Speaker 1: Broadcasting from Studio a at proven winners Color Joy Shrubs.
It's time for the Gardening Simplified Show with Stacy Hervella, me,
Rick Weist, and our engineer and producer Adrianna Robinson. Yay, Today, Stacy,
we get to talk about cottage gardens. The roots are
in self sufficiency. The phrase cottage gardens originates from the small,
maybe functional, and certainly densely planted plots surrounding the modest
rural cottages of working class laborers in England, with roots
well that reach back into the fifteenth century. I know
you love cottage gardens, so do I.
Speaker 2: Well, you know the thing is, I love wild planting.
I love things to run together, I love things to
mix together. I like my plants to touch and then
some overlap. So yeah, this is my style of gardening. Now,
I will say cottage gardening does tend to favor sort
of more let's say traditional color palace. Yes, and I
generally don't. But it's about the vibe. It's about the
vibe of a cottage garden. You don't actually need to
use English plants. You can have a cottage gardening style
with North American natives. You could have a cottage garden
with vegetables. There's many, many different ways to interpret this exuberant,
flower filled approach to gardening.
Speaker 1: Well said, and you are right, many different ways to
interpret it. That's why today we're doing a show on
cottage gardens. A simple way to express it is different
flower colors and textures impact informal design. A plethora of plants.
Plethora is going.
Speaker 3: To be our word of the I love it.
Speaker 2: A plethora of plants is what every garden needs.
Speaker 1: That's right. And if I was starting one, I would
have to say, for me personally, especially today with the
incredible cultivars that are available, Stacy, I would start with roses.
Speaker 2: Oh you gotta have roses for a cottage garden. You know,
it's not just that roses are so closely associated with
England and English gardening, but you know they are just
a classic choice. They are I think probably the number
one plant that's associated with a cottage garden.
Speaker 1: You bet this is right in our wheelhouse. Then no
tapping of the brakes here in unimaginably large number of
plants we've stuffed stuffed into well, maybe what you would
consider a small property. And if you want some visual
inspiration Pinterest will give you again word of the day,
a plethora of candy for your eyes. I always think
when I hear cottage gardens, I always think of those
Better Homes and Gardens magazines from the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yep, I remember those.
Speaker 1: A lot of inspiration there. Now. The interesting thing about
cottage gardens, and if you have followed the Gardening Simplified Show,
you know that Stacy loves these kind of plants. Stacy
self sewing or seeding plants are embraced.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, you got my number. Self sewing and seating
plants are such a crucial part of a cottage garden,
and they're also the easiest part to have in a
cottage garden. So you've heard me talk about it before.
Self sewing plants are those that are true annuals. Generally,
sometimes you're perennials that just sow and pop up here
and there. So you've got things like poppies and arugula
and you know, all sorts of wonderful plants like that.
And what they do and the way that I use
them in my garden is they introduce a randomness that
you know, you just cannot replicate by placing plants deliberately
in you know, in a garden, and I love the
way that they just kind of introduce that happenstance and
create interesting new combinations and just make sure that your
garden is always so different your deer. I like that
they don't stay put. I get that other people will
see them as weedy or their unpredictability as a liability.
But you know, if you love this look self, sewers
are really your very best friend.
Speaker 1: You bet, I agree. So it's interesting to look at
that concept of cottage gardens. If you have, for example,
favorite plants in drifts, that's more of what I would
call a meadow garden. A cottage garden is going to
be just a wide variety of individual plants with your taste,
or maybe groupings of three. I think of things like
Shasta daisies. And of course, as I mentioned the roses,
I was thinking, as it relates to cottage gardens, that
the reminiscent roses are ideal for this or the rise
up rosen.
Speaker 3: You know it.
Speaker 2: Those are the two that I am spoiler alert going
to recommend in plants on trial. But don't worry, there's
plenty of more plants on se grits to plants on
trial that you have yet to hear.
Speaker 1: Now in today in America, the term cottage garden has
been kind of a catch all term to describe a
garden that's bursting at the seams and does not otherwise
conform to, let's say, a recognizable style. Individualistic. I would
call it not necessarily out of control, but individualistic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely not something that can be replicated on other sites.
