Speaker 1: Broadcasting from Studio A. Here at Proven Winners Color Choice Shrubs.
It's time for the Gardening Simplified Show with Stacy Hervella me,
Rick weisst and our engineer and producer Adrianna Robinson.
Speaker 2: Well, don't look now, but summer.
Speaker 1: Is halfway through, Wow, and it gets hot. There's a
lot of watering involved. Maybe we get a little bit weary.
So we're going to dedicate part of today's show to that.
As a matter of fact, we're going to be transitioning
from our Great Gardens in the United States to a
regular Gardening Simplified Show format.
Speaker 2: But we've got a few.
Speaker 1: Gardens to go to wrap up that series. And thank
you to all of you who have reached out to
us and said they've really enjoyed the series and look
forward to visiting some of these gardens. So to kick
things off today, we're going to wrap up our Great
Gardens series by getting to something I've been looking forward to,
Stacy's number one bucket list garden.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: I can tell you this that Stacy is highly respected
in the horticultural industry. I have tremendous respect for education,
her experience, and when she says to me this one's
number one on my bucket list.
Speaker 2: I intend to listen.
Speaker 1: So Stacy take it away, because I can't wait to
hear about this number one buck Right.
Speaker 3: Well, I should clarify that it's my number one bucket
list garden in the US.
Speaker 2: Okay, guys, I.
Speaker 3: Definitely have other bucket list gardens around the world, sure,
but this is one in the US that I have
wanted to visit since the very first time that I've
heard of it.
Speaker 4: I have not yet visited it.
Speaker 3: I can tell you the research that I did for
this show has made me even more excited to go.
So I'm going to start prioritizing a trip here soon.
Speaker 1: I can see why, because I know what the garden is,
and the characters and the history, and there's layers of history.
Speaker 4: Here right yes.
Speaker 3: And you know, as I said a multiple times during
this American Garden series, the only thing better than a
great garden is a great story about the great garden.
And this is definitely that garden. So, without further ado,
the garden is Gana Walska's lotus Land also known as
Lotus Land, though technically known as Gana Walska's Lotus Land
in Santa Barbara California. And if you haven't heard of
this garden, well, of course, if you are watching on YouTube,
Adriana is putting in all sorts of wonderful b roles,
so you can kind of see it for yourself and
get the flavor of it. But definitely want to look
at the website. Wow, this is such an amazing place. Okay,
So why is it called Gana Walska lotus Land? What
even is Gana Walska? Well, it's a better question. Who
was Gana Walska? And wow, was she a character? Now
we've talked about a lot of characters through the course
of this entire series, and she may just take the cake.
Speaker 2: I think she takes the cake.
Speaker 3: So she was born in Poland or really on the
Russia Poland border in eighteen eighty seven, and from a
young age she had a passion for opera and she
devoted her younger years to becoming an opera singer. And
no shade on Gona Walska, because she is amazing, but
she was not a great opera singer. And every time
she performed, she got roasted, as they say in current parlance,
by the press, and like they were like mean about it,
like although I did read that there was a performance
where she had rotten tomatoes thrown in her in South America,
So you know, I didn't know that that actually happened.
Speaker 4: I thought that was just a cliche.
Speaker 3: But unfortunately it did happen to Mss Walska in one
of her in one of her performances. And so she
took lessons for most of her life. One teacher was
quoted as saying, work as I did, I could not
teach Ghana Waltska to sing so big yikes. It is
said that her failed opera career inspired parts of the
film Citizen k Oh Wow wow, right, yeah, And I
haven't seen that film in a while, but apparently there's
a character that was based on her and her failed
opera career, and that's considered the greatest American film of
all time by many many people. But what Kana Wolska
was was absolutely beautiful, and she, you know, as one
would have to be to have to want to be
an opera singer. She had a dramatic presence and a
flair for the dramatic that carried over in everything that
she did.
Speaker 2: And you see that in the photographs.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, the portraits of this woman that you
will definitely see in our YouTube version, and you can
see even more online. It's just amazing, just absolutely amazing.
One of my absolute favorites is one of her wearing
a bikini and cleaning out her pond, one of her
many ponds at the garden, and she looks just as glamorous.
You know, most of the time when you see people
cleaning out a garden pond, they're wearing like waiters and
they're looking like, you know, a drowned rat. Well, no,
not Ganawalska. She is looking absolutely radiant and amazing while
she cleans out her lily pond. So, anyway, she was beautiful,
she was full of character, and in the course of
her life she had six husbands. Four of these husbands
were obscenely wealthy. Many of them, I believe four of
them passed away, two of them ended in divorce. Not
casting aspersions here and saying that she was one of
those kind of wives, But anyway, so six times some
of them were obscenely rich, and so during the course
of being married to obscenely rich men, she amassed an
amazing collection of jewelry. At one point she had a
line of perfumes named after her. You can still find
these on eBay, the bottles and they are highly highly collectible.
Speaker 2: Thumb.
