Landscape Design Ideas: A Secret Garden Plan

TODAY’S VIDEO: Yup, We are back at my friend Tracy’s house. Today we are clearing out a ‘hot mess’ and creating a design for a secret garden.
The garden is 12’ wide and 16’ long in full sun.

Want to see the design and installation of last summer’s gardens beds on this same property? Well, you can check that out right here.
Backyard Garden Design-Designing Along a Long Fence in Full Sun

Backyard Landscape Design-Installing the Long Hot Fence Line

And…want to know how to make the concrete mushrooms I was talking about, you can check that out too!
How to Make Hypertufa Pots & Concrete Mushrooms

Please note: There may be tagged products in this video. Please know that I do earn a small commission from any affiliate links that you click on from this video, so thank you if you do purchase something this way. All proceeds are used to help continue to make fabulous videos for you!

ABOUT ME: Hello, my name is Michelle and I own a garden center and floral store called The Landscape Connection. I am a volunteer Master Gardener with the University of Illinois Extension. I am also a home gardener and a retired landscape designer and installer.
I have a passion for gardening and teaching so WELCOME! If you like our videos please subscribe, like, share, and leave your comments and questions. Join us and get your hands in the dirt!
LINKS
Blogs:

Home

Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/TheLandscapeConnectionofRockford
Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/thelandscapeconnection/
Website:
https://www.thelandscapeconnection.net/

The Landscape Connection Gift & Garden Center
4472 S. Mulford Rd.
Rockford, Illinois 61109
815-633-5100

