Weekly garden walk n' talk! / Why I Ripped Out a Garden, Dahlia Tour, Monty Don News 😢

Hi friends, I hope you're having a great day out there in your gardens Nick is helping me out today for today's garden walk and talk It's currently mid-september in my pennsylvania garden And I just woke up to some I don't want to say bad news in the gardening world, but certainly some big news I bet that many of you have heard at this point that montydawn has decided to leave gardener's world After this season and I just want to hear your thoughts on what you think about that change Who do you think is going to be the new presenter? But also wouldn't it be wonderful if there was a way that we could tell montydawn how much he's meant to all of us Throughout the years. I know his books have changed my life. Not just my garden, but my life his honesty About his struggle with depression really it made me feel like I had a friend not only in the garden But in the garden that's living in my mind that sometimes gets crowded with weeds So thanks so much to montydawn for All that he has shared with us throughout the years both be it in a video and on the written page With all that being said, let's take a look around the gardens today. What do you say nick? Let's do it He says let's do it with a thumbs up. So here we are in the hydrangea room So most of our smooth hydrangeas have turned green now, of course, we had the beautiful whites creams and pinks But the only color we have at this time in the garden is this crepe myrtle Isn't that beautiful? It just looks like a pink puffy cloud in the garden And I took a little footage of this bloom earlier and it was just covered in bumblebees So I just love that And you know I think this time in the garden can be a little bit challenging because the weeds are getting out of control The mosquitoes are getting out of control But if we can just find a few things that still bring us joy in the garden, that's what keeps me going That's what keeps me out here Weeding poke weeds that are seven feet tall So let's go through the hydrangea room together Let's focus in on all the beautiful color that we can still enjoy Over here we have an amazing dahlia that i've completely fallen in love with it's called blue boy I suppose it's garden blue. It's really lavender at the end of the day, but it's beautiful It's almost six feet tall now It's just the perfect decorative dahlia right next to that we have diva Those are nice side by side, aren't they they would look nice in an arrangement together Paired with something like american dawn, which is a beautiful orange dahlia So these are sprinkled throughout the main flower walk, but I actually want to focus in on the book nook today The raised bed gardens and our brand new rose garden. Yes. That's right I have ripped out grace's garden and we are in the midst of replacing it with a formal rose garden and a new fountain So we're going to show you that today So let's go ahead and head into the book nook Our incredible hydrangeas have all turned green There's a little bit of burning You know on some of the blooms, but that's all right. It's not too bad Look at all of the insects You know, normally I try to film this early in the morning or late in the evening And a lot of the bugs are asleep at that point but look at all of the moss and the bumblebees They're fighting over this agastache, aren't they? That's really lovely you can see the cleome have gone to seed could you get a close-up on this neck You can see the pods right here They're starting to burst. This is a great time to just go ahead Collect some of that seed for next year If you don't collect it, it'll just fall down onto the ground and replant itself You only need to grow this plant once and then you can collect seed for the rest of your life So we have these henry studio pots here in the book nook and I want to point out the color on these These are from henry studio And the stain color is relic lava A lot of people ask me about that and the new fountain that we're going to be receiving is also going to be stained Relic lava, and I just love this Now look at this This is wait. What is this? Let me think about that for a second This is a pink agastache. I think it's called pinky winky. Is that right? No pinky pie pinky pie agastache I planted this at the beginning of june. It's mid-september and look at it This is the best perennial for a planter because it stays in flower. It never goes out of flower It still looks exactly the same as it did back then in june We've got a trailing geranium right here. This is the ivy leafed geranium. You can see it looks like ivy And look at the blooms on that aren't they lovely Little stripes of raspberry running toward the center So I think I have four agastache plants and maybe two or three trailing geraniums in here and these pots I did plectranthus That's the variegated foliage that you see right here Okay, I see nick is filming a bee Gotta get the bees in that's right. You gotta get the bees in That's what's most important. This is plectranthus We've got a new lantana right here I think this is some kind of scaevola, but I can't really remember I just popped that in the other day and then down here in the shorter pots. We have straw flower And we also have a ornamental pepper with purple foliage And you know what? I am loving the color of these pots now, especially Since our panicle hydrangeas have started to turn that lovely shade of mauve So let's take a look at these because we have a couple different kinds Of panicle hydrangeas, so if I can sneak back in here Let me cut a few of these actually so we can see a side-by-side comparison This one right here is limelight You can see it stays pretty green during the fall season and i'll get closer to you guys with this in one sec this one strawberry sundae That one's a little bit harder to find nowadays for some reason And i'm not sure why now say a prayer for me that the skunk is not currently back here And I will go ahead and snip one of these limelight primes for us Here's a limelight prime So there's the difference limelight prime limelight strawberry sundae And as we walk around the other gardens We can go ahead and pick some more panicle hydrangeas and compare their fall bloom color because they really are quite different They pretty much all start out white Now I want to point out this watering can here I'm sure a lot of you love yulia from why garden. She has a great channel here on youtube Maybe about three or four years ago She sent me some roots from her whitewood aster Which is a native plant and I have that over in