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 Weist, and our engineer and producer Adrianna Robinson.
Unruly an adjective that by definition means not amenable to
discipline or control, disorderly, and so today we're not going
to talk about invasive plant problems. Some plants are just
delightfully somewhat out of control, unruly, the right amount of chaos,
finding beauty and the tension between unruly and control. There
are plenty of gardening voices out there setting boundaries for you,
but what about some unruly gardening for example, asking yourself
the question with some of your plants, are you willing
to sway and flop versus staking a plant?
Speaker 2: Well, as the president of the local chapter of the
Unruly Gardening Club, I am going to come out in
full support of plants doing their thing. Yeah. I mean,
it's funny because when we were talking about the topic
earlier this week, one of my coworkers said, oh, unruly gardens,
I can give you pictures for that. So I'm clearly
not alone, and I think it comes from being a
plant lover, and you know, just kind of appreciating plants
for what they are and what they do. But for me, really,
I think it goes another step further. And the reason
that I pride myself on having an unruly garden is
I'm gardening for the bugs and the birds, and you know,
in nature, things are not all trimmed and clipped in
neat and tidy. Nature is a glorious, you know, array
of plants growing together, and I aim to replicate that
in my garden. And I'm fine with it. But I
totally get how people how this topic is going to
make people a little bit uncomfortable. A lot of people
think a garden should be anything but unruly.
Speaker 1: And speaking of people, I'm a people person, okay, And
plants have personality like people do. That's true, and so
I embrace it and enjoy it, especially the ones that
are well kind of unruly. For example, I get excited
about incredible stormproof smooth hydrangea or invinciblee we white. However,
I appreciate and like the look of a flopping smooth hydrangea.
For our YouTube viewers, I've got a few pictures for
you that I took on Cape cod I kind of
like it when they flop over. Or another example in
spring for Scythia's can be somewhat unruly and having forcythias,
and you know, I'm not talking about the show off
sugar baby variety, but I'm talking about just a traditional,
old fashioned forsythia kind of flopping along the ground and
sticking up all over the place and the daffodils are
coming out of the ground. I kind of feel like
that's in unruly situation and it works. Or for example,
one of my favorite roses, I love the oh so
easy roses, but it could be argued that oh so
easy roses and they're prolific blooming, can at times get
a little bit unruly, at which point I'll take out
my printed sures. Right, But I like that unruly nature
of the plant, right.
Speaker 2: And roses are a great example. And we're going to
talk a lot more about roses in plants on trial,
but I think the Osoeezy series and shrub roses in
general are a great example. They are you know, work
has been done to kind of tame them and keep
them more compact, but if they get a lot of
water and conditions are good, they're going to start shooting out,
you know, growth all over the place. That's a response
to the conditions. Yep, And that can look a little
bit unruly. But also it's covered in flowers, so you
know it's straight off.
Speaker 1: When they get happy, their personality comes out. And I
like that, I really do. So it's not about chaos
gardening and throwing in extra plants. We are all like that.
We'll go to the garden center. I can't leave a
garden center without buying a few plants. And my car
shows it. My car can be unruly. You've got fertilizer
prills and rice holes and some soil on the floor
and on the seats, and I can't help that. I've
got a neighbor who's the exact opposite. He'll on a
Saturday roll his car out, spend the entire day in
the driveway detailing that car. I can't do that. I
have no interest in doing. That's a matter of fact,
to mess with him because he's always coming over asking
me gardening questions because he likes that's my landscape, so
he's always asking me questions about his garden. Anyhow, I'll
back my car up, I'll open up all four doors,
I'll fire up the leaf blower, blast everything out of
the car, shut the doors, pull it back in the garage,
mess with his head. And I think he kind of
likes it. It's entertaining.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, That's the great thing is that there
is a place for both of these personalities in life
and in the garden. And if you do want to
be the kind of person who plants a garden and
you impose your will on it and you trim it
and you keep everything from touching, that is a perfectly
acceptable way to maintain your landscape or garden. I have
no problem with it. It's not what I'm going to do.
But I do think that it's important to have this
conversation because I think that that need that people, especially
non gardeners who are maybe interested in gardening, feel that,
like I don't have a real garden unless everything is
pruned and trimmed and tidy, and I don't want to
devote that kind of work. It keeps them from gardening.
But there is joy in the unruly, Like I said,
it's more akin to nature. So if you're into gardening
for the bugs and the birds like I am, if
you just love to be surrounded by flowers. You know
it's it's a way to garden. And I'll tell you this,
A big side effect of having unruly garden is a
lot less work and a lot more time to enjoy it.
Speaker 1: So just saying no, I agree one hundred percent. Some
examples for you. I love the mop top fountain, weeping
butterfly bush and talk about breaking the rules. Long slender,
weeping branches that are covered in lavender flowers in spring
and hardy down to zone four. Here's another example, raspberries
in your garden. Having raspberries is like having a bad
hair day, but oh so delicious. Individual raspberry canes are biennial,
meaning they live for two growing seasons, but there's perning
involved when you're dealing with Flora.
Speaker 2: Kans anthorn's anthorns exactly unrumed. But you know you got
to pay the price for those delicious raspberries, you got it.
Speaker 1: I would love a combination of treasure trove Rudebecia with
xenias and cosmos and Stacy. I view cosmos as one
of those unruly plants in the landscape that fits in perfectly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can put that anywhere, and it is an
absolutely welcome addition to the garden, and if you like
the cool pinks and whites, you can go with your
regular cosmos. And if you like the hot colors like
I do, there's a beautiful orange cosmos that you can
grow just as easily. So there's kind of something for everybody.
