Late Spring Backyard Garden Tour May 2025 ~ birdhouse garden

Planting Creeping Fig to Cover a Block Wall

Birdhouse Garden Tour 2019 – https://youtu.be/EwghsiBLk8s
thebirdhousegarden@gmail.com
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good morning everyone How y’all doing today I wanted to take you on a tour of our backyard garden And I wanted to start right here before the sun started coming up over the house so you could get a glimpse of our red Japanese maple It’s a skater’s broom and we planted it this past fall uh the one the Japanese maple that we had there since we purchased the house has slowly been dying for many years and we just decided to take it out and I was really sad when that happened but I knew it was the best thing and I we I knew that I wanted to plant a red maple there I knew planting in the fall would be best for us since if I waited till spring we heat up just too quickly and I wanted to give a chance for the roots to get better established before that hot weather comes So let’s go on over there before the sun starts coming through There’s so many things I like about the Japanese maple Uh this is my first red maple ever and I love the foliage the color Um and when you’re in our home and you’re looking in the backyard garden the red just really pops against all this green that I have And I really do like that it’s foliage from very low to almost the roof line And we did plant it further out from the house than the green one that we had here when we first bought the house But I’m very happy with how it’s flushed out and it just looks healthy and beautiful and I just I couldn’t be happier And on that note we purchased two more red maples and those were bloodg good and I picked those up 75% off at Home Depot First time I had ever purchased anything at Home Depot on clearance A few years ago when we did I think it was one of our first backyard tours I had titled it something about building a garden on a budget or growing a garden on a budget And we have mostly kept that back here and even in the front just simply because gardening um you know plants can can be expensive Anyway I wanted to uh start over here by our laundry window I will make sure that I post a photo of what it looked like just a few days ago before I cut everything back I have three Super Tunia Mini Vista Pink Star and two Super Bell’s grape punch The Great Punch is brand new The super bells have been there since last spring and they don’t look pretty right now but I bet in a few weeks when we get up to the ’90s they’re all going to start blooming Everything here is pretty much the same I did have some pentis down here Oh there we are See it down there i had several of them and our German Shepherd just keeps walking on top of them and I’m about down to one of them Just one now Same as the butterfly bush That is why I have this topiary form on top of it My mother gifted this to me and it was much bigger But this is our bedroom window And if we do not let him in uh when he wants to be let in he will make his way back here and get as close to us in the bedroom window here as he possibly can So I try and make sure I get him in as soon as possible so he doesn’t break any plants This is our I think evening star hibiscus And of course it looks completely different from the little one that I have out front but I’m still letting that one grow See how well it does Originally I purchased three of them Um you’ll have to forgive all the mess It was super super windy last night and I tried to clean up a little bit before we did the tour I have the doghouse flanked with both hibiscus and dianths down here I believe the dusty miller is new this last year and I’ve been trimming it back trimming it back It’s it grows up to here and it just getting a little too wild and woolly Another new plant that I added just a few weeks ago from Proven Winners is totally tempted frosted violets Kufia And I’ll make sure that I put the stats on the screen and I put that right here And we moved the birdhouse from over by the merit supreme hydrangeas to right here because we put a bloodg good Japanese maple over in that area Behind this I have a couple of lambs ear and dusty miller And these lambs ear I continue to divide uh each season and they’re just an amazing performer here in our heat And they’re very easy to divide And boy you talk about a plant that can take full sun um in extreme heat Lamb’s ear is one of them This is the little wooden walkway that we built a few years ago and I have enjoyed it Actually I’ve enjoyed it quite a bit However when we get further down um our flower bed here you’ll see that we are slowly starting to lay a stone pathway And I think eventually uh when we can put it in our budget I want the pathway to be stoned all the way coming to here But until then I’m going to enjoy the wooden pathway I have Superbell’s Great Punch in the window basket by the garden shed And actually just below it you will see um I think it’s blew my mind of ovulus down there I had three of those in the window box for over a year And just recently when I refreshed the window box I put those three right here I put one there next to the garden shed and two flanking the walkway as we come in And so this is the first time that they’ve been in the ground our lemon cyprress here that I planted many years ago in our kitchen window box during the winter I think it was 10 or 12 inches I believe it’s between 12 and 15 ft Now after I took it out of our window box I had it in a pot I think for a year year and a half and then we put it in the ground And the moment we put it in the ground that’s when it really just took off Been very happy with this It is shaded a good portion of the day but the sun that it does receive is the hottest part of the day So I’ll have to say for our zone here zone 9 it has performed very very well This is a black lace elderberry that is not our zone I think it goes up to zone 7 if I’m not mistaken And it’s been blooming It’s it’s almost done These can grow very very large And I had I had I been able