Garden Center Shopping Like a Pro! 🌿 Expert Tips to Pick the Best Plants & Shrubs

Looking to buy the best plants and shrubs for your garden? Whether you’re a beginner or an experienced gardener, shopping at a garden center can feel overwhelming! In this video, I’ll share expert tips to help you choose healthy plants, avoid common mistakes, and make the most of your plant shopping trip. With these tips your are on your way to a beautiful and thriving garden! Thank you so much for watching! -Steph🌱 (gardening in Massachusetts zone 6b/7a) #garden #shopping #howto #tips #gardeningtips #gardening #plants

🔔 Don’t forget to like, subscribe, and hit the notification bell for more gardening inspiration!

Videos I referenced can be found here:👇

My Top 5 Perennials, where coneflowers are featured:

Pruning a Gold Mop Cypress Shaping Evergreens Into a Tree:

Backyard Privacy Fence. Green Giant vs. Emerald Green Arborvitae Comparison:

How to Prune Knock Out Roses. Fertilizing & Deadheading for Non Stop Blooms:

How to Prune Salvia to Get Continuous Blooms!! Learned this by Accident! My Selective Pruning Method:

———————————————————————
✨Vego Products Click here 👉🏼 https://glnk.io/HookedandRooted (and thank you for using my affiliate link!)

🌟🌟-ALSO- look below for an exclusive DISCOUNT CODE! 💰💰

Hooked and Rooted viewers receive $10 off any purchase (This is on top of any sale prices!)
Code = HOOKEDANDROOTED10OFF
———————————————————————
Coast of Maine Soils – Find a Retailer near you: https://coastofmaine.com/pages/find-local
———————————————————————-
Iseli Plants, Trees & Conifers – Find a Nursery near you: https://www.iselinursery.com/map/
———————————————————————
My Amazon Store Where You Can Find Many of My Favorite Garden Items
👉 https://amzn.to/49F9RTU
———————————————————————-
☕Gift Steph or George a coffee ☕: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/hookedandrooted
———————————————————————-
Hooked and Rooted is a gardening show on Youtube. My shows & content include topics such as: Offering gardening tips for beginners, low maintenance garden ideas, landscaping for beginners, new build garden transformations, how to make your garden beautiful, sharing perennial plants and evergreen shrubs for the garden, and the best ground cover plants you can plant in your garden.
———————————————————————-
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hookedandrooted
———————————————————————-
Website & Contact:

💻 Website:
https://HookedAndRooted.com

📧 Email:
HookedandRooted@gmail.com

📬Mail:

