Hello friends welcome to Gardening with Creekside I am Jenny and today we are going to come back to
this place where we planted the Oakland hollies behind me and we are going to take it up another
notch there's a couple of things in this bed that we are going to do um we're going to trim
back the amsonia we are going to plant five more of the phantom hydrangeas if you remember directly
behind us so you have the hollies then you can see the kryptomeria is behind me and then in front of
those are the Phantom hydrangeas we had five of them left over might as well use them right
so we are going to plant them kind of behind the amstonia right here and then after we planted the
four oaklands we realized that they still needed a little bit more filling in so we've got one other
oakland that we're going to plant now i know it looks different we'll talk about it later but
this is a really high visibility area for us and you know me i don't like clutter
i just it's driving me crazy so i'm very excited to get this bed
done because it's really going to look neat and tidy and it's going to give us spectacular color
really all year round now what we're going to do first is really simple so you see the brown
sticks here this is that fantastic perennial it is amstonia it is a great early spring bloomer
beautiful light blue blooms on it very kind of star-shaped the blooms themselves are very
small but they form a cluster so it makes a big impression and then for the rest of the
season it has beautiful it's a lovely green very fine foliage on it and then in the fall
a nice brilliant yellow color clearly the frost has killed all the foliage on the top super simple
to do i'm going to take my hedge trimmers and i'm going to cut it as low as i possibly can to
the ground it's one of the easiest perennials to clean up because you can't hurt it so we're going
to get the hedge trimmers out give it a good flat top and then the leaves have gotten stuck in here
because those stalks are a great leaf catcher so we're going to get this cleaned up and then we're
going to go back and talk about the phantoms and show you exactly where we're going to plant those
all right so the amsonia are cut down to the ground you can see that there was no mercy you
don't have to be tidy and neat and careful with them just cut them down so they are down as bad
as far as i could get them to go down um jerry has already ogged the holes for both the hydrangeas
and the holly because we have some things going on today and we weren't sure if he was going to
be able to be in the video and og in the hole so we went ahead and did that ahead of time
so like i said we have the five phantom hydrangeas and basically they're just going to be kind of in
a little bit of an arc behind the amsonia in front of the maple tree we came as far away
from the maple trees we could go but we still ran into some roots they'll be fine they'll all grow
together and be happy about that the phantoms of course are fantastic panicle hydrangea they love
the sun they bloom on new growth so that means you prune them once a year from basically now up
until for us like beginning of march before you start to see the green buds come out of them is
when you want to prune them before that they will get nice and large again it's just another layer
of the garden to help kind of screen the parking lot behind us it just gives then this bed will tie
into the bed that's behind in front of the krypton areas rather so it just kind of all ties in again
we had them left over why you know we don't want to waste them let's use them so it's really simple
you dig the hole you throw some vyotone in there and you pop them in yeah it's as easy as that so
we're going to get i'm going to get that done and then we'll move over there to the holly
{laughs} that my friends is how you plant five hydrangeas in like
five seconds get Jerry Simpson with you
a man moves fast he doesn't let anything go under his feet now the holly obviously it's larger it's
a little thinner than the other oaklands that we have you know what it's what we have is what we're
going to use we're thinking long term here in the spring i will go ahead and shape it up prune it
down a little bit more so that it will be more in line with the hollies that we have clippers
so i will yes i will prune it shape it so it'll be more in line with those other hollies the other
hollies are going to grow everybody's going to get holly tone come springtime they'll be fine
this time next year they'll all look the same and we're not going to worry about it so that is a key
point is when you are planning a landscape or a new area and you want to make sure that
everybody is the same size when you plant them to be really sure on the plan that you're doing and i
always my motto in life is it's better to have too much than not enough so whether i'm having
friends over for supper i tend to overcook in my plants i tend to over collect because that way i
can always use them somewhere else but i hate to be one short so that's what happened here again
you know what it's just it's light right so we roll with it now so we're gonna get this planted
this one is root bound so jerry is taking the clippers do you want a shovel do you want a shovel
he's just using my clippers to break clippers will need to be sharpened after this
just breaking up those roots some just giving them a good scratch
that way they can start going out instead of being still twined up within the holly tree um
once we get this holly tree planted just like the hydrangeas i went ahead and put biotone in the
hole so it's in there all of our shrubs because you can tell red clay soil so the shrubs and
the trees we always tend to plant them a little bit high that way water doesn't pool around them
now again though on this area it's a slope very few things here at creekside are flat same thing
here it is a slope so we're not going to be too worried about them like sitting in water because
all the water would come this way and flow down behind the garden shed um so she's in the ground
we'll back fill with our native soil and then we are going to go ahead and mulch this entire
area so that it ties into the other hollies all underneath the maple tree nice and neat and tidy
again you know full disclosure here yes there are weeds in the bed
it is getting ready to rain so i don't have time to properly get in here to weed them so
just being honest we're just going to cover them up i'll deal with them later once if they come
through the mulch then i'll deal with them but for right now we're just going to kind of hide it
right your kids when they're cleaning their room and they stuff things underneath the bed so that
it looks like it's neat and tidy that's what i'm going to do here so yeah you know it's life it'll
be fine when it comes when if they come back up through this the mulch we'll deal with them then
don't always do this rarely do this but today we are
all right my friends the project is complete we have the amsonia trim back five phantom
hydrangeas are planted and one oakland holly has been planted as well and of course
everything has gotten a nice thick layer of mulch now what do i do to this bed from here
on out nothing i just wait um spring will come the amsonia will come back up you notice that we just
barely put some mulch on top of it it'll be fine yes there's some mulch down kind of in the crown
of the perennial on amsonia they can handle it it is not a problem at all the hydrangeas will come
up nice and flush out in the spring and then of course give us gorgeous blooms through the summer
the appropriate time to fertilize these plants is early spring plant tone if you have nothing
else plant tone is the best fertilizer to use it's like your all-purpose fertilizer
if you want to get specific the hollies of course will like holly tone because they are
acid loving plants and your hydrangeas actually believe it or not love rose tone because rose
tone is a great for a woody flowering um shrub so the hydrangeas need those same requirements
as a rose bush does so you can use rose tone on that and then plant tone on your amsonia
but if you don't have anything you only have plant tone go for that that is perfect yeah so we just
sit back and wait this is not on irrigation and no i did not water these in it is a cloudy
rainy is coming today it's been kind of what we call spitting around here so it has a little
bit of a haze we are going to get i think three or four days of rain these are fine it is winter time
it is not you know august and we're planting these so it is okay i know my soil i know my
conditions and i don't need to water these right now um so yeah so we just sit back wait and the
beauty will come pretty soon it's fantastic again keep adding those different layers to your garden
bring some interest in different areas as always thanks so much for joining
us creekside y'all have a great day we'll see you next video bye friends