Speaker 3: Yes, she did in the money sense. So in nineteen
forty one, with the encouragement of her sixth and final husband,
who was a Tibetan Buddhist scholar, they buy this beautiful
property and they name it Lotus Land because it is
intended to be a study center for Tibetan Buddhism, and Lotus,
of course, is a sacred flower in Buddhism. And they're
going to house his huge library of Tibetan Buddhism books,
and they're going to have monks over there to study
and host them. And that's what this house was intended
to become. Well, he passes away before any of that
can be realized, and she instead turns her attention to
making this property into one of the most amazing gardens
that has ever been constructed in this country. So that
she says, as she built her garden, this is a
direct quote. Now the word impossible does not exist in
my vocabulary anymore. Nothing is impossible. And another great quote
from her that I think really kind of sets us
up to go into the garden here, I am an
enemy of the average.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and her garden is definitely not average. So it's
a thirty eight acre garden, which is bonkers for this
area of the country where real estate is extremely sought after,
and there are multiple different them gardens. And we've talked
about this through many of the gardens that the gardens
are kind of broken up into rooms or themes, which
is a really easy way to kind of accommodate all
of your garden goals, sure to really just separate it
out into those different themes. So it really very much
centers around water. There are a number of different ponds
and swimming pools, and you know, a lot of what
she did at lotus Land was to incorporate things, items
that might otherwise come across as a little kitchy or attackie,
but she was able to incorporate these things with such
pinache that they just come off as amazing.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: Now, one of the most famous pictures of lotus Land
are some of the cactus around the house. So there
are cactus, there are tons and tons of aquatic plants.
There's a huge cactus garden. She ends up having such
a vision and desire to build out this garden that
she ends up selling her entire jewelry collection to fund
the purchase of more plants and the continued building of
the garden. And like this woman loved her jewelry, like
this was she gets to a point where she's just like,
I don't even care about the jewelry anymore. All I
care about is making this incredible garden.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: So she knew all sorts of celebrities and was willing
to shell out any number of dollars for the right
specimen and had people, you know, gardeners and so forth
seeking out just these amazing specimen plants for her from
all over the world, and they came back. You can
still see those at Lotus Land today. There is an
Abalony pond that is all lined with abalone shells, and
there's this multi tiered waterfall of giant clamshells, which you
can't collect giant clam shells anymore, it's like illegal to
do that. But a lot of times you see that
in these kind of vintage Hollywood glens, and I just
I have to confess, I just love it. I think
it is simply amazing, and there's just so much to
say about this is a photography of this garden. Now,
you know, I have worked with a lot of photographers
in my previous job, and I have seen the way
that a good photographer can make even a fairly average
garden look absolutely glorious.
Speaker 2: It's a skill.
Speaker 4: But when you.
Speaker 3: See what good photographers do with an amazing garden like this,
it's breathtaking. There are just you know, it's just I
can't even explain how great it is. So one thing
that you need to know about Lotus Land it is
in a residential area, so visitation is very, very limited. Yes,
this is like the hottest ticket in California, right, Okay,
probably not quite. I'm sure there's night clubs that are
more popular. But if you want to go to Lotus Land,
you do need to make a reservation well in advance.
It seems like as soon as they open up the
reservations every year, they just go like that. You are
not getting in without a reservation. So if this sounds
like an amazing thing to you, as it does to me,
make sure you are doing your research ahead of time.
I can tell you right now, when I do go
to Lotus Land, I will be planning it around my
Lotus Land reservation planning the entire trip around my Lotus
Land reservation rather than the other way around. But I
hope that you at least look at the photos or
if you're watching YouTube, you've seen it. Just an amazing
garden built by an amazing person, and I want to
go really like nothing else around here.
Speaker 1: And my takeaway on that, Stacey, is that Ghana was
a very complicated person. Yes, and some people approach gardening
as though it's complicated, and what she did was more
or less compartmentalized and developed rooms, the same thing we
advise people to do. I always advise people to garden
and bite sized pieces.
Speaker 4: And you don't need thirty eight acres to do it,
although it does help, yeah, it does. So on that note,
we're going to take a little break. When we come back.
Speaker 3: It's the last segment of the American Garden series of
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more at proven winners Color Choice dot Com. Greetings gardening friends,
and welcome back to the Gardening Simplified Show, where we
are officially winding up are a tour of American gardens.
So I have four more to get through. I'm going
to do it fast. These are all really cool gardens,
one of which I have a couple of which I
have been to. But I will go quickly and just
kind of give you the broad context so we can
wrap this up and get back to the gardening because
we are in the height of gardening season and that's
what we're going to be talking about in the last
half of the show. So next up, we're heading north
in California to Golden Gate Park.
Speaker 1: You've been there, right, Golden Gate Park. I mean I
think that's the one that's got the windmill. I think
there's a windmill in there, and they have two loops.
Speaker 4: And it's a huge park.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's so so big that you would easily
not be able to see it all.
Speaker 1: I heard it's bigger than Central Park.