And you know, it's interesting when you were talking about
how plants are often grouped and that it's typically a
lot of individual plants. Another thing that I do think
is characteristic of a cottage garden are plants that are
easy to grow and divide so that they end up
kind of spreading around the garden as kind of a
unifying element, or plants that you're trading off with friends
and that kind of thing. So it's not like, oh, hey,
you know, all of my Shasta daisy's are just relegated
here to this section. But it's like I bought a
Shasta daisy. Over the years, it's gotten huge, I've now
divided it and now it's here and here and here
here exact and kind of makes that appearance of randomness,
but unity as well, because you have the same plant
used multiple times throughout the garden, but not like you know,
with a real eye towards composition, more with an eye
towards just the joy of flowers and plants.
Speaker 1: Exactly well said, And of course in a cottage garden,
I believe that we have to look at the concept,
especially considering the fact that we're packing them in. We've
got to look at the concept of tall, medium, and
short all within a cottage garden. And Stacey, you know
how much I love grasses, and it's in a situation
like this where I would look at using a calamagrosis
a carl Forrester type of grass because of the height
that it gives without taking up too much space.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think you've really hit on an important point
as well as the texture that grasses provide. We've talked
a lot about how cottage gardens have flowers as a
central element, but texture is equally important, so you should
definitely not exclude things like grasses. And I think grasses
can play all sorts of different roles. Sometimes, of course,
they can look really contemporary. So if you're looking for
more of an old fashioned. Look, you might want to
choose that more carefully, but I would agree that grasses
are a very crucial part and that you know, it's
very I have found this myself. It's surprisingly easy to
wind up with a garden of plants that are all
roughly the same size.
Speaker 1: Yes, it is.
Speaker 2: You know, it's kind of funny to say that. You
don't set out, but you know, you're just like, I
like this plant, I like this planet, like this plant,
and you plant them all up and you're like, wait
a minute, my garden is like exactly five feet tall,
and there's nothing at the you know, at the bases,
the shoes and socks, and there's nothing up above. And
so yeah, the really, when you look at cottage gardens,
it's really key to have all of those different sizes
to create those layers. And we've talked about layered gardening
before as well.
Speaker 1: You bet the lawn, of course, is not going to
be important in a cottage garden. You're not going to
have time for a lawn. You're going to be busy
with other things. And so I want to share with
you a never admit there's no more room for plants, Limerick.
I like this, Yes, you know, I think back to
the seventies, the sixties and seventies when the jello people
talked about there's always room for more jelly. Yeah, so
I kind of incorporate that into this week's limerick. No
more lawn in my yarden. Don't like it. I beg
your pardon. Keep planting. No stoppage here at my little cottage.
There's always more room in my garden. The garden of
my dreams is one that goes to extremes. It's individualistic.
I find it quite holistic. It's bursting at the seams.
I'm an easy going kind of fellow, not rigid, just
kind of mellow. Gardens of bloom, always more room for
plants and a bowl full of jello.
Speaker 3: You really were inspired.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, if you look at guides online to create
a cottage garden, in many cases they would recommend a
curved path. This is where I go off the path
a little bit. I personally believe a straight path provides
good contrast to the wildness of a cottage garden. So
for me, I like bricks, like maybe recycled bricks in
a pathway straight up to the front door, and then
paint that front door some kind of really funky color,
a bright color.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I agree when you have that exuberance
and that you know, just kind of I don't want
to say hodgepodge because that sounds like a bad thing,
but you know, unrestrained kind of composition, those vertical, those
those strong lines become very very important. You can have
a curved path through your garden, but I do agree
that the kind of the main pathways serve as a
counterpoint by staying straight and offering some organization counterpoint.
Speaker 1: Good word, Let's see what Stacy has in mind in
Plants on Trial as we continue talking about cottage gardens
on today's show, including plants you may want to try
that's coming up next here in Plants on Trial and
The Gardening Simplified.
Speaker 2: Show, beautify your home and community with proven Winner's Color
Choice Shrubs with over three hundred and twenty five unique
varieties to choose from. There's a flowering shrub or evergreen
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distinctive white container your local garden center or learn more
at proven Winner's Color Choice dot com. Creating's Gardening Friends
and welcome back to The Gardening Simplified Show. Where despite
the snow literally at our doorstep here in Studio A,
we're dreaming of a flower filled cottage garden in the summer.
