that was an aloe, you would, you would think it's an aloe. I don't, when it didn't have the flower spike on it, it kind of looks more aloe-like than agave-like to me. You'll get more spotting on some, you know, I've seen forms with a lot more spotting on the leaves than this one has. But anyway, super interesting. Not filming it with the flowers open quite yet. This one is pollinated specifically by a couple of moths, including the sphinx moth and then bumblebees as well. So kind of interesting pollination this one has. I'm, I'm filming it before it opens the flowers because I don't necessarily know that I'll miss it in some way. Who knows? I don't know if we'll be out of town or what, or, or the water hose will break it off or who the heck knows what would happen to it. But I wanted to film it while it was, the spike was up here. It's in extremely well-drained soil and it has access to the lime from the concrete from the sidewalk and, you know, the post here that's planted next to it as well. But anyway, really cool agave that's native to the Eastern United States. I said earlier in the season, we were surrounded by construction this year. And I think you can, you can probably hear that across the street. We've got tear downs right before the season started. They tore houses down in 360 degrees around us basically. And all season long, it's been nail guns and, and, and lots of construction going on. Progress, I guess is what we would call it. But it's been quite noisy out here. We've probably shot less content in this garden this year as a result of it. We've, we definitely talked less about some of the plants out here. And I was thinking about that yesterday. We've, I don't know how many plants have actually gone in the ground this season, but we certainly haven't covered them. I mean, there's a ton of stuff that's ended up in the ground over the course of this season that we haven't talked about at all, which is kind of fun because the rest of the summer we'll have, you know, things to show off as they get, have gotten established out here in the garden. And we're in the process of showing off all of those new native plants in some video content. Now, when we were at the rare plant, the rare plant auction this past week, the plant symposium in Raleigh has a rare plant auction that's associated with it. I got stuff two or three years ago. I won this Solomon's seal that's over there and it brightly colored Solomon's seal. And we've added to this collection quite a bit over the last few years. Many different Solomon's seals. Again, I'm not the biggest fan of the regular variegated or green Solomon's seal can just take over your garden. Some of these ones that are more either dwarf or more variegated are definitely slower, slower growing overall. And we've shown off this dwarf one a few weeks ago. That one's pretty neat and it's actually put on some growth quite a bit already. We've got another one of those variegated ones. This one is called Shiroshima down here that I planted. I won this in an auction. So, you know, despite the fact that I'm not the biggest fan of polygonatum or Solomon's seal, I did bid on another one for Steph because I knew she would want this plant. As soon as we saw it, I was like, oh, you know, that's a neat one. And that one will spread overall slower. I will mention over to the right of that, that we also, Indian pinks, Steph pruned this back after it stopped flowering. You can see it's side branching and re-blooming. So that's an important note. If you do have Indian pinks in your garden, they will respond pretty well to being pruned. Immediately just a side shoot from another leaf node right below it sent out a side shoot and they're starting to bloom again. So I think by the heck, by the time next weekend comes and people are here, it'll still be flowering because of that, because of that pruning. But anyway, it responded, it responds well to that. So I think that's just a good side note. Some things, some perennials will do that when you're deadheading them, you know, will respond with secondary flowers. Some won't, but you know, you learn as you go in your garden, right? But sometimes deadheading things like that, we're not collecting the seed on it, right? So what is the purpose of having the seed set? Maybe birds come along and take it. So there's arguments for keeping the seed on some things, arguments for though on smaller, newer planted perennials in your garden, maybe to take those seeds off. So, you know, daylilies and other things, you know, if you take the seed heads off as hostas, whatever, it's going to build that plant faster for next year, rather than keeping the seed on it that first few years. This is a gladiolus murielle, which did have a much tougher name to say in the past. So I'm, this is one of the rare, the rare plant name changes that I'm approving of because gladiolus is certainly easier to say. This is also often referred to as the peacock lily. These will bloom mid-summer, a little later flowering bulb or corm, I guess it technically is. These are, have beautiful white flowers with kind of purple, purplish throats on them. And again, they'll bloom in mid-summer. It's a tender bulb that, you know, is hardy in zone 7 to 10, 7 to 10, probably 7B to 10, really. But you can grow it as an annual in northern areas and dig it and store it just like you would dahlias or any of the other summer flowering bulbs that you might be adding to your garden. What's neat about this one is our friend Paul from down in Wilmington, who we see at this plant symposium. We sit at the same table with Paul for, I don't know how many years I've sat with Paul at the same table at the plant symposium. It's always great to reconnect with folks at this event. And he sent us home with a banana, which we haven't gotten, we haven't gotten banana in the ground yet. It's sitting over here beside the van on the driveway. It needs to find a home as well. But these are going, you know, we've got the perfect spot for these. We had a smaller growing perennial hidden behind another perennial here. So this, these will get up and get a little bit of height on them. So, but thanks