Speaker 3: Oh, I think it's much bigger than Central Park. Yeah, okay,
and there are a number of incredible gardens in the park.
But I think you know, in terms of its kind
of position in American history. Golden Gate Park created or
hosted the first World's Fair west of the Mississippi, which
is obviously huge. After the nineteen oh six earthquake in
San Francisco, it housed two hundred thousand suddenly homeless people
who were camping in the park. It just has incredible
trees gardens, and you know, especially if you're coming from
a cooler climate like ours, or really any place sort
of east of California, the trees and things that you're
going to see in this park are like nothing else
you have seen before. I mean, just amazing specimens and
unique species. It also is the home of the very
first Japanese garden in the United States, and that is
quite interesting because you know, I think so many people
nowadays think of Japanese gardens as are Japanese themed gardens
is like the garden, right like, because they are so
manicured to a large extent, and so for a lot
of people who go around to a garden, they don't
necessarily feel like they are in a garden until they
visit a Japanese garden and they see that this has
been very deliberate, very planned out, that the plants are
very highly maintained, so it kind of fits I think
the average description, the average idea that most people have
of a garden. Of course, during all of the anti
Japanese sentiment during World War Two, it got renamed and
there's just horrible stories about what they did to the
owners and gardeners who were taking care of the garden
through that. But things did finally improve and in nineteen
fifty two it started to grow again and the Japanese
caretakers and designers were reinstated. The number one thing that
I remember after having visited this garden many many years ago.
Speaker 4: Have you visited it?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 4: Okay, that bridge.
Speaker 2: Is incredible a photo lot right.
Speaker 3: If you have been to the garden, you know exactly
what we're talking about. It is called the moon bridge.
It's it's almost in what it makes a full circle
in the water, but it is such a strong and
high arch that it's more like climbing a ladder than
crossing a bridge. To go up it, it's like these
kind of wooden rungs that you have to kind of
climb up. It's really really cool, really like nothing else.
Most places, I don't know if they still let you
cross it because it's the kind of thing that would
make you say, hmm, I'm surprised they let people still
do this because it's a little bit dangerous.
Speaker 2: Grandson, All, yeah.
Speaker 4: I'm sure you.
Speaker 3: And also in the park is a San Francisco Botanical Garden,
so an absolute muscya for incredible specimens and species you
will not find hardly anywhere else in this country. Because,
like we were saying about the Huntington Garden, they can
grow anything, so they do lots of cool Australian plants
as well. Now, since we are in the Bay Area,
I had to mention the roof Bancroft Garden, and this
is a garden that I had also always wanted to visit,
and I was very very fortunate to visit it on
a or a couple of years ago. It is a
private garden that is now open to the public. And
Ruth Bancroft was a teacher. She was actually going to
go to school to be an architect, and then in
nineteen twenty nine the stock market crashed and she said, hmm,
I may not have a bright future ahead as an
architect if there's not a lot of money out there.
So I'm going to become a teacher. Of the world
will always need teachers. But I think what you really
see when you visit this garden is that her penchant
for architecture, her penchant for structure and design really translate.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 3: Now, this is a garden almost entirely of cac Dian succulents.
There are very few other plants in the garden, but
they are done so incredibly well. And if you love
cactiane succulents, if you love the structure and shape that
they bring to a garden, it is this is one
of the best places that you can go to see that.
I love this when I was reading about the garden,
this is quite interesting. She believes wrongly that smaller plants
in smaller containers established better, and she insisted that nothing
larger than a one gallon plant ever be planted.
Speaker 2: That's amazing, that's amazing.
Speaker 1: And I've watched videos on Ruth Bancroft once again a character.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she was a task master. She was like, you
do this.
Speaker 4: And I mean, this is my garden.
Speaker 3: You're doing it my way exactly. It doesn't matter what
you think, it doesn't matter what you know. You're doing
it my way.
Speaker 1: And she makes me think of one of the first
mentors I had in the garden center industry.
Speaker 2: She had served in the.
Speaker 1: US Navy during World War Two as a wave but
she was the same way identical type lady. And when
you heard her come walking through the garden center, always
wearing high heels, click click click, and a task master, yeah.
Speaker 2: It was amazing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so probably very similar.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 3: Ruth Bancroft invited a gentleman named Frank Cabot over to
her garden. And you know, she has a huge collection,
and I think among like plant collecting societies, her reputation
really kind of preceded her. So Frank Cabot comes to
her garden. He was a great gardener in and of himself,
a great garden designer, And as he's walking around her garden,
he asks her, what's going to happen to this garden
when you die? And she was like, I don't know.
I mean, this is pre Silicon Valley, this is in
Silicon Valley. So of course, if things were different then
she probably would have said, well, I'm going to sell
this and my ancestors are going to make a million,
couple million dollars. But now she says, you know, I
don't really know what I'm going to do with this
garden when I died. She wasn't even that old at
the time, but he knew what an extraordinary garden it was,
and that is when in this conversation he and she
came up with the idea for the Garden Conservancy. And
the Garden Conservancy is such an amazing organization. I'm fortunate
enough to have worked with them when I lived in
New York, and they are instrumental in conserving and preserving
private gardens for public use.