Speaker 1: I love it, so it's all a matter of opinion.
In segment four, we're going to talk to Eric and
Christopher from Grow for Me Gardening and there's Zone six,
a garden in upstate New York. I got a kick
out of watching some of their videos because Eric gives
tough stuff fun one of my favorite high ranges at ten,
and Christopher doesn't because he thinks it's a little bit unruly.
So we're gonna ask them.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, we do want to say ahead for
people who are familiar with Eric and Christopher or who
or who aren't, their garden is decidedly ruly. It's very
well organized. So we're gonna go totally the opposite direction
in segment four when we have them on. But you know,
even though I'm proud of my unruly garden, I would
like to say that I do kind of think of
it as a mullet garden, you know, you know, this,
so a mullet, like the haircut. It's business in the
front end, party in the back. So that is my
garden because you know, I understand I have to put
like a relatively constrained face forward. So my neighbors don't
think I'm completely off my rocker.
Speaker 1: I know I've got some of that too.
Speaker 2: But then in the back, you know, all bets are off.
I'm just saying, So that's a good way to think
about things, too well.
Speaker 1: They already think I'm off my rocker based on how
I clean my car.
Speaker 2: Regardless of that, you've made a big announcement to the neighborhood.
Speaker 1: Maintenance strips in the garden. I just want to mention
briefly because this is seeding time for turf tall turf
type fescues. There's so many different types. They're coarse blade,
but to me, they are the perfect unruly type of lawn.
It's a bunch growing grass and especially important for people
who live in the transitions zone the mid Atlantic states
into the plain states, where they can't really grow the
warm season varieties, can't really grow the cool season varieties
like we do here in Michigan. Receeders like morning glories
or Verbina benariensis, delightfully unruly characters, and of course rows
of Sharon. New introductions like paraplue or pillar althea are
great options versus the conventional unruly or tending to be
unruly rows of Sharon. So many other plants that we
can talk about, and of course vines either nature alone
a little bit are a little unrule and I love that.
Let's see how Stacey ties this in and plants on trial.
That's coming up next here on the Gardening Simplified Show.
Speaker 2: 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 for
every taste and every space. Just look for the distinctive
white container your local garden center or learn more at
proven Winner's Color Choice dot com. Greeting's Gardening friends, and
welcome back to the Gardening Simplified Show, where we are
talking all about unruly gardens and the joys and pitfalls
I suppose of them. It seems the main pitfall that
we have ascertained so far as that our neighbors think
we're crazy for being a little bit unruly. But you
know that's a risk that we're willing to take.
Speaker 1: It's entertaining.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So to kick off plants on trial today, I
wanted to share a little poem that kind of inspired
my journey to unruly gardening. Not a poem by me,
but by someone else. And I realized, did you have
a limerick?
Speaker 1: Because we didn't, Shah, I have a limerick this week.
We'll fit it in some.
Speaker 2: We're gonna fit it in somewhere.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: I'm giving you a chance because we were doing like
poetry corner.
Speaker 1: Here your poem.
Speaker 2: Okay, Okay. So it's just a short, little excerpt from
a famous poem written very long ago in the sixteen
hundreds by Andrew Marvel. And when I first read these
lines years ago, I said to myself, this is how
I want to feel when I go into the garden. Okay,
just a couple of lines. What wondrous life is this?
Speaker 3: I lead?
Speaker 2: Ripe apples drop about my head. The luscious clusters of
the vine upon my mouth do crush their wine. The
nectarine and curious peach into my hands themselves do reach
stumbling on melons as I pass, and snared with flowers,
I fall on grass. Even though that's about an edible garden,
that's kind of how I always wanted to feel. I
just wanted to that feeling of just being like surrounded
by this, you know, just bevy of plants all around you,
and just that amazing feeling of being at the height
of the season. So that's that's how I took a
path to unruly garden, because you're not going to get
that feeling if everything is all neat and tidy and
in its place.
Speaker 1: I love that. And you painted a picture with words.
Here's this week's limerick real short. My garden rambles uncontrollably,
truly with the aromas of earthly petuli, but I let it
go around my chateau. I like it somewhat unruly.
Speaker 2: Do you grow petuli? Oh okay, it just rhymed. It
does rhyme. It's a cool it's an I mean, it's
actually a very unsuspecting plant until you touch the foliage
and then it smells well, exactly like petuli. So anyway,
uh so I get it. Unreally, gardens are not for everyone,
and I'm sure we have a lot of listeners here
who are getting the hev GBS listening to us talk
about a garden that is unorganized and you know, exuberant
and full of plants. But I would make the case
that even those among us who have a organized or
ruly garden, I don't think ruly is technically the opposite
of unruly, but that even the most manicured garden can
benefit from some moments of unruliness. I mean, you know,
if you think about some of the most you know,
dramatic formal gardens around, like in France and in England
and Italy and so forth, you know, they do typically
have at least some element of wildness or nature. And
just in the same way that unruly gardeners like us
need some organization and structure to help that unruliness make sense,
I would say that those organized and clean gardeners need
some unruliness to you know, break up all of that
you know, hard structure and everything that they're doing. And
I feel like when I've seen really formal gardens, I
feel like the one unruly element they tend to bring
in climbing roses.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you do not see that.
Speaker 2: Because roses are of course a classic a garden classic,
and roses can be made to be very they're not, naturally,
you know, very tidy. But of course plant breeding has
introduced a lot of tidy ones. And if you are
so inclined, you can really kind of train a rose
to be very constrained and refined.