Because you know, I think that a lot of people
love the idea of cottage gardens, but they're very intimidated
about trying to start on. Yes, now, I do want
to say, first of all, I don't think that, for
the most part, cottage gardens are as much work as
people think that they will be. You know, I have
a lot of perennials in my garden, and really the
only thing that I do to maintain them is, you know,
cut everything back in spring. I mean, I don't really
do a whole lot otherwise, I don't grow stuff that
needs to be staked. And nowadays, you know, staking is
like that's stuff from thirty years ago. Now there's so
many things that don't need to be staked, So you
don't need to worry about that. You know. Sure, every
couple of years you've got to divide some stuff and
move some stuff around, and but that's you know, that's
part of the fun. Is that's part of how your
garden changes over time. So I don't think that they
are necessarily as much work as people presume that they are.
And we've had these kind of conversations before, how modern
plant breeding has really taken away a lot of the
work that people assume gardening requires. You know, plants are
more disease resistant, plants are sturdier and don't usually need
staking they're more reliable, they bloom longer. So it's time
that we all kind of rethink, you know, how much
work it actually takes, because we might be harboring some
very antiquated notions of garden maintenance. It just simply don't
necessarily apply today.
Speaker 1: And the beauty Stacey is if you change your mind,
you can move things around. That's part of the fun
of a cottage garden, and you touched on it in
the first segment. Texture is so important, varying types of texture.
So if you step back and you're not quite happy,
you can move things around.
Speaker 2: That's the beauty definitely. Now, if you find yourself a
little bit intimidated by the thought of trying to create
a cottage garden of your own, don't be. I have
a simple solution for you, and that is much like
Rick was saying, you know, go to Pinterest or do
an image search on your favorite search engine for cottage
gardening cottage gardens, and you can put in cottage gardens England.
If you really want to see those kind of archetypes,
of course, you'll find results from all over. And don't
just look at those photos and go, oh, that's pretty,
you know, take the time to actually read what you're
seeing in those images and think about what they show.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: One thing that you can do is to kind of
sketch take a you know, print it out and take
a piece of sea through paper and kind of sketch
it out, and you'll start to see the elements. You'll
start to actually think about the elements then, rather than
just seeing it as like a whole bunch of plants.
And when you do that, I think you really start
to understand that the things that are making that particular
garden successful for you you are easy to replicate. You
just kind of need to break it down into elements
that you can digest and translate into your own garden.
Speaker 1: Kind of like a bubble drum, yeah, like a bubble drum.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But I do agree with you Rick that the key
to a successful cottage garden is height. And as we said,
it is surprisingly easy to accidentally end up with a garden.
It's almost all the same height. I don't This is
a very strange phenomenon, but it is surprisingly easy. And
when you're looking through these images, what you are going
to find is that the cottage, the best cottage gardens,
the most effective cottage gardens have some element of height.
Now that doesn't necessarily mean tall plants. It often does,
but it can also mean things like a rose trained
onto your house. It can mean a vine trained on
to say, a porch post, or a trellis or obelisk
out in your garden, or a topiary, large shrubs, tall perennials.
There's a lot of different ways to accomplish this, but
there does need to be an element of height so
that you're getting that sort of just you know, curtain
of flowers effect.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you mentioned that, Stacey, because I want a
trellis or an arbor in my cottage garden.
Speaker 3: You already have one, I know, but.
Speaker 1: I'm saying that's what I want in a cottage garden.
Speaker 3: And what are you going to plant on it?
Speaker 1: Roses and hyacinth being vine okay, yeah, love it, and
probably a clematis.
Speaker 3: Oh, I love it.
Speaker 2: Such great choices, you know what you're talking about with
this cottage garden stuff. But of course, so instead of
our regular plants on trial, where I just tell you
about one of the three hundred and fifty plus proven
Winter's Color Choice shrubs, I'm going to go over a
couple of topics that we have in our line that
are perfect for a cottage garden look. So, you know,
I also want to remind our listeners as we have
this conversation that a cottage garden is a journey and
not a destination. You know, yes, you can absolutely spend
this spring digging things up and going to the garden
center and spending tons of money and coming home and
planting a cottage garden, but it's always going to be
a work in progress. You're going to find gardening friends,
you're going to trade plants. But these are the kinds
of elements that you're gonna want to consider, especially for height,
because those are either going to be more permanent in
the form of a you know, large shrub or a
small tree, or you know, maybe a little bit more
expensive if you're investing in a pergola or obelisk or
trellis or something along those lines. So, of course, as
you've already said, my first choice is roses. If there's
one plant that people associate with cottage gardens, it is
absolutely roses.
