🇮🇪 25.25: Our Irish Garden Plans: Liam Has Ideas… but So Do I!

We take you on a walk around our Irish property to talk through all the changes we’re dreaming up — from the sunken garden to the firepit dilemma, a potential hedge, a new stone wall, and a whole lot of plant shuffling.

There are some solid plans… and some strong opinions. (Spoiler: not all of them are shared.)

If you enjoy behind-the-scenes garden planning, a bit of banter, and seeing how an outdoor space evolves over time — come along for the walk. We’d love to hear what you think we should do next!

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[Music] So Liam, I was hoping maybe we could do a little walk around the yard. I’ve been thinking about some ideas. Okay. Do I have any input in these ideas? That’s exactly why because you usually do have some ideas that come come to light. Uh so how about we just ideas? Good ideas. Well, you have you have all kinds of ideas. Some of them are expensive ideas. They’re all expensive ideas. All right, I’m ready. Well, I think for right now, this area here, this hedge, I’m not going to do anything with the hedge or with the roodendron. I think we’re just going to let that do its thing. Okay. Uh, same thing over here. I’m not going to worry about this front too much. Okay. Uh, so that’s the plan. I probably will take out that crocosmia just because it blocks the view of the road, makes it hard to get out. And then this area here. So, when we look at we’re going to call this the hillside. Yeah, the crappy hillside. I This drives me nuts. This hillside drives me nuts. Well, there’s a couple things. So, we have this heather that’s doing really well, and I think that is nice to see. So, I’m happy about that. Our roses, which I thought were pretty much goners, those have come back. Uh, you see there’s a lot of dead, you know, stems on them and stuff like that. But this winter was just rough on all cuz we just get these clumps of roses and I want them to ramble all over the hillside. Yeah. And I don’t think they’re going to do that in this spot. We’ve had them in there for at least what, seven, eight years and they haven’t got very big. So, I think I’m going to dig them up, but I need to find a place for them. And I don’t know if I find a temporary space or do I, you know, I So, I’m I’ve got to figure that out. But I think this is an area I can work on right now. What I want to do is uh this fall I’ll probably uh take out the crocosmia that’s up there. And I’m going to start uh adding some roses and bring those the the wild roses roses. The wild roses are great that you don’t have to take you don’t have to do anything with them. And they look great. Yeah, they smell good and they take over. So, I say fill this whole area with wild roses. Well, and that’s the plan. And you’ll look if you’ll before we went on our boat trip, I did tuck in uh some cutings and I just stuck them in the ground, but then we left and it was super hot that week. Oh, they’re starting to come up though. A couple of them are actually. Yeah, two of them ended up taking. So, I was super excited to see that because I was not expecting those to fill in. But all of these were started from cutings. Did you just you just zip it off? you stick it or do you have to put it in rooting compound? No, I didn’t use any rooting compound. I just cut off the stem and then I I make sure that there’s not a lot of leaves on it cuz I don’t want to have to support that and they tend to take. So, we can kind of keep that going. I’ve done it in several spots. Other thing I did is, you know, I cut back all the ivy that’s back there. I don’t know if it’s going to take up here, but I just threw it up there. If it roots, that’s great. If it dies, it just becomes compost. And you’ll notice like here we do have that uh katoni aster that’s the ground cover which I’m not crazy about to be honest with you. Well it’s nothing special but I mean it just it just but look it now that I look at it it is suppressing the grass a little bit wherever it’s growing. So it is good for that. We’ll see. Can you plant something on it so it suppresses the grass and then something really much prettier will grow. Uh I don’t know about that. Well, remember once we put in these uh roses, uh then those are going to pretty much hide and only what you’ll see is what’s kind of on the upper level. So once we get those roses planted, we can start treating that top tier a little bit different. Remember, this soil is really rocky. It was all kind of scraped away. So there’s no top soil. It’s all clean. So we do probably, if we are going to do anything other than those roses, we probably have to bring in some soil. Uh unfortunately, it’s such a slope that we have to make sure that we have something to break. So, I think my goal right now is to extend the rose bed. All right. Keep it going. We will remove these pink roses. And I’m going to stop right here at the uh heather and we’ll figure that out as we go. The heather isn’t that beautiful in the summer. No, but it looks