Speaker 1: Sure, but everybody loves a ramblin rose.
Speaker 2: Everybody does love a ramblin rose. And you know, even
again in that most formal garden, they may take pillars
or obelisks or pergolas or something like that and cover
them with a structure, or of course, you know the
famous rose covered cottage of the cottage gardening. So I
am here in plants on trial today to make a
case for climbing roses to be the unruly element of
any guard. Uh, and specifically our series Rise Up, the
Rise Up series of climbing roses. Now there are currently
four varieties in the line. There's Rise Up Amberness, which
is kind of a yellowy orange, really beautiful, amazing fragrance.
There is Rise Up Ringo, which is bright yellow with
kind of a red eye and a double flower. There
is uh trying toys, No, I'm getting to lilac days. Yeah, yeah,
Rise Up amber Rays, which is a bright, bright, flaming orange,
really cool, color and then yes, Rise Up Lilac Days.
And it was specifically Rise Up Lilac Days that inspired
me to come up with this today because I'm thinking
of a photo that my colleague that we took at
my colleague's house where she planted a Rise Up Lilac
Days on her house. And her house is very neat
and tidy. She's a very like put together, tidy person.
Her landscape is very tidy, but she has a Rise
Up Lilac Days that she just lets do its thing.
And I tell you, the difference that it makes in
her landscape is night and day. It's so good to
have something like this. Now we're not just talking about
growth of these climbing roses that is unruly. They're flowering
is unruly too, and that is a wonderful trade off
because you have this big plant that's climbing your house
or again climbing a pergola and obeliska trellis a fence,
so many different places to put it. And not only
is the rose covering that structure, but the rose itself
is covered in flowers and Rise Up Lilac Days. It's
the rose of the year this year. It is a
color that is you have to see it to believe it. Now,
there is no true like purple rose deep purple, but
this is pretty close. It is about the color of
lilac flowers, a beautiful pinky purple, and the fragrance on
this plant you just have to smell to believe. So
now in vision that you have this, you know, beautiful
climbing rose climbing up your garage or you know another
structure in your home and it has hundreds and hundreds
of flowers on it and it's just giving off this
amazing fragrance. And there's just no other way to get
that look in your garden than to embrace kind of
that wildness of a climbing rose, like rise up lilac.
Speaker 1: Days wildness and yet almost thornless.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I love about the plant. And like I said in
the first segment to Stacey, it's finding beauty in the
tension between unruly and control.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think it's really cool how roses again
combine that classic look with this element of wildness. Now,
roses are not inherently climbing, so they're not going to
be like a whisteria that twines around. They're not going
to be like an ivy or Boston ivy that climbs
by rootlets. They actually just have long, flexible canes that
sort of allow them to scramble up a structure, kind
of using their thorns and leaning up against their neighbor
to attain new heights. So that does mean you kind
of have to work at it a little bit. You
have to kind of suggest to it where you want
it to go. But once you do that, you are
rewarded with that just amazing column of flowers. Now rise
up roses are hardy down to USDA Zone four, so
that's pretty impressive. They're all on their own roots, so
you don't have to worry about protecting the plan and
you know, having the bottom stock come up and you know,
all of a sudden you have a different rose, yepe.
They're on their own roots even down to USDA Zone four,
and Lilac Days is heat tolerant up through zone nine
and the other ones are mostly heat tolerant through zone eight.
But so that means Lilocdaz's has this huge range no
matter where you are, no matter what style of garden
you have, this is the rose to get. I tell you,
it is truly exceptional to see and again just kind
of provides that little twist on having something that is
unruly but without turning your garden into complete chaos.
Speaker 1: I've found it to be the perfect plant for a
six foot chain link fence.
Speaker 2: Oh perfect, Well, that's way better than a chain link fence,
I know.
Speaker 1: And by the time you get to August September, it's
growing over the top of the fence, and oh, I
just I love that plant.
Speaker 2: Now it does not need dead heading in order to
bloom all summer, which is great. Since it is going
to be a big, tall plant. I would recommend and
this is going to be one of those easier said
than done type of things, I would recommend that you
do prone it because if you get out the ladder
and you cut back some of those canes to shorten them,
what you're going to end up with is that beautiful
look of roses from the bottom all the way to
the top rather than just at the tips. So does
require a little bit of work, but trust me, the
reward is worth it. And my colleague who planted a
rise up Lilac days on her home will certainly agree
that it's worth whatever or she has to put into
it because the compliments that she gets and the joy
that she gets coming home to see it every day,
I agree, is more than worth it. So that is
Rise Up Lilac Days and the Rise Up series of
climbing roses from Proven Winner's Color Choice Shrubs. You will
have no trouble finding especially Lilac Days at your local
garden center this season. So if it sounds good, please
do check us out on YouTube if you're not here already,
so you can see some pictures of it, or visit
proven Winner's Color Choice dot com so you can see
more photos of it and decide if it's going to
earn a spot in your garden. Really or unruly.
Speaker 1: I think it should, you know, Stacy, I think back
to the nineteen seventies and eighties when at the garden
center we'd have rosarians come in, and rosarians love them,
but they had their whole list of rules, how to
do this, how to do that? Cut back to the
you know yeah, oh yeah yeah, and a plant like
this just throws all that out the window. It really does,
at least that's been my experience in my garden.