Steph
Hooked and Rooted
PO Box N656
Westport, MA 02790

now these some people love them and some people don’t but they’re really easy and one of my favorite full sun perennials is they will look dead but they won’t be they’re just going to be dormant and going to sleep for the winter new to gardening and not sure where to start well today we’re at a garden center and I’m going to share with you perennial flowers shrubs and evergreens that will come back for you in your garden year after year if you’re new to my channel my name is Steph and for the last several years I’ve been providing you with weekly garden center and nursery tours where explain to you different plants and what my experience have been in growing those plants i have been gardening for over 12 years and today I’m going to share with you plants that I would choose all over again if I was starting my landscape from scratch when I do these videos I often get many new gardeners that comment and aren’t really sure where to start so this video is for you we’re going to get a couple of things out of the way right off the bat and one of those is the term annual and perennial when you head to the garden center this time of year you’re going to see lots of beautiful blooming plants such as patunias and geraniums and you’re going to be tempted to bring these home and plant them in your garden and they work wonderfully for that season in a container but these will die back at your first frost and will not return for you in your garden next year so annuals live one year what we’re going to show you today is perennials that will come back in your garden year after year when shopping for perennials trees shrubs evergreens the one key thing that you need to know is your gardening zone and that will tell you whether or not the plant that you’re shopping for is hearty in your growing zone and to figure that out all you have to do is go to google.com and ask “What is my gardening zone?” When we’re talking about plant hardiness zone that is the lowest temperature that that plant can withstand and still return for you after winter in your garden for example here is a plant tag and it will give you information about the light conditions to grow your plant whether or not is a perennial or an annual and on the back it will give you the hardiness zone so this is the lowest temperature that this plant will be able to withstand and still be perennial in return in your garden the first perennial I’m going to share with you is Salvia it has a beautiful spike bloom that adds a lot of vertical interest in the garden you can see here that it comes in many shades of purple as well as white and even pink now Salvia is a full sun perennial and it prefers a well- draining soil it gets to be anywhere from 18 to 24 in tall and wide and it is pretty pest and disease resistant deer and rabbit don’t touch it and if you deadhead it which means just cutting it back after it’s done blooming you’ll get even more blooms out of this beautiful plant it also pairs really nicely with other perennials such as cone flowers and daisies as well as roses speaking of roses if you want a really low fuss rose for your landscape the knockout rose is a great choice i have several of these planted in my garden in the color double pink and they have done beautifully for me for about 10 years now they are lowmaintenance pretty disease resistant and they just shine all season long they bloom for me from mid-spring all the way through my first hard frost in late fall this one here happens to be the red and you can see how pretty it is so they come in red in pink in yellow and even shades of white and you can see how beautifully they pair with salvia the knockout rose needs full sun and it prefers a very well draining soil they stay about 3 to four feet tall and wide and they’re really easy to size control each year at end of winter I go through and I prune them to keep them at the size that I prefer them at and I have a video on my channel on how to care for your knockout roses both to prune them and fertilize them and one of my favorite full sun perennials is cone flowers i actually made a video with my top five perennials that I can link below that featured my cone flowers as my number one pick now these are great they attract pollinators they’re really easy low fuss the deer stay away from them and they come in so many different colors as well as heights now this particular variety is a red one but they come in shades of pink and orange yellow and even white in terms of size these get anywhere from 12 in to 36 in in height and in width depending on the variety at the end of the season they will die down to the ground and go dormant for the winter and then they will reemerge next season the one thing you should know about growing cone flowers is that they will not tolerate a wet soil so make sure that your soil is well draining and a couple more really easy beginner friendly perennials are dillies now these some people love them and some people don’t but they’re really easy and even when they’re not in bloom they have this really beautiful tuft that almost looks like an ornamental grass this particular variety is a really popular one called Stella Deoro and it has these really pretty yellow blooms now these stay pretty compact they like full sun and they’re not fussy about the soil that they grow in daisies another really pretty flower that is pretty much um a staple in many gardens they are a quintessential cottage garden flower and you can see that they have a yellow center with beautiful white petals now these get to be anywhere from 24 in tall and wide they do like full sun and a well- draining soil and they multiply really easily so you’ll start off with one plant like this and they’ll selfseed which means they’ll drop seed and create more plants so over time you will end up with a bunch of these which just means you can divide them and move them to other places in the garden and another really great spike perennial plant that has this vertical interest that I absolutely love is nepida nepa is also known as catmint and it is part of the mint family and has a mint fragrance you can see here it has this really pretty light lavender blue coloring another one that is pest and disease resistant the deer and rabbit stay away from it because they don’t like the fragrance all of the perennials that we’ve looked at so far will die down for the winter they will look dead but they won’t be they’re just going to be dormant and going to sleep for the winter and then in the spring they’ll emerge again out of the ground and begin producing blooms except for the roses those will just look like a bunch of sticks in the winter but again after winter they will start pushing out new foliage and new blooms now let’s talk about a few perennials for shade this beauty here is called dicentra or bleeding hearts