great when it is blooming. So, and that’s usually in the winter. Maybe we’ll find a better place for it. We could. And the heather does tend to do well here. Now I do have the panacle hydrangeanger and an arberescent hydrangeanger up there and I’m testing them there to see how they do because those could be a top tier plant because I once had planted eight blue hydrangeanger here and I spent a lot of money on eight blue hydrangeanger and as you can tell yeah not not too much there. We also uh someone had given us a blue spruce that we planted up there and that didn’t take that didn’t take. Yes. And we also aren’t here to take care of stuff so the grass gets in there. We have moisture issues. Now, we have been talking about trees cuz I know you really I really want some trees. I only have so much time left. I really want some trees. So, we’re looking for fast growing trees. Preferably. Yeah. So, we did get a tree today. So, we haven’t figured out where we’re going to do it. We’ve been talking about putting some kind of tree behind or up by the shed there. Yeah, I think we should put one there. I think the big question is, do we want like a craggy looking tree like a hawthorne or do you want a big shade tree like a maple or an oak or a honeyloust or I might be around for the maple. I’m not sure if I’ll be around for the oak. So, that is something that we do have to consider. So, Oh, well, you’re not that far behind me. I mean, you know what I mean? For God’s sakes. Um, I’m not planning to do anything in front of the wall right now. Although, there are some things we could put Oh, yeah. We need something that crawls on the wall and Well, I mean, the climbing hydrangeanger does do its thing, so that’s a possibility. Yeah. I mean, the climb the climbing hydrangeanger that you plant by the door looks beautiful. Yeah, I’m super happy with how that’s doing. And it really uh took when I, you know, like now that I’ve got it pinned up, it it looks fantastic. I’m so happy with it. Looks nice and it’s grown so much. I’m just It’s really nice to see this area. I’m not going to change anything. This is kind of a rotating area of whatever is doing well and I’m okay with that. Oh, my rose bush. Look at my rose bush. I know. Hopefully that’s going to bounce back next year. It’s going to be in rough shape this year. That’s just all there is to it. So, it’s going to be it. It’s And then we have the bugs eating it as well. So, we’re at a lot of disadvantages this year, but that’s okay. We’re We’re okay with that. Uh coming around here, I think I do want to try some more climbing hydrangeas just and keep them low along where that black area is. I just feel like breaking this up, you know, so it’s not just gravel and concrete. You mean keeping them low just on the black area, not letting them crawl up higher? I don’t I will Let’s get them up to that line and then we’ll decide what we’re going to do. Let’s hope we can make that happen. Uh and here’s the tree that we had bought. And this one here is an autumn blaze maple. So, it’s one of those trees that just does get a nice orange red color. At least in Michigan it does. I don’t know how it does here. It grows fast. That was my criteria. Yeah, Liam looked it up and said it was one of the faster growing ones. They say, “Well, then they grow fast, they die fast.” But you know what? another 50 years. If it dies, I’m not going to care. Yeah, they don’t really die that fast. Now, I do have plans for this area, but before we get into what I’m going to do there, I think we need to talk about the sunken garden. So, let’s just pop that. This is this is another one of my my uh things that bugs the you know what out of me. Well, you know, fortunately, it hasn’t been as hard to keep to clean out as as it was before. So, it’s it’s a pain right now, but I think we can start to manage. is coming up already. I know it’s no matter what we do, it’s always there. But, uh, we do need to decide how we’re going to treat this surface. So, do we put down, you know, a true landscape fabric or do we do the flags? We’ve been talking about doing flags. Yeah, we talked about doing flags. I think maybe flags is the only thing we can do because and stuff does grow up between flags, but I think we’d be able to manage. Well, that we could manage probably, but yeah, down here, I mean, really, my goal here is, okay, we’re going to take out that fire pit. It was not the best spot for it. Now, now when I look at it, we’d be sitting in front of fire looking at laurels. Well, care about that. Well, but we have all these plants. I know, but it would damage the laurels, too. So, and the heat and I’ve been thinking about this and it was mentioned in the comments, too. Bringing that out to the middle so people can sit around the fire and, you know, doing that kind of thing. That might be the middle of this area here. Yeah, cuz remember these stones won’t be here. The goal will be to try to find plants that will grow up around this. See, the thing is it’s like having a fire. I want something that’s