Speaker 2: I think it does. So hopefully that gives you some
food for thought as we struggle through the last cold
weeks of winter here in Michigan. We're going to take
a little break. When we come back, we are going
to be opening for the mailbegs, so 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 outperform what's
already on the market. For easycare, reliable, beautiful shrubs to
accentuate your home and express your personal style. Look for
Proven Winner's Shrubs in the distinctive white container at your
local garden center, or learn more at Proven Winner's Color
Choice dot com. Greeting's gardening friends, and welcome back to
the Gardening Simplified Show, where it's our time to help
you with your garden question, quandaries and conundrums. And I
know they are mounting out there in the garden as
people's start doing stuff and thinking about stuff, So please
feel free to reach out to us at Gardeningsimplified on
air dot com. There's a contact forum right there. Do
be aware, of course, that we get a lot of questions.
We can't answer them all, but we don't want to
leave you hanging, so it's very easy to get in
touch with us also over at proven Winners, color Choice
dot com, and if you fill out the contact from there,
one of our horticulturists will get right back to you
with a personal answer. No robots, no AI, none of
that stuff. We really answer your gardening questions, so please
do take advantage of that if you are stuck, because
we only have time to get to a few questions
every week unfortunately.
Speaker 1: And Stacey, thank you to the people who send fudge.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, of course and all the other nice things.
If people have said it's really lovely. So what a
we got in the mailbag today?
Speaker 1: Oh okay, Leslie writes to us, I have a twenty
year old climbing hydranger that blooms beautifully every year but
develops an unsightly brown, spotted, scorched look on the east
facing side in midsummer. I've included pictures. This affliction has
gotten work over the last few years, and it's been
suggested that perhaps it is sun scorch caused from water droplets,
but I'm not entirely convinced this scorching has only been
occurring in the last four or five years. I've been
aggressively pruning it for the past three years. It's growing
a bit out of control, unruly, unruly, thank you. The
vine is in shade from two PM on after getting
bright sun all morning. The opposite side is completely shaded
and looks good except for the occasional leaf that looks
like the plant may need iron.
Speaker 2: Yes, really, so it's an interesting question. And I'm sure
if you want to see the pictures that Leslie sent,
they're going to be on our YouTube version if you're
not already watching there. And this is the kind of
damage on plants that people go, whoa, this is really weird,
like is this a disease? Like what's going on here?
And the fact is Leslie actually kind of answered the
question right there in her question when she said except
for the occasional leaf that looks like the plant may
need iron. So iron deficiency is known from a botanical
standpoint as chlorosis, and basically what it means is that
the foliage is kind of yellow instead of green, and
there can be depending on the iron deficiency and the
plant in any other nutrient efficiencies that might be happening.
It can be intervenal chlorosis where it's in between the veins.
It can cause the whole plant to look kind of
yellowish and washed out. But here's the thing that I
think is happening to Leslie's plant. When you have iron chlorosis,
that lack of iron severely diminishes the plant's ability to
create chlorophyll, and it causes problems for the generation of chlorophyll.
It causes the chlorophyll that is created to degrade very quickly.
And chlorophyll, as you've heard a say on the show before,
is essentially a plant's sunscreen. Yes, chlorophyll is also what
photosynthesizes and makes energy for the plant, but it also
kind of functions as a sunscreen to keep plants from
getting burned. So if you have iron chlorosis and your
plant does not have as much chlorophyll as it ought to,
that is going to make that foliage far more susceptible
to sunburn. And so that's what you have going on now,
caused by the water. It's really caused by that iron deficiency.
So I don't know if you have been fertilizing it.
If you haven't, definitely start using a comprehensive fertilizer. Don't
just look at those three numbers. You're going to want
something that has additional nutrients. You can also find, of course,
iron supplements that you can add, not the ones that
you buy in the drug store, but iron supplements for
plants that the drugstore ones are not probably going to
work very well. And the cool thing about putting iron
on a chlorotic plant is it greens up almost immediately. Yeah, right,
So it's very easy to resolve this problem if that
is indeed what the issue is. So read your fertilizer label,
make sure if you are fertilizing it, the fertilizer you
put has iron. Iron chlorosis can also be caused by
a pH issue, which if your pH changes, it can
tie up the iron in the soil so that it's
not available for the plant to take up. So you
might also just want to get a soil test to
find out what's really going on. But I think if
you apply an iron supplement from your local garden center
according to packaged directions this year, I'm that problem is
going to go right away.
Speaker 1: Stacey, I had chlorurosis on my climbing hydrangea and I
used Aspoma hollytne it did work for Oh good, okay, Jenna, Right,
I have a question about my suburban front yard and
zone six pe. We have a tree in the center
of the yard that's been declining since we bought the
house eight years ago. It's finally at the end of
its life. I would love to replace it with something
that is either larger will grow quickly so we don't
have to wait years and years before getting the benefit
of the shade. I've thought about putting in a statement
flowering tree, like maybe a magnolia or crape myrtle. We
don't mind spending a little bit more money to get
something more mature if it will really meet our needs.
What would you recommend?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: So I should have mentioned here Jenna is in southern
Ohio Cincinnati area. So I want to just take out
crepe myrtle out of the equation first thing.
Speaker 1: I would agree, just.
Speaker 2: Because if you yeah, probably you can do great with
a crape myrtle for possibly forever. But you do have
to know that, you know, one bad, bad winter could
easily take out a crape myrtle tree in your area,
So I would not risk investing that time and money
into a crepe myrtle. I think magnolia is a great choice.