and it gets its name because of its really cute heart-shaped blooms this is a super hearty perennial down to -50° F and any plant that is listed for shade or part shade needs about 3 to four hours of morning sun per day and it does beautifully so this is a really good one and a couple more really great shade perennials that I really love are the Coline this one comes in so many beautiful varieties just here you can see that they have some in yellow and some in purple these are an early to mid-spring bloomer and the pollinators absolutely love them they’re really easy and low and even when the blooms are done the foliage is really pretty ladies mantle another really great shade perennial i’ve started growing this in my garden a couple of years ago it is really easy to grow and has really beautiful foliage so another one that when the blooms are done you’ll still have gorgeous interest with the foliage it holds on to raindrops really nicely and it gets these sprays of chartreuse green yellow flowers and a still bee this is another one that is a beauty in my garden it is really low fuss disease and pest resistant the deers don’t touch it the bunnies don’t touch it and it gets these beautiful plumes of these fuzzy flowers in my zone 6 garden somewhere around the end of June beginning of July these are heavy feeders and what that means is they like a location where they’re going to get a good amount of water and they also like fertilizer so every year in the spring I give them a dose of an all-purpose fertilizer and they are so happy and they bloom beautifully when you’re shopping at the garden center it’s really easy to be able to determine whether a perennial is shade or sun because they’ll usually be in different areas and have signs like this so shade is anywhere that gets up to 3 hours of sun per day now we’re going to talk about evergreens and evergreens means a shrub that will stay that way all year round you can have evergreen shrubs and evergreen trees this happens to be one of my favorites i’ve had this growing in my garden for 12 years and this is a blue star juniper it has the most beautiful blue coloring and it’s relatively compact after 12 years this only gets to be 3 to 4 feet in diameter and only about 18 or so in in height this makes a wonderful shrub or evergreen for a front of a border because they stay relatively low in order to get this really beautiful blue gray coloring it needs to have full sun and junipers in general like a very well- draining soil greens play such an important role in the garden because in the winter when all of your perennial flowers go to sleep you still have some beautiful interest to look at all winter long another one of my favorite evergreens is this one here this is a gold mop cyprus now this will get about 3 to 5t tall and wide and it also loves full sun anytime that you look at an evergreen that is blue or yellow in color it prefers a lot of sun in order to keep this beautiful golden color or blue coloring now this one here you can see that the areas that are shaded underneath the leaves stays more green that’s because they’re not getting as much sun but all of the top of the shrub that gets hit by the sun is nice and golden this has a really beautiful kind of airy shape and texture with some arching branches and is just really graceful looking this one here I’ve had in my garden for also around 10 years and it started to get a little bit large for the space that I had it in so I was able to prune it into a small topiary tree and I do have a video on my channel about that and it looks really beautiful and interesting and I absolutely love it so this is another really great staple evergreen for your garden here’s a quick tip about buying some of these shrubs now here we have two examples of the gold mop fall cyprress this one is in a small 1 and 1/2 gallon container or so for $16.98 and here we have a larger almost 3 gallon container for $29.98 now the pros and cons are the price as well as the size if you want instant impact you can go with the larger shrub at a little bit higher price but they also have a larger root ball so it’ll be a little bit more work to plant if you have time on your side you can go with the smaller shrub that will be more affordable and easier to plant but it’ll take a little bit longer to get up to size but I will tell you in this particular example these grow pretty quickly you can see that I’m standing here among a bunch of different evergreens and it provides so much visual interest when you set up your garden this way with different colored evergreens we have green we have shades of blue and yellow this is what’s considered blue in a garden when it comes to evergreens now the one that I want to show you is this beauty here and this is a haninoi cyprus i have various haninois growing in my garden and the key thing that you should know about these is that they come in different colors both in green and in gold as well as different sizes this one happens to be a more compact version and it is the Hanoki Cypress Verden and this particular one gets to be about 36 in in width and about 3 to 8 ft tall they like full sun and what can tell you that is that it has a little bit of a golden color so anytime you see a gold or a blue colored evergreen it’s going to require more sun now these are absolutely fabulous and they’ve become more readily available at the local big box store garden center but they’re also really available at your local nurseries here’s another example of a shrub that does require sun to keep this beautiful color you can see inside the part that is hidden from the sun is more green and the tips that are getting kissed by the sun look more golden one thing that’s really important to pay attention to when you’re starting a new garden is the size and spacing requirements of plants when I was new I made a few of those mistakes by planting things too close to my house or too close to each other and it required having to pull them out a couple of examples of that are Haninoi as well as Colorado blue spruces because there are dwarf varieties which means they grow relatively slow and can stay more compact but there are a lot of varieties that get really large so it’s important to know what you’re dealing with so that you can plant them in an appropriate spot so here we have a dwarf Colorado blue spruce and as I just mentioned dwarf just means that it has a slower growth rate and can potentially stay more compact but you can see this has a really beautiful color and that is my goal for this video to show you some beautiful evergreens that provide a lot of visual interest with different color and texture this particular one wants full sun it is hardy down to -40° F spruces are really hardy and it gets to be 3 to 5 ft tall and wide on average one thing that’s really common with new landscapes for new gardeners is the