grace's garden and I just cut the blooms off of it Because I thought they were so beautiful. I wanted to enjoy them when I was in the book nook reading And here they are It looks like we've got a lot of bees on On these blooms too, right hon? or a wasp Should we head into the library? I don't know how the light's gonna we can try Just in case you've never seen inside the library before this is a eight by eight foot structure The exterior is made from all reclaimed material the windows were owned by someone else previously this door belonged to their neighbor But we just tried to reuse as many materials as possible in here And i've mentioned this one time And it's worth mentioning it again. If I were to build this structure over again, I would make it bigger Definitely always make it bigger than you think you're going to want more space And put in a lot more outlets. I only have one outlet in here over there I wish I had outlet on every single wall other than that a plus And those things are my fault I set those things in motion All right. Let's go ahead and take a look at the raised bed garden Once we walk through there nick and I are going to show you the new area That we've completely torn out And are rebuilding from the ground up because why This is nick. He's like, I don't know. Why are you why do you keep doing stuff like that? Because I looked at it and it was a weedy crazy mess so I decided to rip it all out and start again Right now that we're getting older. We have to think about What do we really want to do maintenance wise? I don't want to maintain a weedy mess of plants that I don't love If I don't love a plant i'm pulling it out and replacing it with something that I do like So we'll just pass by the hydrangea annex Look at these aren't these gorgeous this dahlia is called lilac time This is my favorite dahlia See the blooms there Here's a good one beautiful Dahlias are all so unique. They have eight different chromosomes so you can have so many variations in terms Of what their blooms look like but also what the plant structure looks like. I mean look at the structure of these plants They're really bushy and full and lush. They almost say use me in the landscape Versus the next one we're going to see says I think use me as a cut flower. Oh here comes rocky So this one right here Rocky's getting his close up This one is called great silence and look at the difference in the structure of that plant You've got the leaves down lower on the plant and then you've got this nice stem without a lot of foliage on it So, oh my gosh, nick. There's a cricket on there Or grasshopper. I mean, there's a grasshopper. Well, see we don't want that. We don't want him on there, but i'm gonna let him go But anyway, hon Just look at this. Look how easy this is to cut and strip Right i'm done Versus if I try to get in here and cut lilac time I've got to look for the right area. I want I need a big stem. I need a big long stem I've got to cut it down here look at all Of the foliage that I have to strip and loose from this plant In order to make it something that I can work with in a bouquet And if you saw the video I did on the best and worst dahlia varieties I talked a lot about the importance of when you're Going to plant dahlias for cutting to think about ones that don't have a lot of foliage along the stem and that's why That's so much easier to cut and strip versus something like this and now we've lost All of these blooms just so I could cut it So this is the kind of dahlia that I really want to be using in the landscape And this is the kind of dahlia that I want to be using for cutting So we'll just sacrifice all these turn them back into mulch. But nick if you don't mind getting a close-up on this one This is labyrinth That's beautiful, isn't it? I love that one Now I think a lot of the dahlias in this bed were mislabeled so we can just show you a close-up on them And then hopefully you can help us identify them This one was supposed to be Suki yori Nama something But it's not right However, you say that that's not what this one is because rebecca grew it and the blooms were this big So obviously this is some other variety This one was supposed to be purple tahitia once again, not purple tahitia, but I don't know nick Do you mind showing a close-up on that? Maybe someone can Help us identify it It's beautiful. The dahlia itself is producing a lot of blooms This one up here is also supposed to be purple tahitia and some of you told me on instagram that it's Michaela miranda That's great, isn't it? Here's a beautiful orange one I'm shaking because I just had my first pumpkin spice latte of the season I should have a big cup of water before this instead Um, i'm not sure what this really large purple variety is I had a tag in it But the label washed away. Anyway, that one's fun, isn't it? Now look at this one. This one is gorgeous This is my favorite dahlia of 2026. This is called vancouver Okay, i'm getting a whole week out of this and the base isn't that fantastic Okay, sweetheart. Do you mind coming this way? Shout out to nick for helping me out today It's gotten a little hard to do these walk and talks It's almost like I have to split my mind One part of my mind is the cinematographer and one kind and one part of my mind is the gardener trying to talk to you Guys, and sometimes I feel like I get all jumbled up in my mind. So this is a huge help Let's take a look at this one hun This is cafe au lait A lot of these blooms are past their prime. Let's see if I can cut a nice one right here Sometimes cafe au lait is more buff. Sometimes it's more pink Environmental factors play a lot into dahlia color changing throughout the growing season Usually see more of the buff tones when things start to cool down here. It's still in the mid 80s Ignore this shrub. We're going to be moving it. Don't look too closely at the stressed out shrub Here we have another wave of sunflowers nick Nick is airing all my dirty laundry Here we have pro cut plum sunflowers Aren't those lovely, you know why I like pro cut plum They make sense in the spring. You can pair them with pastels. You can pair them with bright colors in the summer And in the autumn you can pair them with dusty rusty dark colors It just always works. It's always beautiful and it's unique too. It's not just another yellow sunflower So we have one more wave of sunflowers after this one Okay We can head over to the rose garden now I'll just go ahead and set these things down on the table with rocky So last fall around this time we put in this brand new rose garden So we used to have trees