Paul for the gift that we received at the plant symposium. Steph won this highly sought after dwarf bald cypress. Jim's Little Guy is the name of this one. It was, this was a witch's broom on a taxodium that Dr. Creech found. And you guys know we found, we had Dr. Creech on camera down in Texas this year, which was kind of fun. And then I guess he sent it over to Jim Barry, who I've known, I know in this business as well, Jim has introduced lots of plants out into the, out into the world as well through his companies. And it was named after, ended up, ended up naming it after him, but really cool kind of dwarf slow selection. It can ultimately be a little tree formed like this, a really cool little taxodium. If you don't want a bald cypress, it's going to get, you know, 75 feet or taller in your garden over the time you're there. If you can find this one, such a cool plant. We took down the big Chinese privet this week, that was about 30 feet tall over there. It's unfortunately created a view now where we can see all the way out to the other road behind us back here. We can see into our neighbor's garden, but he came over and helped me with it. We tackled that together. And then Steph's son came and toted it all out to a stump dump. So it's just cut down to the ground though. So we all know it's coming back. I've got, still got to deal with that stump. So step one of getting rid of the Chinese privet over there, but we got to come up with some other things to put over there. This spot, we have, first of all, we actually have written permission to be on this property beside of us. We had talked about this in a video way back. So they've got a lot of invasive plants back here and don't mind that we're taking Chinese privet and some other things down on this property back here. So, you know, make sure if you go, currently not on this, it's the city's property where we, you know, we have permission from the city to have this garden. This is our neighbor's property, a neighbor who we have permission from before you start selling on their stuff, you know, so keep that in mind. But we have this invasive mulberry above us. So we have a native mulberry and then there's a Chinese mulberry. They have intermixed and created this thing. We'll call it neither. It's not good in any way. Doesn't produce a viable fruit. They just fall off on the ground. They never finish. It's really a terrible plant and they're just everywhere. It had weeped down over here with some also some invasive vines back here as well onto our viburnum nudum. It actually hurt part of the back of it. We transplanted this out of the back garden last year, hoping it'd end up in more sun, but it's been smothered by this. So finally took that off and then there's a tree of heaven next to it. And so we all know, you know, don't know how something gets the, I don't know how something gets to come and name tree of heaven when it's, you know, it's invasive and terrible as it is in a plant we see all across the country. You know, it's just out of control. It is a pretty, I mean, interestingly, if you have a single stand of one plant that's been a single trunk like this, the foliage is nice. The branching is nice. The bark is nice. I mean, you know, I can see why maybe it had been brought here. But it's wildly invasive. And this is literally, I mean, there's crazy hybrid. More is here. Tree of heaven. Eliagnus behind that. Ligustrum lucidum back there. Chinese privet right there. What's that? Golden rain tree is out of its, you know, it's not native. There's petunia serratifolia back there. There's winter honeysuckle back there. Nandina's back there. Like I could go on and on and on. This back garden has just been, it's been a rental for a long time basically. And because of that, you know, those things kind of take over the space. But we do have permission to be over here and I'm going to ultimately prune these. They're going to get a bigger pruning and we'll probably put some other things back here. They've given us permission. We have written permission to be over there. But I just want to point that out. I'm not cutting on other people's stuff. Just willy nilly. And these things are incredibly invasive in our area. Our buddy, Keith Mearns, as part of the plant symposium visited us last week. He's the one that found this blonde envy sambucus or elderberry out in the wild and introduced it to the world. It is grown a lot. It's probably seven feet tall over there in a season. So we know it's going to get a little bit out of control. We'll have to, we'll have to do some control on it. But what a pretty plant. And pretty much we're past, a little past peak on the flowering at this point. But there are, there is some seeds set on it and those seeds will turn later and then birds will come along and ultimately take them. But it was nice to have Keith visit the garden here. Those dahlias that we got from Swan Island are now starting to flower. And so we, we did jumpstart them in containers and then got them into the ground. We want, for us to overwinter dahlias in the ground, they need to be in the ground as long as possible. So we got these in the ground hopefully early enough that they can be vigorous enough that they'll come back next year. We lost some dahlias last year to rabbits. So we have these in the rabbit, as part of the rabbit fence this year. If you want to go back and look at all the names of these dahlias that we have for this year, they were in that video. Just search, I'm sure you can search dahlias in HortTube on YouTube and find that video. But we went through all the ones that we, that we got in from them. They'll be currently, I think they're about two to three feet tall. By the end of the season, most of those will be up over the tomato cage that Steph is filming me back across right now and be seven or eight feet tall back there and much larger flowers. The flowers will increase in size as the tuber and the foliage and everything increases in size, but it is nice to start seeing them flower at this point. It's been such an up and down season a little bit for us. So our vegetables are probably a hair behind where they typically