Speaker 1: Absolutely.
Speaker 2: And you know, the funny thing is that, you know,
talking about the history of cottage gardens and how far
back in time that they go, and now we have
this idea of them just being this like flower festival.
You know, the roses that people were growing for the
majority of history were you know, I mean forgive the expression,
but they were absolute dogs. They did not do anything.
You know, they they flowered beautifully for like a week
in June, and the rest of the time the foliage
was all curled up and diseased, and you know, the
plant wasn't flowering and it got black spot and like
that's not romantic.
Speaker 3: Oh, like that kind of.
Speaker 2: Is one of those things like, yeah, if you happen
to catch it on the exact day, you're going to
be amazed, But outside of it, you're going to be like,
what are you doing? But today's roses again, because there
has been this shift and this concerted effort into breeding
roses that are high performance, that bloom all summer without
dead heading, that resist diseases. You can really use roses
to take your cottage garden well over the top of
anything that has been done in the past, so great
secret weapon there. Of course, within the proven Winter's Color
Choice roses, we have a lot of different roses. My
top picks are going to be the Rise Up series,
which is our series of climbing roses. There are I
think four or five varieties in that series right now.
All have long, flexible stems so you can frame them
up your walls, up a pergola however you want to
do that. Rise Up Lilac Days is just so magical.
It has everything you would want in a cottage garden,
unique color, amazing fragrance, big huge flowers with lots and
lots of petals. So all of the rise ups are great,
but Rise Up Liloc Days is definitely a must have
for me. And then, of course, as you mentioned, the
Reminiscent series, and the Reminiscent Series is a series of
roses that come to us from Serbia that are really
those big, full, old fashioned fragrant roses, but modern day performance,
so they're blooming all summer without dead heading, no disease.
So again it's kind of rethinking how much work a
cottage garden actually is absolutely my second choice. Climatis another
great choice. I mean, Clematists do so beautifully in England.
England has the perfect gardening climate for so many reasons.
It's never too hot, it's never too cold, they have
reliable rainfall. I mean, it's like a dream place.
Speaker 1: To go Goldilocks plant.
Speaker 2: I'm sure that we have listeners in the UK right
now who are like, yeah, right, let me tell you
about some of the garden and nightmares that I have.
But it seems like that to us over here. And
Clementists do so well. A lot of people think of
them as perennials, but many are woody plants, and the
ones that we have in proven Winter's Colored Choice are
of course woody plants so versatile. If you have an
ugly fence that you have to include in your cottage garden,
they are a great way to camouflage that you can
also again add a trellis or whatever you'd like. My
top picks in our Clemenis are going to be a
sweet summer love Clematis because it's a perfect scale, you know,
having those small flowers all over the place, and they're
so fragrant in the summer, so that is a great choice.
My other choice is pink mink clematis. This is a
very large, vigorous clematist that is perfect for covering fences
or other large structures. And I pick pink mink not
just because the color is such a classic card cottage
garden color, but because the flowers are almost bell like
and they come out on these little stems from the
wall of vines that I think is just the perfect
cottage garden look. I had a long list, but we're
running out of time, so I'm going to leave you
with the third and maybe we can talk about a
couple of the other ones in segment before, because I
do have something important to say that I'll have to save.
But my number three choice butterfly bush.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah.
Speaker 2: So part of the reasons that I'm picking butterfly bush
is because they have that delightful spiky texture and that
is just going to introduce such a unique look into
a cottage garden that can't really be replicated with a
lot of other plants, you know, with those spiky flowers
coming out all over. My choice for butterfly bush is
going to be the miss series A couple of reasons
for that perfect height, So four to five feet tall
and wide, so you're getting that nice height element. The
colors are amazing, the best colors you're going to find
in a butterfly bush.
Speaker 3: They're fragrant, they blew.
Speaker 2: All summer without any kind of dead heading or trimming,
and they are non invasive. They don't set seeds, so
you don't have to worry about them spreading if you
live in an area where butterfly bush can get weedy.
Speaker 1: Great choice, stacy, and half the fun in doing a
cottage garden is attracting pollinators. Well you're doing that absolutely,
butterfly bush. And yes, in segment four, let's go down
the list of plants.
Speaker 2: All right, we'll finish it up then, but first we're
gonna get to the garden mail bags, So please stay
tuned at proven winners color choice shrubs. We know that
a better landscape starts with a better shrub. Our team
of experts tests and evaluates all of our flowering shrubs
in evergreens for eight to ten years to ensure they
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shrubs to accentuate your home and express your personal style.