Speaker 4: They also help private.
Speaker 3: Gardeners open up their gardens to the public and publicize that.
So if you love to live vicariously through people who
have amazing gardens and they're not all just like incredible
gardens that you are on a table, it's such a
great organization you'll definitely want to check them out and
see if there are any open gardens through the Garden
Conservancy in your area. But Ruth Bankraft Garden is where
it starts. Now, before we leave the Bay Area, I
have to talk about a person whose gardens you cannot
visit because they are almost all private gardens. But this
person is Thomas Church. And Thomas Church was active in
the nineteen fifties nineteen sixties and designed a ton of
incredible gardens for I guess what you would now call
mid century modern homes who are being built in which
were being built in California by all sorts of well
known architects. And what Thomas Church did was really kind
of shift the way people think about their backyards and
started to help people think of them more as an
extension of their home, another room, an outdoor room. So
we talked about outdoor rooms and kind of garden rooms.
This is more of a situation where your backyard is
just another room in your house that you're going to
furnish in a certain way, that you are going to
circulate through in a certain way, that is going to
have specific purposes, just like every other room in your house.
And he wrote this wonderful book with a title that
I Adore Gardens Are for People. And of course, if
you can find a vintage copy of this book, it's
very valuable, but it is still in print if you
want a newer copy. And again, his work was almost
entirely private, so there are very few gardens, if any,
that you can actually visit, but it's worth knowing about
him because he was so instrumental in a period where
Americans were really thinking differently about their backyards. He were
a second book called Your Private World, and these were
some of the first books I think that started to
really demystify landscape design for the average homeowner. So fascinating person.
Now left here, We're gonna move up to Portland, Oregon
to the Lan Sioux Chinese Garden. We talked a lot
about Japanese gardens. A lot of people love to visit
Japanese gardens in the US. Not a lot of Chinese
gardens in the US. And they are so dramatically different
than Japanese gardens, and so we're seeing and so interesting.
So this is a relatively new garden. It was built
in September of two thousand. It is related to Portland,
Oregon's sister city.
Speaker 4: Which is su Suzo.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry if you speak Chinese, and I'm totally butchering
this in China, and the name translates in Mandarin to
the garden of awakening orchids, even though it is actually
Lan su is the land in Portland and the Sioux
and Suzho, so that's where the name actually came from.
And they found a Chinese translation for it has a
beautiful tea house in the center of it that you
can have tea, and it's based around a pond, and
it's kind of it's very structural and it has I
think Ricky would really love it if you haven't been
there yet, because it has a lot of those wonderful
moongates and really incredible sculpted gates that you use to
pass from one garden room to the other. It's a
very unique garden, really focused on sculptural rocks, natural rocks.
And I have to tell you, you know, I'm not the
kind of person who always goes to a cafe when
I am in a garden, but if you go to
this garden, you definitely want to make sure you take
the time to have a cup of tea in their
tea house. Contemplate the garden. It is amazing. Now our
last garden is Blowdell Reserve on Bainbridge Island in Washington. Now,
this is not a garden I have been to, but
I am really quite fascinated about it by it. It
was originally the private home of Virginia and Prentice Blowdell.
Prentice was quote the reluctant heir to his father's timber business,
so he was a naturalist, he'd loved nature. His father's
out there making a boatload of money cutting down trees
and selling them for lumber. But he takes this opportunity
to run the blumber mill to really institute new ideas
of recycling, of conserving forests, of replanting, and really kind
of changes the way people think about harvesting timber and
the environmental impact of that. And he takes these environmental
ideas and reinterprets them in this garden on Bainbridge Island
in a way that you know when you read other
people's experiences of going to this garden, where the garden
and nature are distinct, but also kind of almost seamless.
And this being Washington State and out in the ocean
on Bainbridge Island or in the bay. It's lush, it's
full of moss, it's full of gnarled trees covered in lichens.
But also really yeah, yeah, and just I think kind
of really, what I think is I try to wrap
this up real quickly here. All of these gardens are
about the old Roman concept of the genius low side,
the spirit of the place, and that's what makes a
garden so special and so unique and makes it so
memorable when you go there. That each of these gardens
as a spirit that is either imbued in the natural landscape,
is imbued by the energy that people put into it,
by their vision and buy their spirit and the spirit
of the land that is still there today. So with that,
we are going to take a little break and I'm
going to come back. We were talking about how it's
halfway through summer. We're hot, our plants are dry, and
we're talking all about it.
Speaker 4: Stay tuned.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Stacy. I'm inspired.
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Color Choice dot com. We're eatings, Go friends, and welcome
back to the gardening simplified show where I just need
to give a huge shout out to Adriana Robinson, our
engineer and producer and a videographer who is behind editing
our YouTube show, and she has really gone the extra
mile on all of these garden shows to put in
a ton of footage and just really make it a
lively and interesting experience. So if you haven't checked it
out on YouTube, you definitely should. I mean, she puts
her all into every episode and always does a lot
makes our show so much better, but she really met
the extra mile on these.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I feel guilty because all I do is
come here and talk.