[Music] I can only laugh when I see this and a customer goes, “Can you turn that into something beautiful?” I mean, wow. Okay. Yeah. Once we clear all this out, look at this, you guys. This is all weeds. Oh my god. Yeah. I love a challenge. Let’s turn it into something beautiful. Hey everyone, Michelle here from Gardening TLC and we are back at my friend Tracy’s house where we have another project that we’re going to be doing. Check that out behind me. That is a big bunch of weeds. We are going to be clearing this area out and creating a secret garden. I know it’s the perfect spot. We’ve got a fence on two sides and we’ve got the shed on the third side. And then we can create something really cool. I can’t wait. Let’s dig in. I brought the guys with me today because this is a major major pulling of weeds. And so we’re going to pull all the weeds out. This is a pretty noxious invasive weed right here. And this vine right here is Oh my goodness. It’s just insane. It’s even growing at the telephone pole over there. You can see it. All right. So, the guys are going to start clearing [Music] All right. Now that we can see the ground, we are basically going to be picking up all the bricks in here. The standup edging bricks like this. We’re actually going to throw those away. But then we’ve got to bring the level of this down. It looks like there was some kind of bed in here because we want this to be ground level. So, I will be, not me, but my guys will be digging out a lot of this dirt and humping it out to the truck. These guys are going to now start working on getting this to ground level. All right, this is all cleared out now. I’m sure that there is weed seed that got turned over in here. So, I will be putting down snapshot, which is a pre-emergent, so that new weed seed doesn’t germinate. But, there are probably other weeds that will germinate in here as well. So, we are going to give it some time, probably 10 to 14 days to see if anything comes up because the one thing we don’t want to do is we don’t want to start with weeds. We want to make sure all the weeds are gone. And just because we scraped out all of the dirt and the debris doesn’t mean that there isn’t root stock still underneath there. And that’s what we don’t want to deal with later. So, we’re going to take our time and make sure that we process through this in the order that it needs to be done. Step one, put down pre-emergent. Step two, let’s see if some weeds grow. We’ll come back in 10 days. That was satisfying to look at, wasn’t it? The before and after. But we’re not done. And we’re not even really close. Because even though we cleared everything out, there are still weeds in that bed. And the one thing that you want to do when you’re breaking ground for a new bed and you have an overwhelming amount of weeds in that area is you got to get rid of the weeds. If you don’t get rid of those weeds, you’ll battle them forever. Now, that’s not to say that you’re never going to have weeds in your whole entire life. But we never want it to turn back into what it was, right? Otherwise, why would we even put a garden over there? There are three ways to get rid of weeds. One, you pull them. And when you pull them, if they snap and you don’t get all the rootstock, they’re coming back. All right? Two, you smother them. I love the smothering technique, but the smothering technique is a time uh constraint where you have to put the heavy cardboard down and then put some compost on it, then put some mulch on it and let it sit for a season because you want that cardboard to break down and then because the roots are covered, you’re smothering them out. Now, the third way is with a chemical. And this is the way that we’re going to do it. Now, we’re going to use an organic chemical at the highest concentrate possible and a combination of a pre-emergent. So, the pre-emergent is a granular that we put down called snapshot. We already put it down. This is going to stop any new seed from germinating. It is what we call a pre-emergent. It’s before anything comes up. So, it’s stopping seed from germinating. Now, the spray that we’re going to use once the weeds come up is what we call a postemergent or after the weeds are up and they have a roottock. We want this to be sprayed on some part of the plant. The leaf is the best part. So, even though we’ve taken it all the way to the ground, if I sprayed it right now, it wouldn’t work. I need the leaves to come up. That way I have something for this chemical to attach to and then it travels down the stem to the root and it takes it out from the root and that’s systemic. So it’s going down the stem. We’re going to use an organic product, probably the Captain Jack’s dead weed brew, and we’re going to mix it at the highest concentrate. But before we can do that, we need some stuff to come up. So while we’re waiting for that, let’s do a design. So we’re going to do a play on a secret garden. And this little garden, you might think, well, it’s in the corner behind a shed. She can’t even see it from the house. But what you haven’t seen is that Tracy has a pool in the back of her yard. And that pool has a view right to the secret garden. And so my first thought when she told me she wanted to do something there was, “Oh, I want some kind of trellis there or some kind of arch there where we can see through and it pulls your eye all the way to the back.” and then maybe a little bench or a statue or a beastro table or whatever. We don’t know what that is yet cuz Tracy’s on the hunt for it right now. I do know that we’re going to make some more of those hyperfa mushrooms that we made a couple days ago and we’re going to do them in purple cuz that’s her favorite color and we’re going to put those in her garden as well. So, I thought that would be really fun and she’ll love those. All right, so let’s take a look at the design. But before we do that, let’s talk about what the light is over there and the size of the actual secret garden area. We are in a full sun area. So, this is going to get 8 plus hours of sun. We are also in an area that is 12 ft wide and 16 ft long. We are going to come out a little bit further than the shed and kind of come around the corner just a little bit and then along the edge of the fence line. And yes, we are going to put an arbor in here. I’m not going to use an arched arbor, though. I’m actually going to use a square arbor because I want to be able to see through all the way to the back. We will be putting in a path with some crushed, it’s called spar