They are pretty fast growing if their needs are met,
and of course there's lots of great choices, but I
thought that this would be a good opportunity to kind
of talk about some of our guidelines for choosing a
specimen tree. Now, again, I think Magnolia's are great, but
they are, you know, especially the non evergreen type, which
are the hardier ones, kind of a one hit wonder,
and that one hit is worth it, don't get me wrong,
but you know, so I think when you're choosing a
specimen tree, you should have a little bit more thought
process on what else it can do. You know, crab
apples are beautiful, right, They're so fabulous, they're just amazing
in spring, But then you also get the fruit, and
the freuod attracts birds, and so you're getting a little
bit more there. So I think you should consider color.
Is there a color to the foliage and or to
the flowers that kind of compliments something with your house?
You know, people who paint their front door are really
bright or fun color. Is there a way that you
can plant something that kind of plays off of that
because you have a fun front door color, not any
not anywhere, Okay, no, gotta be really didn't want to
be that unruly.
Speaker 1: I'm letting the plants be unrually. But no, you are
right about that, Stacey. And you know, I would say,
right off the bat, in my opinion, to fit some
of that criteria, a june berry clump, right plant you know,
spring flowers, june fruit and fall color that is it'll
knock your socks off.
Speaker 2: And and great bark and yeah, the clumps, so you
have the multiple that is a beautiful choice. You might
have to work a little bit harder to find a
multi stemmed service berry or shadblow or amlankire, but that
is definitely one of the best kind of all purpose
no brain or plants. And actually it's not even that
overused yet, which for being such a great, you know,
four season plant. I also think something like, you know,
of course, temple of blue hepticodium, another great four season plant,
piper bark maple. I know you've got one of those
fabulous bark, just a beautiful, beautiful, handsome tree with excellent
fall color. That's one of those plants that people are
gonna walk by and go, what is that? So you know,
I think it's important to think about, you know, multiple
seasons of interest. Is there a color of the flowers
or the foliage that's really going to cause a moment,
like a traffic stopping moment? You know outside your house?
Is is there a special birthday or something like that
that you want the plant to be at its best
at so you can take a picture in front of
it every single year.
Speaker 1: Well, talking about unruly, here's something to add to your
list of criteria. Ask the neighbors what they think, and
ask a spouse for their opinion. Also, because at one
of my homes, I planted a weeping beach. I love
weeping beach, but it's kind of unruly. Everybody hated it.
I was the only one who loved that tree, and
to this day I love that tree. Well, good for you, Yeah,
still there and growing. Yeah, I took a stand.
Speaker 2: You know, did you let them come up under the
branches and see how fabulous it is under the branches?
Speaker 1: I tried every sea side.
Speaker 2: You can't play in my playhouse. You've insulted my.
Speaker 1: Play I've tried everything.
Speaker 2: All right, what else we got in the mail bag?
I think we have time for one more.
Speaker 1: Let's see Julie. Interesting question. This winter, I had an
unbelievable amount of mouse damage I've never experienced in my
sixty five years. Oceania County and West Michigan much harder
winter this year than other years. My husband also put
out bait stations, mouse bait stations in an effort to
get the mice before they came in. Is it possible
the bait stations caused them to come in? I'm afraid
I lost several plants due to mouse damage. So we've
got a couple different things going on out there. Number
one the plant damage, and number two, it sounds like
some of them are getting inside the house.
Speaker 2: That's not good.
Speaker 1: That's what it sounds like. Maybe I'm wrong.
Speaker 2: Well, I think that it is possible that the bait
stations do attract them. I mean, they're intended to write.
If there isn't something that smells good or tastes good
in there to the mice, they're not going to go
into the scary bait station. But I will also say
I have seen multiple times here at the nursery in
years where we've had extremely heavy snowcover for a longer period,
we see far more mouse and vole as you pointed
out before the show.
Speaker 1: Damage operating under the cover of all that snow.
Speaker 2: Yep, that gives them a great cover. And so they're
down there snug is a bug in a rug. The
hawks can't see them exact and they're just showing down
on that nice juicy canebium layer under the bark. So
I think it's a combination of the two. Obviously, there's
not much you can do about the snow to deter them,
but definitely, if you're gonna do bait stations, I would
say maybe take them out by winter so they're not,
you know, seeking food when food is otherwise scarce.
Speaker 1: And if the problem is voules, my recommendation don't use
bait stations, use mouse traps. Bait the mouse traps. Use
mouse traps, and that's going to give you a good
barometer two on what's going on on.
Speaker 2: That's true, you do kind of need to see so
you know how to treat it effectively. So thank you
all so much for your questions. We're going to take
a little break and when we come back we are
talking to Eric and Christopher fro Grow for me gardening.
You are not going to want to miss that, so
please stay tuned. Thanks for 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 winnerscolor Choice dot com.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Gardening Simplified show Boy, do we
have a treat for you today? We're going to talk
to Eric and Christopher with Grow for Me Gardening and
their beautiful garden in Zone six A and Upstate New York.
At Grow for Me Gardening. They believe that creating beautiful
outdoor spaces shouldn't be complicated or intimidating and stacy. That's
what we're all about on the Gardening Simplified jo.
Speaker 2: Right, and so when we say Grow for Me Gardening,
you can find pictures of Eric and Christopher. You can
follow them on YouTube, on Instagram, and on their website
Grow for Me Garden. So if you are not already
familiar with their amazing work and their beautiful garden, well
you'll see some of it on YouTube if you're joining
us over there. But while you are on YouTube, you
should definitely follow them as well.
Speaker 1: So Eric and Christopher, Welcome to the show. And I
guess right off the bat, we're going to ask you
whether or not winter has ended yet. They're in upstate
New York.