to do it all over again I probably wouldn’t have put it here Um but it’s happy here And this is where it’s going to stay And so I kind of try and keep it tamed uh here within the walkway And all I did here was just uh plant a few impatients this because this area is very heavily shaded and they they don’t do well in the sun They only like the shade unless you live by the beach And if you live by the beach then you can put them in the sun A few months ago I did a video on putting dalas in two pots here And every single dalia plant did come up I did four tubers in each pot which I thought that’s probably too many But they’ve all come up They all seem to be doing very well And I’m very happy with how they look next to the fountain You can tell how quickly it heats up here Lantana thrives in the heat and the sun And this is bandana yellow And but before you know it this will start blooming And it will probably bloom all the way through November That’s how good of a performer this is I’ll post a photo of what the trailing purple Lantana looked like a few months ago During the winter it almost looks like the plant is dead It just looks like a bunch of sticks And you can tell how quickly that flushed out And before you know it these will probably come out to here and I’ll have to just continue to cut them back because it kind of encroaches on the walkway But absolutely love this plant It just kind of just does its own thing and it’s it’s not a highmaintenance plant Any kind of lantana you get once you get it in the ground not a lot of water but a whole lot of sun and they’ll perform great for you These dalas haven’t quite started blooming like those over there But this is the first time that I’ve had dolls perform this prolific since planting them And I had some out in the front and they just never really performed that well And I think they probably just didn’t get enough sun right here This is like the cut off point This area gets a lot of sun and then just behind it the sun kind of begins to trail off Have to show you guys something real quick This is what the wind does These will drop from our redwoods and I’ll have to go by and pick them all up throughout the yard So I guess I missed this one Against the little picket fence here we have plumbago And I think I see one blue flower uh blooming This is a summer bloomer And I have seen it bloom in bloom already in some other neighborhoods around the city but again this area kind of gets a little bit more filtered sun I have nandina flanking both sides of the picket fence And I don’t have a name for this hydrangeanger It was just a hydrangeanger standard that I picked up at Lowe’s on clearance many many years ago And I’ve kept it in this pot Um it probably could use a bigger pot but this is seems to be where where it’s the most happy Around the corner here any denths you see here in our back garden they are from Proven Winners And I’ll make sure I’ll put the right name and the height and the zone that they are These patunias I planted last spring early summer They overwintered They’re still blooming I’ve had to cut them back several times because they kind of grow out into the lawn You can tell where some of the lawn’s kind of a little dead right here And that’s just uh me not getting out here to trim them back soon enough Some armisia The callillies are have been here for over 25 years I separated them when we planted the merit supreme hydrangeas and they’ve already been blooming And when it gets warm they kind of take a break And then in the fall they’ll put on a few more blooms This is the stone pathway that we’ve kind of started And a few months well maybe it was last fall we purchased a few stones And flag stone is very pricey And you can tell that they haven’t been placed exactly where we want them yet and they had my husband Will eventually kind of sink them so they’re flush with the dirt Um but he had knee surgery back in December and he had a bit of a longer recovery than we all anticipated So there’s no rush on him getting these sunk We’re just buying the stones slowly and placing them And when he fills up to it and he can kind of kneel and get that the stones situated I think this is going to be a real beautiful look as it as we kind of enter this way And you can turn off and go either way This is a lemon cyprus that I purchased a few years ago and I’m trying my hand at making a topiary out of it So it still needs a little bit of work And I have a bit of a surprise in June I have something on special order and um takes a long time for it to come in and I actually my husband and I have to travel a bit to go pick it up because what I ordered nobody here carries it and um I think we’re going to place what we ordered here So look forward to that And in these two gem baby gem boxwoods I have I know this is not the prettiest look But I have to kind of keep these little gates here because otherwise Chief will just mark them and ruin them and kind of trample over them as he’s cutting across and he sees squirrels and possums up here on the wall So that’s why I kind of have these little gates right here I think these are called Pacific Breeze climbing roses I think it’s something breeze I’ll make sure I get the right name up They have been blooming like crazy And I pruned this back so much this past February You wouldn’t even know it but recently you can tell where I’ve pruned it back These roses were almost higher than the birdhouse and it was looking like it was out of control like it needed more room to to climb Um so I almost wanted to leave it to show you what it looked like but I didn’t care for the look so I went ahead and cut it back But they’re just little petite roses And um a few weeks ago there was just all just this pale pink wall of roses The potato vines already bloomed Everything blooms so quick over here in our zone And we’ve already trimmed this back You can tell this is what it looks like when it blooms And it only blooms in the spring And then beyond that it’ll just stay green like this This is our Oklahoma red