dust, and you’ll see what that is when we put it in. But we’re going to put a path in with that and then have like a platform at the back where we can put a bench or a beastro table, a statue, something. What we’re also going to do is outline the whole outside area of that with beautiful perennials and shrubs so that she’s got beautiful color throughout the season. We’re also kind of tying it in to the fence line bed that we did last year, which I will give you an update on that so that you can see how that’s doing as well. All right, so let’s take a look at the design. We’re going to work from the back to the front. Now, as you can see here, I have put a path in. But when we do the actual path itself, we’re actually going to have it start underneath the arbor, and it’s going to start as wide as the arbor is, which is 4 feet. And then it’s going to kind of like flare in to a 3-FFT path because we really don’t need a path any wider than that. And we want as much planting space as we can get. My design program has limitations, so it’s just showing it like this. The other thing that’s going to happen is as it gets to the end and it’s going to be probably the pathway itself right around 7 ft long, it’s going to end up in a little rectangle platform that we’re going to make that will be probably 4 feet this way and 3 ft deep. So like a 4×3 rectangle and that’s what we’re going to set the bench on. So we’re going to start at the very back and then we’re going to work our way forward. The last piece that we’ll put in will be the arbor and you’ll be able to see like how you see the see-through. But my goal here is that we have layers of plants that are peeking up and down. We also have some winter anchors, which won’t really matter in this kind of a bed because you’re never going to see it from the house in the winter. I want this to be beautiful through the summer when they’re in the pool and it can handle the heat and I want things coming in and out of bloom. And I want you to be able to like kind of sort of see it, but then want to walk over there and really look at what’s in there. So that’s what we’re going for. So what we’re going to start with first is the very back and we’re going to do two junipers and then we’re going to do a hydrangeanger. I have chosen to use a skyrocket juniper in the back corners. This is a pretty skitty juniper only getting 2 to three feet wide. They get 15 to 20 feet tall and they have a beautiful blue uh foliage on them. And I love that this is going to be the anchors in the corners. Now, I’m at the end of the season and sometimes I can’t always find the cultivors that I’m looking for. And maybe you won’t be able to find a skyrocket either if you’re thinking about doing this. I could also use a tailor juniper. They get a little bit taller, but they’re just as skinny. They have more of like they push a little bit more on the green versus the blue on the color, but they’re just as skinny and they’re absolutely gorgeous. For me, junipers are rabbit and deer resistant. Not that Tracy has that pressure. She doesn’t. She has a fully fenced in backyard. But what I love about junipers is in that back corner, they’re going to be drought tolerant and they’re going to give us that beautiful vertical height. With the junipers being full grown back there, I’ve used up six of my 12 feet of width. So, I need a hydrangeanger that will fit in this area, but I want it to be the focal that you see as it pulls your eye all the way to the back. So, I’ve decided to use a Limelight Prime. These are absolutely gorgeous. So unlike a regular limelight that gets ginormous, this one stays a little more compact and fits into the parameters of what it is that I’m looking for. When these start to bloom, when they’re closed, the buds are like lime green. Then they open white. Then they start to age to this really beautiful pink. They have a nice like cone-shaped flower on it. They’re going to get anywhere from four to six feet high. Now I think this will get probably all of six feet because it is in full sun. getting that eight hours. But what I love about it is once we get it established, it’s going to have the same watering requirements as that juniper. They’re pretty stinking drought tolerant and it’s super low maintenance. And the reason I love hydrangeas is because they really do give you a lot of flower power for most of the summer. So, these start blooming usually right around the end of July and then they take you all the way through the rest of the season. And they’re gorgeous. And this is definitely an impact plant that will make you look and go, “Look at me. Look at me.” And that’s what I’m going for. For the very, very back, we are going to be using, yes, a purple color scheme in this bed because it is Tracy’s favorite color. She absolutely loves purple. Now, we are going to be using some shrubs and some perennials. So, the first shrub I want to use is a willa, and I want that dark purple foliage on there. In front of that, we’re going to be planting some aliiums. And then in front of the hydrangeanger down low, this will be like on the back edge of the little uh rectangle platform that we make. Those are going to be some of those rock and round sedums. I am in love with those sedums. They grow in these nice little cute mounds. Oh, they’re so neat and tidy and they’re gorgeous when they’re blooming. I definitely want a contrast color in front of those junipers because I want to draw your eye back through the bed. This is a spilled wine wiggilla and it’s a smaller wiggilla, but it keeps that beautiful dark purple foliage throughout the whole season. It’s blooming towards the end of May and then it’ll shoot up little repeat blooms usually around the beginning of August into the middle of August. It’s never going to bloom as heavily as it did that first big flush, but it’s absolutely gorgeous. And I think the contrast on that color between the blue and that dark purple is going to be great. I am going to center this like on the cutouts to where we’re going to put the bench because they get four feet wide and we’re going to make that three feet wide. So, it’ll spill over a little bit onto our cutout and it’ll fill that area in perfectly. Now, in front of that, oh yeah, check these out. This is a summer blooming alium. And this one is called bubble bath. And the first time that I saw it was when I went to Walter’s Gardens just like a month ago and saw it up in the test gardens and I was like, “Oh, I love those.” So, it’s got a beautiful lavender color