Look for Proven Winners shrubs in the distinctive white container
at your Life Garden Center or learn more at Proven Winners,
color Choice dot com. Creating's gardening friends and welcome back
to the Gardening Simplified Show, where it is our opportunity
to help you with your garden questions, quandaries and conundrums
and celebrations of course, because you know, we love to
hear the successes that you're having as well as what
you're struggling with, because it's all part of gardening, and
you know, we all have each other to do celebrate
our gardening successes with, but you may not, and even
if you do well, maybe you just want to get
them out to a bigger audience. So we welcome you
to reach out to us anytime you would like at
Gardening Simplified on air dot com. Another great great way
to reach us is on our YouTube version of the show.
So if you aren't familiar, if you're listening to us
on radio or podcast every week, there is a YouTube
edition which is not just two people sitting in studio
a talking about plants. No, Adriana, our amazing producer, puts
in all sorts of great b roll and images that
keeps it really interesting.
Speaker 1: So I'm glad you brought that up because Adriana does
an amazing job. And I'm not saying that just because
she's sitting across from us right now, because it makes
that YouTube video so enjoyable to see what we're talking about.
Speaker 2: And then you can leave a comment there, and when
she's looking at him, she'll say, Hey, someone has a
great comment on YouTube, like this person who left to
comment on last week's episode that I wanted to share
with everybody because we really liked this one. She says,
thank you for another fun show. I made my now
husband a terrarium for Christmas because we were talking about
terrariums last week. I made my now husband a terrarium
for Christmas when we were simply friends, and he said
it was the most unique, impressive and creative gift he'd
ever gotten from anyone.
Speaker 3: So you hear that.
Speaker 2: Forget that merry meat chicken recipe that's on the internet.
You just make the person you're after a terrarium and
your wishes will come true. That's great, she says. We
started coorting shortly thereafter. See, I told you, and now
we've been married for ten years, I'm going to say
that terrarium helped me stand out from the crowd. The
funny part is that after we married and we were
moving all of his things into our new house, I
found the terrarium in his room, mostly but not all dead.
I was mortified and joked that it had better not
be a bad omen. And it hasn't been so far.
Speaker 1: What a great story.
Speaker 2: You know, Now that we're about to have Valentine's Day,
which you know, I know is a polarizing holiday, but
it is a plant holiday. It's a holiday that's closely
associated with all sorts of plants, and it's a great
opportunity to get yourself or someone you love a fabulous
new plant, or if you really want to go over
the top, like our YouTube viewer did, make them a terrarium.
So you got time to do it. So start thinking
about that right now. Look around your house for some
interesting vessels that you can use or go thrifting, and
maybe you'll find one of those fabulous like giant seventies
terrarium bottles. There's so many opportunities.
Speaker 1: Wait till you hear my slant on this next week.
Speaker 3: Oh I can't wait.
Speaker 2: But I'll bet it's going to be based on many
years in the gardens industry.
Speaker 3: All right, what else we got in the bailbank?
Speaker 1: Meredith asks, thank you for your sage wisdom. I live
in Zone five Eastern Ontario clay loam soil with a
sizable creek in my front yard. Each spring the creek
gets high run off. There's minor erosion each year. I
want to keep any erosion minimized through planting. I've heard
certain trees take up too much water, which makes me
reluctant to plant them, and my climate can be at
risk of summer drought. How much do trees affect moisture
retention in the soil?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so complicated question, but a very good one. So
I would say yes, trees substantially impact moisture in the soil,
and sometimes that can be a good thing, like in
the case of say a flood zone, something like a
river birch or a willow. Can you know they're capable
of absorbing so much water that they can help minimize
you know, bogginess or low spots in your not low spots,
but you know, moisture excess water in your yard. But
that's not something you might want around a creek because
it could you know, take water from the creek. And yes,
trees are not just very high users of water, but
they are very effective competitors because of course they have
a massive root system compared to most anything else. So
it is something that you need to be aware of.
But I would also say that trees you can't just
kind of generalize about their seeking of water. Of course,
some trees are notorious silver maples for example, just notorious
for going into sewers because they seek water. Well, there's
plenty of other plants that just don't do that. They
just don't have that you know, natural desire or whatever
to actually go out aggressively to seek water.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I think I would steer away from trees.