Speaker 2: She does all the hard work.
Speaker 3: Well, you see, we do the work up until the show,
she does the work after the show. So together we
all make a great team. So huge thanks to Adriana
from all of us and I know from all of
you as well. Also shout out to everybody who said
hi at the Cultivate show in the industry. I met
some fans at the show and it was just so
nice to hear from everybody, And you know, we sit
here in studio and we know people are watching, but
it's always so nice when people take the time to
say that they enjoy it, so thank you. It was
great to meet you all. Okay, it is halfway through summer.
It is halfway through medior no astronomical summer.
Speaker 4: Meteorological meteorological.
Speaker 3: Yes, it's halfway through meteorological summer, which basically just means
the months that you think of as summer, so June, July, August.
It is not actually halfway through astronomical summer, which will
go until September. I didn't check the date twenty first
somewhere around there, not the usual equinox date, and you.
Speaker 4: Know, that's kind of hard to believe. I'm sure this
is bad news for you.
Speaker 3: I'm sure for a lot of people, this is good
news because they're especially with the weather that a lot
of people have been having in the country, not just
in Michigan, they're probably like, bring it on.
Speaker 2: I'm loving this. Yeah, yeah, I love this.
Speaker 3: Okay, but how do you really reconcile loving hot weather
and now having to water when I know that you
dislike hoses as much as I do.
Speaker 1: I know it gets wearisome. It really does, the whole
watering thing, and people start to get tired at this
time of the year. The plants start to show it. So, yeah,
it's but that's why we're here. This is called the
Gardening Simplified Show. We went on vacation and had a
great time visiting gardens all over the United States. Now
we're back to work because we're trying to simplify gardening
for people.
Speaker 3: Yes, well, I know one thing that I'm seeing a
lot in my neighborhood. Now Here in Michigan, we had
a warm spring, then a cool spring, mostly a cool
summer where we had enough rain, and now all of
a sudden, we're having an extremely hot summer where we're
not getting nearly enough rain. Yes, we haven't had rain
in a while, not enough rain anyway, and my plants
are showing it. Some of my plants are looking a
real bad. Stuff that I don't usually have to water
is looking like hello, little help here. But what I
am seeing a lot in my neighborhood is a lot
of trees losing a lot of leaves, so kind of
those inner leaves turning yellow and suddenly falling. And I
think it's just a response to heat. I'm seeing it
in my own magnolia as well. Okay, I think it
is a response to the heat that we are having
as well as sort of a transition from enough rain
where we went probably six weeks without really having to
put any supplemental water at all because we had enough
rain to you know, really no rain to speak of
in the last two to three weeks.
Speaker 1: Well, and that's been the problem. Feast or famine. It's
been a roller coaster ride. It was that way this winter.
My friends in North Carolina have been struggling with severe
drought in North Carolina and there's other places in the
United States. In winter, we had these constant freeze thaw cycles.
It did a number on the bud Leah's and a
number of plants, Japanese maples, and so these fits of nature,
so to speak, certainly are showing up.
Speaker 3: In the plants definitely. Now if you are seeing yellowing
in your trees, and you also see at this time
of year a lot of yellowing in panicle hydrangeas. As
long as that yellowing foliage is confined to the inner
portions of the plant and isn't super widespread, So as
long as it's kind of further back on the branches,
if it's in the center of the plant, it's really
not a cause for concern. I know a lot of
people freak out, but it's really like with a panicle
Hydrangea is what's going on is just that as the
plant has grown through the season, it is starting to
shade its inner portions, and that makes those leaves less
effective at photosynthesizing, and so the plant's just like, hey,
you're not doing a great job at making the energy.
I don't really need to support you in this heat
without enough water. I'm just going to take all that
chlorophyll that is in you leaf. I'm going to relocate
it to other parts where I can use it. That
makes the leaf turn yellow and it drops, So it's
not necessarily a cause for concern. You should be concerned
if it starts appearing on the tips, if new growth
starts to be compromised, that is definitely a sign that
things aren't going well. But as long as it's fine
to the inner portions, it's just the plant kind of
adapting to the heat in much the same way that
we are trying to adapt to the heat. Because so
don't freak out. It's widespread. Just again, as long as
it's not taking over your whole plant, nothing to worry
about there.
Speaker 1: I have a neighbor with a massive rhododendron, and now
that they're done blooming, he wanted to stump it.
Speaker 2: Oh he is the size.
Speaker 1: Yeah again, so I went over there to help. After
it's done blooming, that's the best time to do it.