Speaker 3: Well, thank you so much for having us. Technically winter
has ended, but when we look out the window, it
has not really ended. We have snow on the ground
this morning. Yeah, it's a it's been a doozy this winter,
a little bit colder, a little windier, and snowier than
the last couple of years combined.
Speaker 2: But do you have at least have like daffodils or
something poking something up above the ground.
Speaker 3: We have nothing. Normally we have focused by this time,
and I think we have like maybe one bud. Yeah
we have, we have one inch dacidyl foliage popping up.
But that's it.
Speaker 2: It's a start.
Speaker 3: It's a start. We'll take it in the right direction.
Speaker 1: I encourage our listeners and our viewers to go to
YouTube and grow for me gardening and see the beautiful
garden that Eric and Christopher have in Upstate New York.
And Eric and Christopher, I think the thing that really
impresses me is when I go to your website and
I look at pictures, I see that way back in
twenty eighteen, you started from scratch.
Speaker 3: We did. We built our first home together and we
had a sandy backfill lot. The soil, you know, I
don't even think you could call it soil. I think
when they built our neighborhood used to be a farm.
So we picked up chunks of concrete and old bricks
and it wasn't great, to say the least. And when
they gave us a landscape package, which we always describe
in quote because it was it was pretty rough, Eric
took a picture of it and he went to the
garden center. We were incredibly inexperienced gardeners. We were really
new to us. So we went to the garden center
with this photo and the first thing they said was
get that white spruce away from the corner of your house.
And that was the first big project we did, was
lift this ball and burlap white spruce out of the
ground and put it in the backyard. Yeah, that's when
we learned how heavy those were.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's how it started. And it certainly snowballs. Keep
in mind, twenty eighteen meant two years into our journey,
we all suddenly had some time off from work where
I think it solidified our love of gardening because we
spent a long time in that garden every day.
Speaker 2: And so once you have a blank slate like that,
you know, what's your inspiration? Kind of how did you
get started attacking such a project with so many options?
Speaker 3: That's really important question that we asked ourselves. And the
first thing we thought are missed neighborhood was we need
to start thinking about privacy and kind of delineating our
property from our neighbors, because nobody had any senses at
that point in time. So one of the first things
we did was we installed a hedge of limelight hydranges.
We went from garden center to garden center collecting one
gallon two gallon limelight hydranges to plant on the west
side of our back property because we knew that those
limelight hydranges could handle full sun and eventually they would
get pretty large and be able to create a little
bit of privacy on that side. And then we went
inside our house and we started looking out our windows
and thinking what kind of view do we want to
have out of our windows, And we started with big
structural things like birch trees or slender evergreens, and approached
the garden from actually indoors, and then we went outside
and we have a very square, contemporary home and started
softening the harsh straight lines with some curved borders. And
during all this time we were learning on social media.
We were learning by watching Gardener's World, We were learning
by subscribing and getting our hands on any imagazine needs
to get it on, following people on Instagram, really just
absorbing all the information we could, going to the local
garden center, talking to the employees, going to the garden shows,
taking the local classes as much as we could, and
really fell in love with it and jumped in headfirst.
Speaker 2: I mean, that is just so inspiring, because I think
so many people feel really reluctant to go into gardening
because they're just like, how am I going to learn
it all? And you know, for the for you to
have gone from you know, virtually nothing in twenty eighteen
to you know, now eight years later, having this absolutely
stunning garden and just you know, doing it, not feeling
like there was some magical moment where you guys would
actually have enough gardening knowledge that you could you know,
be quote unquote licensed to do this. You just you
know dove in and learned as you went, and that's
that's so important to not just like wait forever.
Speaker 3: That's probably one of the biggest gardening lessons we have
learned since we started, is you really have to be
a little fearless because plants are going to die, and
sometimes it's you. Well most of the time it's you,
but sometimes it's not you. And I feel like, you know,
fearless pruning is something we were recently talking about in
a video, especially on a young plant, so that you
can shape it for the future. It might seem scary now,
but it's going to be so much better later if
you are fearless. And that's I guess what we were
doing all along. We just didn't realize it. Yeah, And
I mean there's a lot of science involved in gardening,
but I think we kind of approach it like it's
an art and that there's guidelines and parameters and as
long as do play within them, you're you know, you're
gonna have some mistakes, like you would in anything. We're
gonna you know, we've killed tongues of plants over the years.
We've had a ton of failures as many successes, but
really having fun with it understanding that there's gonna be
infestations of insects, there's going to be disease, there's going
to be things that don't make it and you have
no idea why, and then taking those things and learning
from them and over the years, you know, we were
just talking about this in one of our YouTube videos
the other day. Our garden looks terrible this spring. We've
had a brutal winter with extremely harsh winter winds. And
I think six years ago I would have gone out
in March, and I think we would have been extremely
stressed out about the state of the garden. Right now, now,
with our experience, we go out and we're like, Okay,
this is going to work, this is going to be fine.
Things go to make it. We have opportunities to add
new things, you know, and over the years you really
learn how resilient gardens are.
Speaker 1: Oh, that's really well said. I've always said, if you
haven't killed any plants, you're not trying hard enough. And
that's a great, great way of approaching it. We're talking
to Eric and Christopher Grow for Me Gardening, and you're
talking about fearless gardening coming from the garden center industry.
Myself Eric and Christopher, I would say that there are
a lot of people who fear trying hydranges. And I
was watching one of your videos and you guys were
doing account how many different hydranges do you have in
your landscape?
Speaker 3: We have over two hundred in our half acre a
lot right now. Oh wow, only time we don't grow
are climbing hydranges.