But on the erosion issue, go with something that's more herbaceous.
Look at grasses, that sort of thing, you know, grasses again,
ornamental grasses. They can survive quite well switch grass in
both wet and drought conditions, and so it's going to
be able to handle that variable condition of the soil.
And by the way, trees draw a ton of water
out of the soil. I have a neighbor who had
a large a couple of large shade trees in her
front yard was unable to grow grass and was bemoaning
the shade of those trees. I'm like, no, it's the roots.
And I shared an article you can look it up
on the internet about how many gallons of water are
pulled out of the ground on a daily basis by
a seventy five foot tree. It's staggering.
Speaker 3: Sure, yeah, definitely.
Speaker 2: Now they give it back, of course in the form
of transpiration, but yes, they will. Now I agree with
you one hundred percent, Rick, If you are trying to
minimize erosion, especially erosion from water, yes, that is like
a creek or something like that. Trees are effective at
stopping erosion for water that goes over the surface, but
they are not very effective at stopping erosion on any
kind of banks, embankments, anything like that that are kind
of going on either side of the creek because their
roots are you know, big and thick and not very stable.
They're they're stabilizing for the tree, but you know, they
can easily allow water to get in and around them,
and they make you know, kind of like what you've
seen in the mangroves. But they're not mangroves. But yes, grasses,
herbaceous plants, anything with a long, deep, fibrous root system
is the best choice for kind of stabilizing that bank.
So yeah, grasses are an excellent choice at Daylilies even
are a great choice. And I would just say to
Meredith or to anyone else out there. You know, Meredith
is in Canada, but here in the US, very often
natural resources departments of the various states or that whatever
it's called in your state, will often offer plants at
a very low cost to homewners trying to prevent erosion.
So before you go out there and spend a bunch
of money at the garden center, especially in spring, they
tend to do these things. Do you call around, ask,
look online and see if they have any kind of
low cost or even free plans to offer you for
just these kinds of situations.
Speaker 1: And I'll share some pictures for YouTube of erosion here
on the Lake shore when that occurred in twenty twenty,
twenty twenty one, the trees didn't stand up to it
too well. Stay see in some wild pictures of trees
giving up as it relates to erosion. So that's kind
of how I feel about it all right, Jillian writes
to us, Hello, I love listening to your show, and
while I'm out working in the garden or just dreaming
and planning and winter, I'm with you, Jillian. I planted
this Elizabeth magnolia two years ago. It's settled quite a bit.
With our recent snow melts, water is pooling around the
base of the trunk. Is it likely to die if
I don't dig it up and plant it a little higher.
Any suggestions on how to address it without shocking the
tree too badly?
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is kind of a tough situation. Jillian did
send pictures. I don't think it's it's certainly not the
worst that I've ever seen, but you never really want
to encourage water to sit around the base of any plant.
Some plants are far more sensitive to it than others,
but it's never really a good thing. I would also
say a two year old magnolia probably not also a
great idea to go ahead and dig that up. Magnolia
roots are pretty sensitive, so I wouldn't necessarily recommend digging
it up, although it depends on what size you started with.
If you started with a small bear root one, you
could consider lifting it there will be some root loss,
but not that big of a deal. I would ask you, Jillian,
is it possible, actually instead to kind of work the
grade around the planting site so that instead of going
towards the base of the tree, can you take away
some soil or mulch or you know, whatever the situation is,
and kind of use that to grade away from the
tree instead. I mean, it's hard to say, because there's
you know, but I would I would look at possibly
doing that if you can do that in a way
that doesn't significantly expose any roots that the plant has
already created.
Speaker 1: Grade is important. But I think the key here is
Jillian is saying snow melt. I'm thinking that this excessive
moisture is temporary. If that's the case, I think the
tree can stand up.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, magnolias are not certainly one of the most
sensitive to moist soils, and as long as it's well
drained and doesn't sit around for you know, weeks on end,
which of course it will in winter because very often
the ground is frozen and the water can't drain down.
But you know, if in like your summer rainstorms and
so forth, if the water collects and then drains away.
That's not really anything to be concerned about. So yeah,
I think that you do have a year to kind
of spend watching it and evaluating whether you're going to
do something, But you know, also look around at other
things that you might be able to change, whether it's
the direction of a downspout on your house you know
where that's training to, or other factors and see if
that gives you an opportunity to maybe do a less
invasive remediation here for your plant. We're going to take
a little break and when we come back, we are
continuing our talk on cottage gardens, so please stay tuned.