But in essence, what we're trying to do is allow
additional light into the center of the plant. Again, because
it's very thin in the center. So yeah, one of
those things.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And if you do any kind of preening like that,
especially when it is so hot and dry, you're going
to want to provide some supplemental water because that wound
is going to give off a lot of water, and
you know, you really want your plants during this type
of weather. You want to avoid stress because if a
plant gets stressed, it usually by vastly slowing or even
shutting down growth temporarily. It needs to conserve its resources, right,
You can't just pick up and go somewhere else where
things are better, So it has to kind of conserve
what it has, and so you need to do your
best to eliminate that stress.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 3: Similarly, if you have a hydrange of blooming, it is
the height of hydrangel season. We've barely talked about hydrange
is at all. So you know, I know our hydrange
haters out there.
Speaker 4: Are probably happy. They're beautiful.
Speaker 3: Yeah, everything's looking really incredible in our gardens here. But
if your hydrange of blooms are browning prematurely, that is
a sign that they aren't getting enough water. And I
know that's frustrating for people because they finally come into
bloom only to become brown and crispy. So you definitely
want to make sure that they are mulched. You know,
mulch is not just a winter thing for hydrangees. It's
super beneficial in the summer as well, where it can
help conserve moisture. Hydrangees are naturally shallow rooted, so those roots,
being so close to the soil surface are going to
heat up from the sun. They're going to dry out
quickly because water is evaporating from the soil surface. And
a shredded bark maulch, you want to try to avoid
a rock mulch around hydrangeas. Shredded bark mulch will do
a lot. Now if you already have a rock mulch.
And I don't know what it is about this year,
but I've heard from so many gardeners who send me
a picture of their hydrange of suffering and it's got
a rock mault right up to the base.
Speaker 4: What you can do?
Speaker 3: They don't appreciate that, And especially if you live in
a really hot climate or you're more likely to have
those rock mulches, because in hot, dry climates, you don't
usually want to have a bark mulch because it can
be a fire hazard. So what you want to do
is try to break that rock mulch away. If you
have any kind of landscape fabric or weed barrier beneath it,
make sure you cut that away for a good two
feet around the center of the plant. And then instead
of putting the rock mulch back, put a regular mulch
just in the vicinity of the plant. That is going
to help keep it cool, whereas the rock mault really
heats up substantially around the plant. And especially if you
have a light colored rock mulch, reflects the sunlight back
on the planet, and hydrangers can definitely fry even in
you know, otherwise ideal conditions.
Speaker 1: Well, for people who have watched or listened to the show,
they know that I talk to my plants and hydranges
are one of those plants that will talk back to you.
Speaker 2: If you pay.
Speaker 1: Attention, you can determine what's going on. And by the way,
I wanted to mention to you, Stacey, you also know
that I'm a leaf shredder with my shredding machine, and
I'll tell you what. Shredded leaf mulch at the base
of my.
Speaker 4: Hydranges definitely definitely make some.
Speaker 1: Cool wet during this hot weather. So yeah, I don't
think it's a fig leaf of my imagination.
Speaker 2: I think it works.
Speaker 3: And you know, the nice thing about doing about taking
this approach is from the street. So if you have
rockmulch and you're afraid about how your buds are going
to look from the street, it's not going to make
any difference. People won't be able to tell that the
mult doesn't go all the way up to the hydrange.
You will see it looking on top of it from
your home or whatever, but it won't really make a
difference as people view it as they're driving by. So
definitely give those plants a little break if they are
browning out too quickly.
Speaker 1: And important to point, I see so many people who
rely on lawn irrigation to water these plants. This is
not the time of the year for that. Great for
your lawn, but some deep trickle watering with the hose
will make a world of difference.
Speaker 3: It does no for sure plant stained water right now.
I mean this is you know, we have long days,
hot sun. They are photosynthesizing like crazy. Remember, for a
plant to photosynthesize, it needs to have the stomata on
the underside of its leaves open. That means water vapor
is coming out. You need to replace that water that
they are losing to keep them growing vigorously. This is
especially important for re blooming shrubs. And I've heard from
a lot of people who you know, here we are
mid July. They're like, hey, my sonic blue, my Regila,
my bloomerang Lilac isn't reblooming. If it gets stressed, it
will shut down growth. And the key to a good
rebloom on these reblooming shrubs is to keep that growth
coming vigorously, keep them in vigorous through growth. The more
new growth they put on, the more flower buds they
are going to create. So now is not the time
to say, eh, it's good enough. I get the feeling,
Believe me, I know, after you know you're out there
and you're like, it is way too hot and sunny.
Even with you know, my sun dressed and hat, I'm
still too hot forget about it. If you think you're hot,
think about how your plants feel and try to muster
up the energy to keep them as hydrated as you
need to be during this weather.
Speaker 1: And with that programming note, we should point out that
next week we get back to the mail bag and
try and deal with all those issues.
Speaker 3: Definitely all right, So we're gonna take a little break.
When we come back, we'll be hearing from Rick at
his halfway point in summer. So stay tuned. Thanks listening
to the Gardening Simplified Podcast, brought to you by Proven
Winners Color Choice Shrubs. Our award winning flowering shrubs and
evergreens are trialed and tested by experts with your success
in mind. Learn more at Proven Winners color Choice dot com.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Gardening Simplified Show. We're halfway through
meteorological boy, that's tough to say summer, and I'll tell
you what's also tough for some people is the heat
and your plants are gonna need a little bit of help.