smokeless, you know, and they do have those solo stoves, I think, and they’re they’re supposedly smokeless. If anybody has any comments and lets me know if they’d have one of those, I’d love to hear your take on it because I really want to use this area. And again, uh like I said, originally I thought of putting like a a stone fireplace down there and where, you know, where there was a chimney and everything like an outdoor fireplace. Then I ended up at the fire pit, but again, I I agree it does it’s not going to work. Yeah. So, and we you know, we’ll get these stones organized. We just don’t know what we’re doing quite down here. But I think the big thing is going to be deciding what kind of surface we’re going to have down here. And then we’ll gradually work on the the plants that we’re going to put down here. Any suggestions on surface? Now, see the thing is it’s it’s we even thought of pouring concrete because it’s not in a rectangle. It has, you know, undulating rock walls here. So, yeah. If anybody has any other ideas, we take it. It is an option to to pour a concrete slab or some kind of thing down here. Yeah. Uh but I don’t know. It’s just so tricky. It’s just a microclimate. It’s a beautiful space and Yeah. Tell them why you decided that you really wanted a sunken garden. Well, because we’re up on we’re up in the mountains, first of all, and we’re up on a height and there’s that’s the the other reason we want trees. There’s no I mean, the laurels are great for a windbreak, but we wanted to be able to enjoy some space outside and not being blown off the mountain and also give us a little privacy. It is nice to have this area. It’s a surprise when people come over and they see it. They’re just shocked that it’s down here. If we can get it under control, I think it’ll be a beautiful fantastic space. And it’s been fun. Like we did these steps ourselves. I mean, it’s a DIY project that actually turned out for us now for this area. Yeah. And the reason why I’m saving this for last is in part because we have to decide what we’re doing back here because if we have to get a cement truck or if we’re having uh flags delivered flag stones or anything like that, we’ve got to be able to drive on this or be able to deliver it to this spot because our septic is right here. So, we can’t drive on that on that side. And I also want to build a rock wall at some point down there. Well, I want to talk to you about that cuz I I agree with you on that part of it. An agreement. An agreement. Well, you suggested it before and I was kind of against it cuz I suggested I told you that’s what we’re doing. Well, and I and I kept saying like, “Yeah, but if we ever need access, if you permanently put something, but I’m getting over that.” And I do like the idea of a short wall, maybe, you know, a foot or two feet tall or maybe a little taller, maybe. You know, we could we could possibly do that. We can argue about that. But but my idea is that we create that wall, but we actually make it into a raised bed or a raised box. I want I I’d like it to be about that wide with with where you could plant stuff in the middle of it. Yeah. We’ll figure out the sizing as we kind of decide what kind of plants because if we’re going to do any kind of shrubbing shrubs in there and that’s the other thing, the height of the wall. We have to think about what kind of plants we’re putting in there. Well, I’m thinking I’m not thinking so much shrubs as much as I’m thinking about well shrubs maybe shrub roses, but more like I don’t know like just more something more like in spring lots of daffodils and change into different things. Yeah. Now, that kind of stuff is easy. I’m thinking about shrubs because they’re a little easier to take care of. They’re a little more vigorous also, so we don’t have to worry about them being overtaken. Like once they’re established, they usually win. Uh, usually. Well, I’ll see what kind of shrubs. I don’t know what your shrubs are to my sh. And this I’m totally open to what we put in here. So, we’ll see. I like this is it. I like color. He picks out white hydrangeas. I I want a pink hydranger, a blue hydrangeanger. He’s all about this white stuff. Liam, we have tried We got a white house. We need color. We have tried the colored hydrangeas. Well, no, it doesn’t have to be color D, but it’s got to be flowers that have colors for God’s sakes. So, color is on the list. That’s that’s tops of the list. Now, the plan is once we do this wall, we want to create maybe a little pathway that’s going to go through this area, right? I have a little gate that came from a friend of mine. Yeah. And I would love to put the gate and then a pathway, possibly the wall turning a little bit there because um with the second part of the house, there’s a separate kitchen. So, if we have people staying in that part of the house, we want to be able to uh give them a separate access, not a private access, like if we had friends or family staying who maybe, you know, we didn’t want to be around. Yeah. Yeah. We want to be able to