Thanks for listening to the Gardening Simplified Podcast, brought to
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Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Gardening Simplified Show as we dig
in deeper on a fabulous topic, cottage gardens and Stacy
I like to use birdscape components that have a regional
flavor in a cottage garden, So wherever you live in
the US, you don't have to live on Cape Cod
or the Northeast. In the Northeast to have a cottage garden.
You can have a cottage garden pretty much anywhere you want,
but try and add a little bit of regional flavor,
maybe a bird bath or a bench. We talked about
structures like pergolas or arbors. Of course, I like iron
in the landscape because of the rusting issue. As a
matter of fact, I was looking at some of the
new pottery coming out this year and they have limestone
and cement with rust color. I love that. I'll work
that into my cottage garden. I have a neighbor who's
very much into this, and he is constantly finding stuff
on Facebook, Marketplace or Craig's List or whatever and giving
it a try or giving it away. Of course I
use driftwood because I'm near the beach. But whatever you do,
the key element is plants, but a little bit of hardscape.
And again I love recycled bricks as a pathway in
a cottage garden. Okay, let's get to the plants. Old
fashioned plants in New easy to care for cultivars. And
you touched on that Stacey in Plants on trial. I
look at old fashioned plant like lilacs, look at the
cultivars we have today.
Speaker 2: To use, yeah, and look how disease resistant they are,
because you know, as fabulous as an old lilac is,
and they are wonderful, and you know, you can even
forgive them for just having that sort of brief moment.
The classic old lilacs, they are susceptible to powdery mildew,
and in a densely planted situation like most cottage gardens,
they're going to be even more susceptible to powdery mildews.
So it really does even though you're kind of going
for this charming old f should look, it really does
make sense to do your research and make sure that
you're selecting cultivars that are not going to have the
problems that come with the old fashion glance.
Speaker 1: You had mentioned Butterfly Bush, but Rose of Sharon, something
like Polly Petite Spyria, any of the double play cultivars
for me, Stacy, because I love roses in a cottage
garden so much, I'm going to say that Woudjila has
to be part of it too. And I love Sonic Bloom.
I don't know, I've just fallen in love with that plan.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, Sonic Bloom would be a great choice
for a cottage garden because it is a reblooming white gela.
So you're going to get all of those flowers in
late spring, just like you would a regular white gela.
But then it's going to take a little break and
come back and continue to flower. And again, having that
constant supply of tons and tons of flowers is so
key to the success of a cottage garden. To remember,
when you look at those fabulous photos of a cottage
garden and you think I want that, you're still only
seeing one moment of time. So you know, for yourself,
you really need to make sure that you're choosing plants
that are going to give you maximum flowerings so that
it looks good and cottagy the most.
Speaker 1: I agree with that one hundred percent, and I'm glad
you brought that up, Stacy, because I was also going
to say, make sure to look at all the seasons spring, summer,
and fall. For example, it's classic in my mind to
use tulips in a cottage garden, but of course you're
just going to get temporary color. So if we fast
forward to fall, plants like asters, or chrysanthemum or the
fall blooming windflower anemones, all of those ideal to add.
Speaker 3: Yeah, carry after us too, you.
Speaker 1: Bet Alium's tuscan sun Heliopsis would be a great choice.
And a few weeks ago when we did the perennial show,
Stacey Rudebecia the Treasured trove black eyed Susan's can you
see that in a cottage?
Speaker 2: Oh, I think that'd be perfect in a cottage guard.
And if it could use some yellow, how.
Speaker 1: About smooth hydranges or hydranges? How do you feel about
hydranges in a kindergric?
Speaker 2: I was just gonna ask you the same thing, Aha,
great minds like so, I do think that hydrangs are
a great choice, and hydrangeas are the one choice that
I didn't get to in Plants on Trial, So I'm
glad you brought it up. And I think that all
hydrangs very much work in a cottage garden, and you know,
so then I was starting to think, well, if all
hydranges work really well in a cottage garden to add
height and color, pollinators and all of that, then how
do you choose? And that's when I really realized and
as much as I talk about hydrangs, you'd think that
I kind of would have internalized this at some point.
The cool thing about including hydrange is in a flower
garden or a cottage garden is that you can pick
based on which flower shape your garden needs. You know,
you can have the big round globes of a hydrange
of mac if what you need is more big round robustness.