on it and it’s blooming towards the end of July. So, you’re going to have that beautiful contrast of that dark foliaged woodilla behind it and then this is in front of it and it gets flowers on it that are like this big around and they’re this absolutely beautiful soft lavender. The foliage on it looks good all the time. Even when it doesn’t have flowers and even after those flowers fade, they still look good. So, it’s some nice movement back there. And I think it’s going to be the perfect thing to go in front of the wiggillas. Deer and rabbit resistant. And again, we’re picking things that are drought tolerant. I planted quite a few of these last year, and when I planted them, they were kind of all spled out because they had been in their pots too long. A couple of them that I planted didn’t look real great because I moved them like three or four times. So, not only did we plant this cultivar here along Tracy’s fence line last year, I also put them in my own garden. Now, this year, oh, they’re growing just like I thought they would in those beautiful cute little mounds and I absolutely love them. We are going to plant this on the back side of that little cutout that we’re going to do for the bench or whatever goes there, but in front of the hydrangeas. And we’re just gonna kind of like dot them along the edge back there. And you’ll see those peeking through the bench, which I think is probably what she’ll end up doing. But I love these. Only 10 to 12 inches high. So they’re a shorter sedum. And they have absolutely beautiful flowers. We’re going to do the pure joy and it’s got kind of like a lighter clear pink, which is absolutely gorgeous. Have you noticed a pattern with the drought tolerant plants and the heatloving plants? We have definitely picked plants like that for this area. One, it’s in the back corner of her house. So, getting a hose back here might be a pain in the butt for her. She does not have an irrigation system, a sprinkler system. So, she’ll be watering this by hand the first year and then hopefully she’ll never have to do that unless we go through a drought. So, again, we have picked some more sedum to put in here and some of those little more grass. I have chosen a sedum called Autumn Fire. It’s actually an improvement that they bred to autumn joy. It actually is a little more compact, only getting 24 in high. It stands up fabulously. The flowers on it are a little more intense as far as like the deep richness of that pink and then they have a tendency to fade as they age into kind of a red color. They are great in the winter to keep them up all winter if you want to keep them up for winter interest. These are a great addition to fill in that center area along the sidewalk. And then to soften that up along the edge of that sidewalk, oh yeah, we’re going to put some grasses. I’ve been planting quite a bit of cesaria autumnalis lately. This is an autumn war grass. It is the cutest little tufted grass. I planted it in the passageway garden at my uh house. And I also have some of this growing at the garden center, full or part sun. So this will grow in the shade, grow in the sun. These little toughs start growing early in the season. The tough itself probably only gets maybe 12 to 18 inches high and then when it gets its little flowers or its little plumes that come up off the top of it, that’ll shoot it up to 24 in. It kind of has a weedy color to it. And those plumes come out pretty early in the season. I would say you’ll start seeing those around mid June. They are super drought tolerant, tough, they look great, give you movement. I just love this in front of those sedums lining that pathway. I think it’s going to look fabulous. We are going to finish off the line with some pensmen. And this is going to give us some movement in the bed as well. Another dark foliaged plant. It is a little bit taller than the sedum. And I want to create a little bit of a screen so you can’t see everything. So I want it to be a little bit taller because I want it to make you want to walk over there and check it out. I have decided to use the Pensammen dark towers. I have this one growing at my house and it is fabulous. I absolutely love it. And I love that we’re putting another dark foliaged plant in here. Now, I know in the picture those flowers look a little bit more pinky red, but they actually have like a lavender color flower on them. This is such a great plant and they’re drought tolerant. It’s going to give us a little bit of a screen that way. You know what? You can’t see everything back there and it’s going to make you want to go back there and check it out. So, pretty excited to plant these in there. We talked about coming further than the end of where the shed is. And I want to do that because I don’t want it to just be this stark start. And so, we are going to kind of feather out a little bit towards the front of the shed and come just a little bit further down the fence line. Now, in front of that pens, you can see two boxwoods. That’s like bringing that little bit of formality that allows you to have to go through the hoop and you can’t like cut through to get into this garden. And so the arch will actually uh be in between the boxwoods. And I keep doing this and it’s not going to be an arch. It’s actually going to be a square because I think that’ll give us a better seethrough into the garden. So, we’re going to do boxwoods and then we’re going to repeat the same rock and round sedums that we did before and we’re going to add some Russian sage. So, all in all, this is a pretty good drought tolerant, heat tolerant secret garden, don’t you think? We are going to use a baby gem over here. This is actually out of the Southern Living collection. I am a zone five, so we can plant these here. I’ve never planted a baby gem. We’re going to try this. If it doesn’t work out, we’ll pull it out and put a winter gem in. But I actually want one that gets just a smidgen bigger. So, this can get 3 to four feet tall and 3 to four feet wide. And that’s what I want it to do. I want it to get all of four feet because one, I want to screen and two, I want it to kind of grow to the fence all the way over and then to the arch all the way over and fill in that spot right there. I think these are going to be great. Again, this is the one shrub that we will have to prune if we want to keep a little ball. And you’re going to do that after the new growth comes out in the spring, but you want to do it before the temperatures soar into the 90s. So, if we have to prune