need or the want to create privacy or a living fence and two evergreens that are great for this purpose are the arborvite and this one here is called the emerald green arborvite and this one here is called the green giant arborite i recently made a video on my channel explaining the key differences between these two types of arborvite and I have some examples of real life applications where these were used but in general just to give you a quick summary the emerald green arborvite grows more columner and has a tighter growth habit and it is less deer resistant and the green giant just as the name suggests grows more giant much larger has a looser growth habit and is more deer resistant i will go ahead and leave the link to that video in the description of this video as well as in the pinned comment so that you can go ahead and check that out let’s talk about hydrangeas which happens to be a deciduous shrub and deciduous just means that it loses its leaves just like trees so in the winter these will lose their leaves just like the knockout rose they will look like a bunch of sticks and then the following spring they will start pushing out some new foliage now the great thing about hydrangeas is they have a beautiful blooms right so there are shade hydrangeas and there are some that are more tolerant of sun this happens to be a more sun tolerant hydrangeanger it is a paniculada type hydrangeanger called a little lime and this is my favorite hydrangeanger in my garden the little lime is a more compact version of the limelight hydrangeanger which can get pretty large at 6 to 8 ft tall and wide the little lime stays compact at 3 to 5 feet tall and wide they’re really easy to prune to keep them to any size that you prefer in your garden these will start to leaf out for me here in my zone 6 some point in May so right now they’re all leafed out then they will start to produce bloom buds first they start off a little bit of a lime green color then they will go creamy white before turning pink as we get towards the end of the summer and the nights get cooler even in the fall they have beautiful fall interest with all shades of mauve so if you want to add a hydrangeanger to your garden the little lime hydrangeanger paniculada type is a wonderful choice if you have a part sun or shade garden you can still grow hydrangeas and the more common varieties to grow in a part shade situation is what they call the macroila type or the mop head or big leaf type hydrangeas they go by all of those names this one happens to be a proven winners variety called Let’s Dance Can Do and it is a relooming type of hydrangeanger now these get to be 3 to four feet tall and wide but some of the older varieties like the Nico Blue can get much larger but if you do have a shady garden and you still want to grow hydrangeas this is another great option like the little lime that we just looked at this will also lose its leaves for the winter but it’ll come back next season beautifully one more thing about the big leaf or macrofila type hydrangeas that like part shade many times people will equate these to the hydrangeas that they see with the big blue beautiful blooms but whether or not you get the blue blooms is really dependent on the type of soil that you have your hydrangeanger planted in if you have a more acidic soil your hydrangeanger blooms will be blue but if you have a more alkaline soil your hydrangeanger blooms will be pink or purple so just something to note if you go ahead and you plant some of these in your part shade garden and you’re expecting those blue blooms the color that the blooms will turn is very dependent on the type of soil that you have them growing in now let’s talk about some grassy type perennials that offer a lot of movement and texture in the garden this here is a grass-like perennial called a chorus sweet flag and I absolutely love this in my garden it’s also a problem solver plant for me because I have some soil that stays really moist and this does wonderful in that type of soil it likes part sun but I have mine in full sun and it still does pretty well and what I love about this particular Aorus sweet flag oon is that it will stay evergreen for me here in my zone 6 so this does not die back all winter it will go a little bit paler yellow in the winter months but then in spring and in summer it’ll get really vibrant yellow and green but grasses are a wonderful addition to a garden we just finished taking a look at the Aorus sweet flag which is a really low growing ornamental grass in that yellow coloring which looks really great in the front of a flower border well here is an option for a taller vertical grass that looks really beautiful in the landscape and offers a lot of movement this is one of my favorites that I have in my garden and it is the Carl Forester reed grass this is a more compact variety of ornamental grass it stays only about 3 feet in diameter and about 4 to 5 ft in height you’ll see that when it starts off it’ll just look like a clump of grass and then it will send up what they call blooms on grasses which are these fuzzy plumes and these almost look like wheat they look really beautiful and offer a lot of interest in the garden throughout the whole season and even in the fall once the season is over you would go ahead and cut these down to the ground leaving only about 2 in or so on the plant and then they will emerge with all new foliage in the spring if you’re looking for a feature landscape tree a Japanese maple is a great option they’re relatively easy to find and readily available these here are red varieties and here we have a tummakiama which is a lace leaf Japanese maple and that just refers to the shape or style of the leaves they have more of a cut shape now these stay relatively compact getting only about 10 to 12 feet in height and with a similar wingspan they’re very easy to keep size controlled by pruning them now this one here is a more upright variety it’s also considered a medium-sized tree and it is a bloodg good Japanese maple the bloodg good have what they call the palmatum style leaves and that is a solid leaf shape now both of these are red and they can both be size controlled with proper pruning the blood good here gets to be anywhere from 15 to 25 ft tall and wide now both of these prefer part sun and they need a relatively moist but well- draining soil these are great options for the front of the landscape or even in a flower border i hope this video was helpful to you in showing you some plants in some evergreens that you can plant in your garden to have beautiful interest for years to come thank you so much for spending your time with me and I’ll catch you in the next one thanks for watching this video if you liked it please hit the thumbs up button and please consider subscribing so you don’t miss any of my future videos and we’ll see you soon [Music]