Speaker 2: Too.
Speaker 1: Let's kick off this segment. It's been a while since
I've done this. How about a limb a rip?
Speaker 4: Oh, yes, all.
Speaker 2: Right, let's do it. Can't be leaf.
Speaker 1: Summer's halfway done. Had some success, had a good run.
I planted from pillar to post. But a few of
my plants are toast, just like me. They got too
much sun. They tell me, success is a mindset. We
celebrate winds, not regret. Meanwhile, the summer heat puts me
on the hot seat to keep my plants watered and wet.
Hanging baskets wilt on the orico, thirsty plants in pots
on the patio. With all the plant care, I juggle
at times. It's a struggle. But I'll tell you this
sure beats snow.
Speaker 3: You know how I know it has been extremely hot
and dry because every day when I get home from work,
my bird bath is dry. Adriana saying she's having the
same experience. Now, this did not happen to me. I
don't think it happened to me last year, although we
did have some you know, hot spells, and last year
was certainly dry overall. But the birds are going in
and drinking so much and splashing so much that I
have to refill my bird bath every single day.
Speaker 1: Hey, they're going to the pool. Yeah, that's fantastic. Yeah,
it's a good reminder that we have to pay attention
in our landscape. So I would recommend one thing that
I'm seeing out there, slime mold occurring on mulch, in
mulch area, shredded mulch areas. It's a good reminder, in
my opinion. I do it in my landscape to stir
the mulch a little bit so it doesn't become hydrophobic.
It's better for the plants, so stir the mulch.
Speaker 4: You know, I'm pretty lucky.
Speaker 3: I don't need to stir my mulch because the possums
and the birds and the squirrels do it for me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they do a lot of that, that's true.
Speaker 3: And you know, every day I come out, there's a
different part that's all kind of ruffled up because they've
been digging around looking for worms or grubs or nuts
that they buried. And I'm like, hey, thanks, guys, this
is great, this is like, this is a great relationship.
You get a place to eat, and I get my
mulch stirred, and I don't.
Speaker 4: Have to do this.
Speaker 1: We're all in this together.
Speaker 4: Yes, exactly.
Speaker 1: Another thing I've learned over the past few weeks. Hose
guides are really important in a landscape because again those
dog on hoses. Oh and by the way, also, I
like to keep a few rags in convenient places in
my landscape to wipe the hose because as.
Speaker 4: You're dragging it around, right, that's the way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I get my shorts dirty and everything else.
And so I'd like to have but hose guides because otherwise,
you know, you do the karate chop thing to plants, and.
Speaker 3: Yes, and you don't have to. There are nice hose
guides that you can buy if you want. I got
some from a garden Master gardener conference that I was
at that are a nice like metal pole with a
Fleur de lys welded on top of them. So I
just put those, you know, where I have to drag
the hose. Kind of changes year to year, but it
doesn't have to be that fancy, honestly, like a sturdy
bamboo steak or really any kind of sturdy steak can
work well. You can improvise with whatever you have. But
if you do have that spot where you pull the
hose out and you end up dragging it over something.
Definitely a hose guide will help a lot to keep
that from happening.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I just use pipe driven into the ground. But
I guess aesthetically it.
Speaker 3: Isn't well, you know, it's it's a it's more of
a utilitarian thing than an aesthetic thing.
Speaker 4: But if you can combine them so much the better.
Speaker 1: You bet feed your annuals. All right, We had a
show on fertilizer and feeding when it comes to your annuals,
especially those in containers. Stacey, thank goodness for water soluble
fertilized for sure.
Speaker 3: Now I know that the folks at Provomina's annuals recommend
that you fertilize every third or fourth watering, which kind
of makes sense, right, because that presumes that the more
you are watering, the more they're growing. So at this
time of year where they are growing super vigorously because
it's hot and they most annuals love the heat, at
least the ones that are doing well right now in
the annuals that don't love the heat have probably already
kind of, you know, bit it, and you're only left
with the things that do love the heat, so I
don't really keep track of it like that for myself,
but I do fertilize probably about every two weeks vegetables
and annuals, and I do, if possible, try to time
it for after a good rain, because you do ideally
want to fertilize when the soil is wet. You don't
want to fertiliz drought stressed plants or really really dry soil.
It can you know, fertilizers, whether they're organic or conventional,
are quite high in salts, and so if you're putting
a ton of salty fertilizer into a dry soil, it
can definitely cause some problems, whereas if you're putting it
into a moist soil, it's a much better experience. So
if you can time that for just after a good
rain or a good watering, if rain is not obliging,
that's the best time to do that.
Speaker 1: There you go, coming from the garden center industry, I
can tell you that when it gets super hot outside,
go to a garden center, there aren't many people.
Speaker 2: There at this time of are there plants though?