this, we’ll do it in the spring. Otherwise, we’ll just let it grow to its own beautiful self. The one thing I don’t know, I don’t know the growing habit of this. Whereas a winter gem, I know it keeps its nice round form. We’ll find out if this one does or doesn’t. I’m also going to do the Russian sage denim and lace from Proven Winners. I absolutely love this Russian sage. It is compact. It’s not all rangy. It grows at a nice height. It’s very consistent. It starts blooming and continues to bloom through the whole season. Deer resistant, drought tolerant, can handle the heat. Just there’s so much to love about this plant. and it’s going to soften the edge of that shed right there. And then we want to tie it in on the other side and just come down a little bit further along the fence line. And then in front of that, we’re going to drop the exact same sedum that we’ve already used in the bed. As you can see, we’ve dropped the sedum in. I’ve already talked about the spec, so I’m not going to do it again. But then we’re going to drop in the arch. Now, this is a rounded arch because it’s the only one that I had in my program. But what we’re going to do is we’re gonna plant two different kinds of clatus on this. How cool is it going to be to intertwine two different clatus up the arbor? We are going to be using group two clatus which bloom in the spring. They also bloom in the fall. Now to get them to bloom better in the fall, you got to give them a little bit of a haircut in the spring because they do bloom on new wood. Now what I love about these two together is they kind of have the same growing size. anywhere from eight, you know, to 12 feet high, both of them. They’ll grow together, grow up either side because we’re going to plant two on each side. Now, in the fall, it doesn’t necessarily bloom as heavily as it does in the spring, but it’s still going to be absolutely fabulous. And if Tracy decides, you know what, I think I want one of the autumn clatus, we can always add one of those later. Now, we will be cooling the roots by putting that mulch down. We’ll also have that boxwood that’ll eventually grow over, you know, and kind of barely touch the edge of the arbor, which will help cool the roots of the clatus. So, very excited about planting these. Yeah, clatus, they just like being planted in the spring better than they do the fall. At least for me, I’ve had way better luck doing that. And I can’t find these right now. So, spring it is. That’s when those will go in. Hurry, get your cameras out. Take a picture of this if this is something that you want to do. So, this is the flat plan layout of how everything is going to go in the bed. As you can see, there are no like really straight lines of anything. I’d say the closest thing that we have in here to a straight line of anything is the autumn morgrass along the edge of that pathway. Everything else is going to be grouped together like in drifts, and that’s the look that we’re going for. I cannot wait until we put this in and then we can see it next year. So, one of the things that we’re going to do is we are going to do a fall planting because we have to wait to spray any weeds that come up. We have to wait also a certain amount of time after we spray before we can plant. So, we might be September before we’re putting this in. September is actually a great time to plant, though. The ground is already warm, the nighttime temperatures are cooler, so your plants actually settle in really well. So, if we do it, let’s say right after Labor Day, we’re still going to have a good two months easy for our plants to kind of root a little bit, settle in, they’ll go into dormcancy, go to sleep through the winter. Because this is a fall bed, I probably will leave everything up to protect all the new crowns. I will also probably spray the evergreens with Wilt Stop, and that’s going to help hold the moisture in my evergreens through that first winter because you know what? Evergreens really don’t have the ability to pull water up through their roots in the winter. And unless you’re getting out there and getting water on that root ball, which I don’t think Tracy will do, this is just a good practice to do. Last year, we had a really dry fall. We really didn’t have any snow, so there wasn’t a lot of moisture. I actually lost some things last year, and it wasn’t due to temperatures. It was all due to lack of moisture. So, that’s one thing we want to make sure we pay attention to in this bed or any bed that you’re putting in in the fall. All right, I can’t wait. This is going to be so cool. I hope you guys enjoyed today’s video, enjoyed the design that we’re going to do. And I know it’s going to be a little while before you see the followup of the installation of this because I got to wait for those weeds to come up so I can spray them. And if this is something that you’re doing, you’re creating a new bed and you’re not really sure where to start, what to do, how to do it. Well, hopefully this video gives you a starting point on how to get rid of those weeds so that you aren’t battling them forever. You do not want to skip this part. I know it takes time. I know it’s not the fun part. It’s not sexy, but you know what? It’s necessary if you don’t want to make your life a living, you know what? Later. So, do these steps first. All right, don’t forget Garden Gab is coming up this weekend. It’s where we’re going to be answering questions from the previous videos. That is coming up this Saturday. The last Saturday of the month, we’re having Garden Gab. And that’s where we share viewer submission pictures that you send in and we still gab in the garden about the garden. We’re just gabbing about your garden. If you would like in on the action of that, send a picture of something beautiful in your garden. One picture. Take it in the landscape format. That means you have to turn your camera the long ways. If you take it straight up and down, I will not use the picture. They either pixelate, they stretch, you can’t really see it well. So, I’ve got to be able to use the picture. And it’s not that I won’t want to. I will want to. All right. Send it to this email right here. We will use those pictures during Garden Gab the last Saturday of the month. You guys all have beautiful things in your garden. Oh, hint hint. If you have beautiful pots, we would love to see those. All right, that’s all I’ve got for today, you guys. I’m Michelle. I hope you get your hands in the dirt and we’ll catch you in the next video. Bye, everyone. [Music]