are at this point, but I can see our cucumbers are in full bloom now. I see tomatoes on the tomato plants. Our peppers are, I see peppers on the pepper plant. So we're on our way now, but it was a little slow to start because we had some 93 degree day and then near frost events like two times. And it was just such a roller coaster for a minute. And I don't do a whole lot to push these. I'm not trying to, you know, I've got time, I've got patience. But the tomatoes have now reached the top. They're in full flower or coming into flower. So we'll have tons. And probably by the time people are here next week, we'll have actual produce in here. And the dahlias again are a little behind as well. That's the reason I started talking about all that. They're a little behind where they typically are for this point in June, but by July and August, they'll be six or seven feet tall and be in full bloom over there. I always talk about the rare plant auction as part of the plant symposium here in Raleigh every year. And while that's a lot of fun, the pricing can get a bit high on some things that are, that are, that are, that are super rare. But the fun thing about it is, is everybody goes home with something. The giveaways have just been awesome. We have a variegated parotia in the garden. It was last year's giveaway. I don't remember from, we have several really cool plants in the garden that have been from that. Steph, I picked a curcuma this year that's going out by the road, which probably is going to be tender here in the garden. I could choose to dig it up and move it. Or I've got a buddy down at, has a place down at the beach in North Carolina. He can grow them outside. I might, I might give it to him because he loves, he absolutely loves them. This is, Steph's choice was this buddleia wartii. There's a specimen of this at the Ralston that's quite tall. This is a interspecies hybrid that was named after the person who actually discovered it in what was then Tibet in 1924. I'm still going to call it Tibet. It's Tibet. It was discovered in 1924 as an interspecies hybrid. Gets tall, super, super interesting buddleia here, tender, zone eight, zone eight hardy. So it probably needs a slightly protected space, but it also needs a lot of sun as well. So another interesting giveaway plant. We'll show this, you know, in time. We'll show that, we need to show that variegated parotia. We may never have shown it. We might've talked about it when we got it last year, but I don't remember if we did or not. Again, there's so many plants out here. I think that I, for two years in a row, we did this, we'll film every plant in the garden in a 20 some part series. And we did that for a couple of years. And I was like, oh, people are going to get potentially tired of that. So we haven't done that, but I may have taken my foot off the gas in a way that like, is not like now you don't know a lot of things that are out here because we've added, we've added them so quickly. So we do need to kind of go back through, I think Steph and, and think about some things maybe we haven't talked about or haven't shown off in a couple of years that have put on some growth or whatever it is. Steph bit on an entire tray of Phat's Hedra. And I didn't, at first she was like, there's a whole tray of Phat's Hedra over there. And I didn't know, I didn't know it was a dwarf one that she was bidding on. I thought she was just bidding on a random tray of, of, of rooted cuttings of, of Phat's Hedra. What's this one called midge? Pixie. Pixie. Pixie. But this is an entire tray of rooted cuttings of a dwarf, of a dwarf, of a dwarf Phat's Hedra. And they're rooted in here well. This is one of those deep trays. We started talking about this this year. Kind of funny when we go out on the road, other people did the deeper trays this year too for their seedlings and also had success with that. But we are using deeper trays, not quite this deep for our annuals, but they were deeper this year than we've done in the past. And we got great results out of that. Heck, those Beacon Impatiens, if you can, they're right here. Those were in those deep cells and all of our annuals because of that look really, really great in the garden. But anyway, an entire tray of a dwarf Phat's Hedra. We have a variegated kind of mutant one over here. We have Curly and Angiostar on the right-hand side, which has a broader variegation. There's quite a few selections of, of Phat's Hedra out in the world. We're going to put one of the dwarf ones right next to the porch, next to the David Viburnum and let it grow up maybe onto the porch. These will work as ground covers. We don't need, uh, how many is this stuff? Um, it's eight times, uh, is it, oh, it's five rows of eight. So it's a 40 cell tray. That's an odd, that's an odd number. Maybe it's less than that middle row. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Okay. I'm doing, I'm doing, I'm doing math. It's a 38 cell tray. That's a weird, that's a weird tray. It's two rows of seven and three rows of eight. Okay. We have 38 of them. We're going to put one right there and maybe another couple here or there. We might put a few in containers, um, for later. They also work as houseplants, but if you're coming to the open garden, some of these will be, um, given out at the open garden. So that's kind of a fun, uh, a fun one. We look forward to, um, uh, giving a few of those away to folks who were showing up for that. So there you go. A few of the things happening in the Raleigh garden. We have just, we have an absolute ton going on. I thought as we got closer, we were ahead like three or four weeks ago. I was like, man, we're way ahead of where we were last year, leading up to the open garden. And then things started happening from every angle and we were out of town a couple of weeks. And now it was like, Oh, you know, the pressure was on, but it's been a good pressure. All the things that we've done out here have really kind of radically changed the space over the last few weeks. So we look forward to hosting everyone this season. And that's what we have going on in the Raleigh garden right now. Thanks for watching.