bud that has pushed so much growth this last year I cannot believe how tall it’s grown Actually my husband had to come in and kind of there is a um business on the other side of this wall and we had to trim back the olive tree up here because just so our red bud could have a little bit more breathing room But she’s a pretty in the spring I think I posted a photo during one of our uh videos earlier this spring This is one of two bloodg good Japanese maples that we picked up at Home Depot Can you believe for 75% off i remember when they had oh I don’t know maybe five or six maples and oh goodness if I had the property I would have purchased them all and found different spots for them Uh my best friend and and another good friend of mine they have large parcels of property on the outskirts of town And I made sure that I texted both of them and said “Hey if you’re in the market for some bugged Japanese maples Home Depot has them on sale.” And we have three Home Depots here in town And they were at all of them I never talk about the oleanders behind us because um they were here when we purchased the house If if I could choose to not have them I would I would have them taken out maybe someday Um my grandma used to say “Well when my ship comes in I’ll buy this or I’ll buy that.” Um I would love to take them all down Um and I think that to save money my husband and our boys could probably cut them down and get rid of the debris but we would have to have a company come in and grind all the stumps down below And that would probably be a little bit more money than uh I’m willing to spend right now on top of wanting to replace them with evergreens that are mature uh because I don’t want to start out with something small and because of the privacy that it provides I’m just not willing to part with them uh mostly for budgetary reasons but um I just wanted to address the fact that it’s not the prettiest looking thing but it does provide privacy And also the pod carpus up here I would take that out as well Another It’s an evergreen but it does periodically drop the little brown It sheds leaves and uh can be very very messy as well um as our camper tree is the way it sheds Um but again it provides privacy so it stays These are our merit supreme hydrangeas and in between is the blood good the second blood good maple that we purchased and I think the red foliage against the yellow house is going to eventually look very very pretty And in between the Merit Supreme is the callillies that have been this is where they this was just a whole bank of callalillies when we purchased the home and slowly I’ve um kind of moved them throughout our back garden When I first started purchasing the Merit Supreme I didn’t realize how difficult they were to find And that’s why these are a little bit bigger I think I purchased one on clearance and it looked really sad and I was nursing it back to health and I had it in a pot for a long time and I thought well this is one of the few places that I can plant hydrangeas because it’s super early in the morning and it within a matter of minutes this is going to have morning sun and then it will be be and then it will be protected the rest of the day from our hot sun You’ll notice that the lambium is a little bare here and that’s just our German Shepherd and him wanting to mark Uh so I did replace a few of them and before you know it this will all grow in I’ll make sure to clip in a photo of what the back wall looked like before we started growing our garden back here I don’t address the creeping fig very much because some people really like it and some people uh feel strongly about not liking it We are very diligent about keeping it trimmed on top so it does not grow over to the other side And I’ve said it many times I’m so happy that we put this against the cinder block wall Um I’ll see if I can link that video down below in the description box Um forgive me if the stats are incorrect but I believe that the width of our backyard is about 100 ft and 80 of it is planted with creeping fig I think we planted 16 four feet apart and every what is it two and a half feet maybe we installed um fencing wire uh with ih hooks to feed the creeping fig underneath it and that was something that my husband and I talked about how do we keep the creeping fig on the wall without falling down over here in California you’ll see a lot of businesses the freeways fast food places will have creeping figs on their wall and you once it falls off the wall you cannot get it back on You have to kind of start over again And I didn’t want that to happen to us And I believe it was my husband’s idea that said you know he said “Well let’s put bailing wire or fencing wire put it into the center block wall and we’ll feed it under.” In the beginning it wasn’t the prettiest look because you could kind of see it but I would say within six months it was already starting to grow and cover the wall and we were putting it under the bailing wire And I think when we did that video it was one of my very first videos I think we planted this creeping fig early 2020 if I’m not mistaken but I’m I’ll link the video down below I absolutely love it And I did get the idea of the creeping fig wall um from Entertaining with Beth At the time she had a gardening channel I think was gardening with Beth or In the Garden with Beth And she no longer does that I think she’s moved to France Uh but she still does the entertaining with Beth And when she bought her house in Los Angeles she had started growing that on her wall and I just thought it was a beautiful look So I kind of took that idea from her We only trim it once a year in the spring and I I would say it hasn’t given us a whole lot of maintenance or grief We do keep it trimmed off the top but it just provides a beautiful backdrop um for anything that we plant in front of it And I’m so happy that we did do that Thank you guys so much for watching I hope you’re having a wonderful day and we’ll see you soon Bye [Music] [Music] 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