running along the entire length of our property and the trees were huge They were bird cherries apples rose of sharons and they were just reaching onto the road Delivery trucks would be running into them So we decided to go ahead and bite the bullet and we paid to have them all removed And that's when I put in an exterior hedge and an interior hedge and then last year We put in this new rose garden and we filled it up With princess charlene demonico roses, isn't that beautiful hun? This is grace kelly's daughter princess charlene demonico These ones one Two three four five six these ones are from heirloom roses And they are grown on their own root stock These three look how tall these are Okay, what is that nick? Six and a half seven feet About yeah, nine and a half feet. Nick says nine and a half feet Anyway, these three are from grace rose farm and these are not grown on their own roots. They're grafted Planted them at the same time. Can you get a close-up on that honey? I wish you guys could smell this anyway The only other thing we planted in this garden Was roseanne geraniums and then there's also two bulbs in this garden We have fritillaria persica and we have gladiator alliums and that's it And because I constrained my plant palette it is significantly easier to keep this garden in check versus The way this particular area used to look which was just a jumble of one of everything So sometimes people will send us plants, which is a huge blessing and sometimes I don't need them All we'll have one leftover and I think oh, I can't pitch that plant and i'll put it here and another one I don't really like and i'll stick it here and that's what ended up happening to this area And I can show you a little bit of footage of that And you know when you don't really love an area you definitely don't want to take care of it, right And this year I want an area that we can just enjoy so we are mass planting reminiscent pink roses One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine and actually have three more In the landscape that we're going to go ahead and transplant over here now These stakes are very exciting, right nick This is nick So Thanks to henry studio We are getting the two-tier renaissance fountain in relic lava. I believe it was about 48 inches high So imagine it at about the height of my shoulders And it's going to fill up this area right here. So we'll have a two-tier fountain In a nice mid-range brown color right here and all of these beautiful pink roses All around it and I also just got confirmation that we are going to get liriope to line this entire bed so right now Here's where the box would start, right? But what's happening underground and what you can't see right now is that I have a bulb border that runs the entire length Of this garden two different kinds of daffodils and a beautiful light blue muscari And I do not want to get rid of that bulb edge. It is gorgeous But when it dies back naturally It doesn't look so good. So i'm going to go through with the liriope and i'm going to plant it right behind those bulbs As the bulb foliage dies back the liriope will be coming on again and cover up that bulb foliage and then we'll have a nice Clean edge and the only other thing i'm going to do divide those rosangeraniums Plant them throughout here Once again, pick up the gladiator allium from that garden put it in here pick up the fritillaria persica from that garden put it in here and then done because why I wish you could see nick right now. He's like lower maintenance Lower maintenance All right. Is it okay if we come this way hon? Okay, cool. I don't know what the light is like today. It's kind of hot Anyway, we're going to plant that together in a video The entire thing setting up the fountain. What was that? We live next to a rock quarry. That's what that was But we're going to do that whole thing together Let's actually go through this gate because um, the driveway garden is lined with liriope So what's going to happen is that this line of liriope is never going to stop It's going to flow from the beginning of our property all the way to the very end of the property This is a nick's batmobile Go eagles So you can see right here This is liriope that I planted last fall. You can see some rose of sharon popping up in there But imagine that lining the new rose garden And you can see these are the new plants and then once we hit I think right about here These are plants from a previous season And guess what starting at about right here And going all the way down here to right here all of this liriope Is courtesy of a neighbor when we first moved here She gave me a box that was about this big Of liriope plants from her garden and I just gradually over the years divided them and moved them along Until finally after 10 years we have a full hedge here courtesy of that initial box that she gave us So over here, sorry about grace if you can hear her. We do have a chicago fig I think the chicago fig is already down to negative five Look at that You see the figs in there We've got some abelias here I just pruned that back into a I just pruned that back into a ball shape the other day And we're losing a lot of color in the garden this time of year, but i'm totally okay with that We have three knockout roses in this garden. I do want to replace these I know the rose that I want to get it's called sexy rexy But I feel like I can't say that in videos I'm gonna have to look at the plant patent name because that's usually just a bunch of like Letters and numbers and call it by the plant patent name. So that's the only time you're ever going to hear me say On this channel, but we can say goodbye to the knockout roses because they're just not doing it for me. They're just not the right color So here we are in the main flower walk. Here's the new bistro garden that we created last fall Not too much going on here. Where did I leave my snips? On the table. Anyway, I wanted to show you the difference between these two panicle hydrangeas This one is firelight And then look at that next to limelight Well friends, I think that's it for today's video a huge Thanks to nick for filming and i'm really looking forward to reading your comments about how monty dawn has impacted you throughout the years Man, i'm really gonna miss seeing him on gardener's world. I can't imagine a presenter other than him Although I imagine some of you probably grew up with uh, george hamilton. Was it george or jeff hamilton? I have one of his books And he really seemed like a down-to-earth guy and every man if you will All right, friends. Have a great one Bye