have I can’t imagine my sister is a lovely person. So, having that path and then my feeling is once we get that raised bed in there, we could plant behind that. Once this hedge is established, we could either put a wall behind it or we could just do plantings behind it as well. Yeah. So, I’m not sure. I want to see how this grows before I make any decisions on that. Well, this is it. I mean, you know that this is the third hedge we put in. If this doesn’t take concrete blocks, yeah. No, no, it’s going to be rock wall. And so, this area I would like to start putting plants in, but I think we’re going to just gradually overtake this lawn. We could give up some of the parking area, but I don’t think we want to do that. Um it’s it’s just easy for us and it’s handy and that would be a long way down the road. Yeah. You know, if we ever did start Yeah, there could be some changes, but Yeah. But right now, this is what we like. This is working. Yeah. Now, around the back here, again, there’s only so much time. Well, and I’ll tell you what, like if we were here full-time, this project would be like a two-year project, and we I would make sure that it got done. It might be more like a 10-year project, you No. Well, no, it can’t be because we we we can’t wait that long. Well, we’ll see. Uh I think we might put maybe a uh climbing hydrangeanger here. Maybe that’s a good idea or something. That way in case the rose Show them the rose. Show the rose. Hey, the rose is looking really good. It really is looking good. Yeah. Yeah. So, in case the rose doesn’t make it though, I think the high climbing hydrangeanger will. Can I just point something out real quick? Yes. I just want to point when this was built. This stone, this stone, and these other two that you see have kind of white on them. Do you see that? I don’t know. Mhm. And those came from the grandparents cottage. So, he wanted to have some of his heritage on heritage on the Yeah. Now, back here, it’s kind of a mess back here, but I did try to put some of that eonymous down along the chimney and along the Well, that’s the stuff that didn’t make it, right? Yeah. But that’s the survivors. Those survivors, so I’m I’m hopeful. Um we had some uh pompus grass here and they did okay and they just kind of we still have pompus grass but it doesn’t seem to be yeah it’s it’s sluggish and so it wasn’t the first year though it was nice first year second year third year and then it every year it just kind of went a little less and less and less. So I think we you mentioned maybe doing a little laurel hedge here that we keep really low. I really think I think a laurel hedge would be the way to go. And the reason why we do laurel is just because it’s easy. It’s quick. We would not put like a lot of plants in there. It would. No. No. And Laurel is be again another nice windbreak and and uh I think it looks nice. It stays green all winter and summer. Yeah. So, we’re going to give that a try. Um otherwise, I don’t have big plans in the back. It’s just about keeping stuff alive and keeping it going. So, yeah. So, I’m not going to even touch that part. And then down here, I hope someday to clean this out. You talked about possibly making this into like an orchard or small orchard or something. And I think that would be a beautiful spot. Uh we do have power lines ahead, but usually fruit trees are shorter. No, they’re smaller. Yeah. So, that should that could be a nice place to put in some fruit trees. So, so I think we have ideas. Yeah. And I do know what I’m going to try to get done now. I’m going to try to get the hill part done. Okay. Uh and I don’t know that I’ll get other parts done. I will get the stuff that we bought planted and we may have to make another trip to a garden center though. I have a feeling. Yeah. And hopefully everything will be doing well and we can go next next level then again. Yeah. Next level. And we need to move these levels faster. I’m under so much pressure. He He keeps saying like, you know, down there. What What is it? What is the big thing you keep insisting on putting in the sunken garden? A swimming pool. He wants like a big water fountain like no water feature. No, not in the sunken garden. Just coming down from the hillside here. Just a simple little pump and a little trough of water going down. Yeah. And a couple of koi. And and then he saw the garden answer pond that they put in. Yeah. And he’s like, “Well, we could do that.” I’m like, uh, yeah, that. Okay, show them the picture of the thing that your parents did at that bakery in Michigan. That’s what I want. Simple little waterfall. Okay. Well, you’re going to have to work on being here more often to be able to keep that stuff going. I’m working at that. I’m working. I’m really working hard at that. Oh, well, thank you guys for watching. Just wanted to give you guys this little overview. We’ll keep you posted on how far we get on stuff. Yeah. This trip, next trip, next trip, next trip. As long as he keeps listening to me, we’ll get this done. But it keeps dragging his feet. Bye.