Speaker 1: Uh huh.
Speaker 3: None of our trees are large enough yet. OK.
Speaker 2: Something looks how are we to for the future?
Speaker 1: When they I love you know, I'm watching one of
the videos and Eric, I love the fact that you
gave tough Stuff top fun a ten out of ten
because that is one of my favorite plants in the landscape.
But it's yeah, I guess it's not the neatest plant
in the landscape, but boy, I love Mountain seratotype hydranges
and even the tough stuff. When that first came when
did that come out? Stay stuff to.
Speaker 2: Fun came out like just two or three years ago.
It's still pretty recent. But the other part of this
I hear I didn't see this video, but I hear
the Christopher disagrees.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, stuff, we had a lot of fun
last season. Just we did a series we did rating perennials,
rating hydrangeas, and during this hydrange video we have some
controversial tape. I think, you know I do. I I
absolutely love and appreciate the Tough Stuff series hydrange is.
I think my patience with that hydrangea, you know, because
it takes a couple of seasons to really come into
its own, So I think I was having a bit
of an impatient moment with that.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, we could actually have you guys back
on future show to talk about gardening with your spouse,
because it's certainly it's certainly something that I experienced to
and it's always fun to see how one person, you know,
embraces something so fully in the other is like, I
do not understand what you see in that.
Speaker 3: We're potentially adding in another water feature in the garden,
and as we were looking at different spaces where it
could go. I tend to be the person that says,
I'll just rip out those plants and move things. And
Eric likes to let things live in their their nice home.
Well I have a vision, right, It's so much fun.
But yeah, I mean hydrangeas. Actually we fell into hydrangs,
I would say, because Eric was the hydranger guy, and
I love roses, so it was a little hydrangea versus
rose and the roses are touching up. But we are
a hydrange garden.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I'd love the fact that you guys are out there
giving great information because you know, you talk about the
most important step is knowing what type of hydrangea you have,
and many people struggle with that. And then we reach
the point of spring after a brutal winter and everybody
wants to get out the pruning shoes. Getting that information
out there and that experience you guys have had is
so valuable.
Speaker 3: Thank you. One of the things we try to focus
on at Grow for Me Gardening is really creating the
content and creating the resources that we were looking for
when we were starting to garden. So we really try
to approach our videos and our resources on our website
from that perspective of what we really wish we had
access to when we were new gardeners. That's something that
we really do focus on, not only by giving clear
information so you know, this is a panicle hydrangea, let's
help you identify it. But then because we're fans of
your show, we're always going to throw in Hydrangea paniculata.
So we you know, we want the good information, but
we want to make sure we get to that extra
little bit of the Latin the science in there too.
Speaker 2: Well, you know it is an important part in that way,
no matter what you know, no matter where you are
and what you call the plant, you can look up
hydrangea piniculator and confirm you know it's it's the same
thing and find out what you need to find out.
So one of the reasons that I thought it would
be the perfect time to have you guys on the
show this particular week is because Grow from Me Gardening
has just come out with an incredible guide to hydrangeas,
and I got a sneak peak in it because you
asked us to weigh in on some of the information,
which we were happy to do here at per Womner's
color Choice. And what really I thought set this apart
from so much of the other hydrange of information that
I have seen over the years, is that your own
perspective that you brought to it about not just the
pruning and identifying and all of that stuff, but about
actually designing and using hydranges in your landscape. So was
it difficult to kind of put that into words. Was
that a belief that you guys went into planting with
or is it something that you kind of enacted naturally
and then were able to talk about once you realized
you had done it.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much. We're very proud of this guide,
and I have to say, when it comes to the
design aspect, this is something Eric articulates incredibly well. There
are times where I would say, you know, I love
the way that we're using the panicles as a structural piece.
But I didn't say as a structural piece. I would
say lots of words, and Eric would just make it
really concise and say, no, that's and that's all. A
really good tip for partners that garden is you really
have to give them their flowers sometimes. But yes, Eric
has a really great way of narrowing down this is
how we're designing with hydranges. Even if I'm not exactly
sure how, I just know that we did it. Yeah.
I tend to think of the garden in vignettes, our
little vision capsules as we walk around, and I think
that helps us not be so overwhelmed by the concept
of designing the garden. Is if we have our own
little rules that we stay within within each vignette. It
helps us to have cohesion throughout the garden. So one
of those rules is to have structure in each vignette.
And when I think about hydranges, I think about, well,
of the hydrange varieties we have, the panicle hydrange have
the most structure, the most upright, the biggest, boldest flowers,
and if they get the largest size of the different varieties.
And then when you look at these smooth yes, they're softer,
they're more billowing, they're that nice mid height and they
can be that softer mid layer in the border. And
then a little bit further down with more texture is
the mountain Hydrangea, the serrata, and you know big leaf
hydrangeas want you want to be up close and study
those gorgeous flowers on them. And the colors can be
used to tie into different perennials or annuals throughout the garden.
So there's really a space for every type of dranger
when you're designing a garden.
Speaker 1: I love that. Now, great question Stacy, and answer Eric
and Christopher, because I really believe this is something that
people struggle with and giving them advice to approach it.
In bite sized pieces. Because when I watch your videos
on YouTube, you guys have a real feel for design
in your landscape. You can see that it comes just
naturally to you do do a great job. But being
able to articulate that to someone else, that's the tough part.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I appreciate that. The uh, you know, the style
of gardening that we've kind of developed over time because
we have this pretty much square vinyl sighting house in
the suburbs, we wrapped it around with all these curved
kind of cottagy English style gardens. So we call it
our contemporary cottage, our fun little word for it. But
it is a lot of fun to be able to
share our method because we've been able to break it
down over time and explain it a little clearer. So
it's not just well, if you put this one next
to that one, they always work, because that's not always
the case.