You can and have the spiky ice cream cones of
oak leaf hydrangeas or panicle hydrangeas if what you need
is more of that, you know, spikey kind of look
going all over. You can also do smooth hydrangees if
you want rounded flower heads, so you could do something
like incredible but smooth hydrangeas and big leaf hydrangees, to
a lesser extent also have a little bit more range
of their flower shape, and something like invincibel lay smooth
Hydrangea or Invincibelle sublime. Those flower heads are much more flat,
so they're almost like these really cool kind of vertical lines,
and they have a very different look in the landscape.
So as you are building your cottage garden and watching
all of these things come together, don't just think of hydrangels,
saying like, oh, I love Hydrange's. I want to add,
of course you can do that, and that's a great choice,
but you know, also think about choosing a hydrangea based
on which kind of you know, textural or spatial element
its flowers really contribute, so you do get that.
Speaker 3: You know, wild varied. Look.
Speaker 2: You know, for me gardening with natives, my garden tends
to favor a lot of asta asi, you know, regular
plants in the daisy family, so you know, my Sylphium
and Cooreopsis and a lot of those native astor asi,
So I end up with a lot of the same
kind of flower form. And really, again as you kind
of digest those photos and separate out the elements, you're
going to see success is a lot of variety in
the flower shape, not just the flower color in time.
Speaker 1: I like that a lot. That's great advice. I was
thinking smooth hydrangea like incredible storm proof something like that.
But the reason I feel that way, Stacey, is because
again I love the gardens on the East coast or
you get in the Cape Cod area. So my cottage garden,
I'm going to be really inclined to put a white
picket fence in there. I can't help it. Maybe it's
cliche or class I think a.
Speaker 2: White picket fence is one of the or any fence, really,
any small fence is one of the easiest ways to
help you digest planting your garden. You put in a
fence there, You've got two sides, and now you can
take two different approaches to either side of that fence.
So it's really easy. It adds structure without being you know,
really overt. So I say go for it.
Speaker 1: Oh, I like that. That's kind of a grass is
greener on the other side of the fence analogy. I
like that. I'm going to throw out a few quick
plants that that has to be in my cottage garden
Verbina benariensis. Maybe not the new cultivar meteor shower which
doesn't create much seed, but maybe the old fashion that
recedes itself, like crazy leucanthemum or shasta daisies like amazing daisies,
banana cream. Love that plant. My cottage garden has to
have lavender in it, sweet romance, although my choice would
be phenomenal.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I agree completely.
Speaker 2: Lavender to me is second to roses, as they must
have in a cottage garden. Maybe this again just goes
back to the English garden type of thing. But roses
and lavender, I would say, you know those are are
you don't have to have them, And certainly I consider
my garden cottagy and I don't have roses because I
have deer, but I do have plenty of lavender.
Speaker 1: Annual salvia has got to be in mine. Rock and fusia,
blue suede shoes, hanging baskets with super beenas, maybe some
Superbinas and Biden's and some bubblegums, supertunias to give you
that great pink color. Menarda. I love Manarda in a
cottage garden and the pardon My series of proven winners Manarda.
I've used that in my landscape years ago. When I
started landscaping, I gave up on Manardas because the powdery
mildew and they just were awful. The new cultivars incredible,
and so I think that they're a great choice for
your cottage.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Pardon My Series is such a beautiful color. And
you know that's one of the best parts about cottage
gardening is that you're just free to experiment with the colors.
And if you put in something you love and you find, hey,
that's just sticking out like a sore thumb.
Speaker 3: I don't like it.
Speaker 2: As you said, you can always move it. And you know,
as we're kind of wrapping up here, I did want
to say another really important thing about cottage gardening. You
said you don't have to live on the East Coast.
You also don't have to have a cottage. You can
do it in any house that you want.
Speaker 1: Very true. Good point, and to put an exclamation point
on that. Make sure to include some edibles because herbs
are going to be super important too. Creeping time, that
sort of thing. I could talk about cottage gardens for hours.
I could too, Stacy, you can't go. All the plants
are gonna die, but we gotta go.
Speaker 3: We gotta go.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for watching on YouTube or listening to
our podcast or radio show version. Thank you, Stacey, thank
you Rick, thank you Adriana, and thank you for supporting
the Gardening Simplified Show. Have a great week.