Speaker 1: And there are plants. And my whole point is if
you're willing to do it, you can pick up some bargains. Yeah,
at this time of the year, because they're looking to
move some of those plants.
Speaker 3: And you know, that's a good time too to think
about refreshing your containers. If something did you know, de
or isn't looking as good as you wanted, or maybe
it didn't do what you expected. You know. I tried
a new plant this year. It is a eucalyptus cool plant,
and I was like, hey, this color works great for
this little combination I'm doing, and it's growing well. I mean,
it is as happy as can be in this heat.
And it's been interesting to kind of watch the color
change because it was quite blue, you know when I
got it, which I love. The blue is what I wanted,
and as it has gotten so hot, it's turned really
really white as it kind of tries to deflect you know,
that sunlight and heat. But what surprised me about this
plant is that it doesn't stand up on its own,
so I've had to stake it. You know, it would
work well, I guess if I had known that and
kind of planned for it. But it's almost like a
spiller in a container, and that was not what I
intended for this container, so I staked it and now
it's growing like a tree, and it's sexually much happier,
and it's growing really vigorously. But sometimes, you know, we
take a chance on things, you know, and we think
it's gonna work out one way, and it doesn't. So
there's no harm in either staking it or replacing it
if it's not working out the way that you thought.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good way to go.
Speaker 1: I picked up some wrought iron, old metal pieces that
make perfect trellises. I've incorporated them in my landscape and
right now as we speak, there's a Kinsley ghost that's
working up one of them. There's of course hyacinth beam
and a sensational honeysuckle, so they look really really sharp. Also,
as I work in the garden this summer, I realized
that I'm glad I gauged the soil mass properly in containers,
because when those plants grow, yeah, and they get big,
and so you do have to gauge. And the more
soil mass you have in a container makes it a
little easier to maintain the plant, to keep it watered.
Speaker 4: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3: Now we were just talking about vines. How are your
cucumbers doing.
Speaker 1: Cucumber's doing great, working their way up that forty five
degree angle frame that I built.
Speaker 2: Doing good.
Speaker 3: So I had an interesting cucumber experience this year. So
I sewed my cumber seats. I sewed them a little
bit late because I planted peas on the same trelist
that I was going to use. I had to wait
till the peas were nearly done to plant the cucumbers.
But I thought, hey, no problem, you know, they'll still
fruit and do just fine. So I planted them, you know,
again later than expected, and I'll be doggone. I watched
sparrows hop into my vegetable garden, pick off a little
piece of the cucumber leaves as they were germinating, hop
out like show it to its little group of buddies
that were just outside the garden.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and then they.
Speaker 3: Just took turns to I sat there and watched them
do this, and they destroyed every single cucumber seedling in
my garden in this matter.
Speaker 4: It was wild.
Speaker 3: I've never seen anything like that. I mean, I've been
growing cucumbers for years. I've never seen birds just decide
that they're I've never seen that, And I don't know
if it's I mean, I have two bird baths, so
it's not like these things are starving for water in
my garden. I also water frequently enough that they could
easily like land on say the silphium, which you know,
the cups are full of water the vegetable garden. So
I had to resow my cucumber seeds. Wow, about two
weeks ago, so.
Speaker 4: They're coming up now.
Speaker 3: I think the sparrows have moved on and decided to
do something else with their time. But the nice thing
is when everybody else's cucumbers are tired and done producing,
I'm gonna be Yeah, I'm gonna be at peak cucumber.
So it's been, it's been, you know. I would just say,
if you did have an experience like this where you know,
some animals decided that your seedlings would make a tasty snack,
it's not too late to continue trying.
Speaker 2: That's cucumbersome.
Speaker 3: It was with that, it was, and I'm just like,
do I stop them or do I watch this like
insane behavior just to like convince myself that is actually
happening because it was wild.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: Well, I want to make another suggestion, and that is
I purchased solar lighting for my back landscape, and of
course this time of the year we get plenty of
sung right, so it charges them up and at night
you have.
Speaker 2: The solar lights.
Speaker 1: The whole point of it is this, I'm finding myself
in the evening, even into the darker hours, working in
my garden when it's cooler outside, and because I have
that solar lighting, I'm able to do it. So just
a suggestion, and also in appreciation for the plants in
my landscape that have a silvery type foliage to them,
like the Synesio angel wings.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, yeah, they just will play.
Speaker 2: Pop you know, in the evening hours.
Speaker 4: Yeah, definitely, don't throw in the trowel.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's hot, it's a little dry, but we knew
this was coming and we'll get through it and we're
going to talk you through it and have fun doing
that in the coming weeks.
Speaker 4: That's right.
Speaker 3: Well, on that note, we will be back to our
regularly scheduled programming next week, back to our usual format,
so please to send in your questions, quandaries and conundrums,
just like you always have. And in the meantime, thank
you Rick, thank you Stacy, thank you Adriana, and thanks
so much to all of you.
Speaker 4: We hope you have a wonderful week ahead.