Speaker 1: So I want to ask a question because this will
help me out, and that is if both of you
could just take a moment and define for me what
do you believe is a contemporary cottage garden. What makes
a contemporary cottage different from let's say, the standard type
of cottage garden that we've always looked at in better
homes and gardens. Let's say, do you have a thought
on that.
Speaker 3: I think our contemporary cottage garden has of course the
gorgeous repetitive fluefy blooms throughout, but there's definitely some harder landscaping,
hard escape involved in it. There's black metal accents throughout
the garden. We use a lot of stone and concrete
in the garden. More shrugs. I would say, yeah, I agree,
we do. We don't. I would say a traditional cottage
garden I think of more the perennial slash self feed
kind of, and we have the perennials and lots of
self feeders, but we really do anchor it with more
of the shrubs, the roses, and a lot of evergreens too.
That's a big part of our design process is always
making sure that we have evergreens in those vignya, not
just for winter interest, but really like that rest for
the eye that you know, anchor points, you know. And
so then when you have your large structure panical hydranger,
you have that explosion of color, but you still have
that Solara Cyprus or we I'm in love with Anna's
magic ball in front of one of our other little
vignettes too, you know that nice you know shar trusy
color that's more constant, So that that's kind of where
the contemporary part comes in. Maybe it's worth more in
control of our cottage. Yeah, I mean using all the
traditional plants, but you know, proofing them differently.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you.
Speaker 2: Know you don't have like a fetched roof and stucco walls.
Speaker 3: And.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you never know what's comment that's true. Now we've
talked a bit about your guide hydranges, and we'll give
the link again at the end of the show. What
I want to make sure if anybody's sitting there going well,
you've told me all about this great guide to hygd ranges,
can I please read it? Where can people find it?
Speaker 3: They can find it on growth gardening dot com. They
can also check out our instagram which is Growth for
Me Gardening. There's a link in the bio and in
the story of highlights, and if they check out our
YouTube at Grow from the Gardening is also there. So
there's nice three excellent sources for the hydrangea Handbook.
Speaker 2: And speaking of the handbook, I remember you guys also
made some worksheets to accompany this, so people can kind
of apply the ideas to their own yard.
Speaker 3: We thought that'd be a fun thing for people to
have access to worksheets. I think people like something tangible.
They can write down, draw things out, you know, keep
track of ideas, pruning, you know, using the handbook, you
can discover which type of y dranger you have, and
you can take notes and keep track of all the
things you're learning as you go through the handbook.
Speaker 2: So, I mean, that sounds like the perfect way to
spend these last cold days that are hanging on seemingly
forever for us in the Midwest and the Northeast, even though,
of course our friends in the warm climates are basking
in basking or sweating one or one or the other.
So I would highly encourage our listeners to definitely check
those out. If this sounds like it's interesting. Again, I
was just so impressed by the guide and you know,
again the information you can find in lots of places,
but not only did you distill that in a really
digestible and interesting way, but you know, design advice is
hard to come by from that, you know, really personal perspective. Yeah,
you know, you get a lot of landscape design teachers saying, oh,
you must do this and you must do that, and
these are the principles of design, where you know, yours
is really just a hey. You know if you look
at our videos and you say, I wonder how they
did that, I could never do that. Actually surprised. You
can do that and here's the way to do it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I appreciate that. We're really excited to share it
with everybody.
Speaker 1: That's fantastic, fantastic. We're talking to Eric and Christopher grow
for Me Gardening, so make sure to look for them
on you YouTube, and can you share the website again
for our listeners and viewers.
Speaker 3: The website is grow Formegardening dot com. But before we're finished, Rick,
we do have a little surprise for you.
Speaker 1: Oh all right.
Speaker 3: We're not trying to not trying to steal anybody thunder,
but we do have a little limb. Eric and Christopher
if you wouldn't mind us sharing, I love it. I
love it all right, let's dive in. Okay, ready for this?
Are you sitting down?
Speaker 2: We are sitting down.
Speaker 3: Okay. If your shrub is a leaky green dug with
Nara Bloom Norah bud, don't weep in the dirt or
feel deeply hurt while dragging your name through the mud.
To keep from becoming hysteric. Consults with Christopher and Eric.
Their handbooks are fined for your peace of mind and
a garden that's quite atmospheric. Identify, prune and design to
make every high ranger shine, turn the pink ones to
blue with a guy that is true and those empty
sticks far behind.
Speaker 2: That was our first ever guest lim Eric or limb
Eric and Christopher. Yeah, yeah, I mean the bar is
so high now. I just so.
Speaker 1: You guys are we love it? Thank you so much,
Thank you, that's so kind of Thank you so much,
Eric and Christopher grow for me. Gardening guys. Let's stay
in touch and thank you very much for your time
here on the Gardening Simplified Show.
Speaker 2: Thank you well. I knew that talking with Eric and
Christopher on the show today was going to be amazing,
but that again raised the bar far beyond my expectations.
So I truly hope that you our listeners take a
moment to check out their guide to high Ranges and
you know, again, just think about what their method and
their approach to gardening means for you and how you
can incorporate their ideas and principles into your own garden.
So on that note, thanks so much to Eric and Christopher,
thank you Rich, thank you Adriana, and thanks so much
to all of you for listening. We truly appreciate it
and hope you have a wonderful week ahead.