Majestic 40+ Year Legacy Garden Tour – Plants for Dry Shade, Tips and Tricks, Expert Combinations

Zone 8, located in Veneta, Oregon, filmed in September.
***correction on the Bald Cypress label at 12:05 – it is actually Taxodium distichum ‘Pendulum’, not ‘Falling Waters’

00:00 Introduction
02:55 Shady Border
10:21 Shade Garden
12:17 The Rockery and Conifer Garden
16:56 Perennial Bed
17:59 Chaparral Garden

This was such an amazing garden to film – Marietta and Ernie are such a power-couple of plant knowledge, passion, and energy, and it was an honor to create this Tour with them – even if it was a bit unconventional in the way that we filmed the garden in September but didn’t do the interview until 4 months later. ;D

Interested in buying the book? Please use this link!
https://amzn.to/3UabZxR

Look out for a tour of this very same garden in its Autumn Glory in a few weeks time!

Thank you for being fans of ‘Over the Fence’. This has been a dream of mine for such a very long time, and to receive so much loving and supportive feedback from you all gives me so much joy. I hope I can continue to share beautiful and inspirational gardens with you for many years to come, even after our world gets absolutely rocked in late March by the arrival of our little one. 😀

Hi Garden Lovers! Welcome to Over the Fence.  I’m your host, Donna Dune. Today we are at a   very special garden. It is so special that it has  a book about it. This is written by Marietta and  

Ernie, the creators of the garden. And just look  at how big this garden is. All around here. And   so, this obviously is not going to be all one  video. I think we are going to do a series of  

Five videos here. Marietta and Ernie can’t be  with us today because they are super awesome   and they can and freeze and preserve most of  their own food. And so, it’s harvest season,   and that’s what they are busy doing. And so,  what we are going to do is have a little tour,  

And go around the garden and see what  looks good. And they are actually on kind   of a limited water supply, I mean, it’s  hard to tell! Their garden still looks   incredibly lush. But we can check it out.  So come with me as we go “Over the Fence!”

Hello garden lovers! So, as I mentioned before,  when we filmed our Garden Tour of Marietta and   Ernie’s garden, they were busy canning,  and so now, here we are 5 months later,   we have Marietta O’Byrne and Ernie  O’Byrne, am I saying that right?  O’Byrne And Schnapps! 

And Schnapps! The star of the garden! And so  we’ve just been doing kind of a walk-through   of the video I took, and talking about  all of the wonderful things that we saw.  And now it’s wintertime and it’s cold and wet! Yup! 

So, we’ll actually start in the more  forested area, which is on this side.  Well, you go to a forest, and try to imitate  it, because obviously, the forest knows best.   The rotten logs, the rotten bits – people used  to take everything out – scraape – well, that’s  

Not how the shade garden grows naturally. I would  say through evolution, nature knows best, right?  Most arisaemas are done by mid-summer. And you want the silver-leafed – you see   the silver center? And it goes above all the  ground-covers, and has this beautiful ‘dancing   spider’ effect, I call it. -Jack-in-the-pulpit. 

In spring when it comes up? No, no, it doesnt come up in Springtime,   remember? End of June, early July. But then when  the other arisaemas are past their prime, it stays   good all summer, all fall, until frost. And it  has the red fruit. But they multiply underground,  

And they also set seed – these beautiful red  fruits. And so you can have a whole group,   but they don’t really interfere with anything,  they don’t shade out anything – at least   the shade ones anyway, because when they  come up they are tall – say 2, 2.5 feet,  

And then they have that leaf, so you can have  all kinds of ferns, whatever, epimediums,   whatever underneath. Pulmonarias.  So they are very useful, They don’t disturb  anything. It’s not a difficult plant.  And it’s good in drought too, in low water? No, it’s a woodland, like there,  

So water – where you grow ferns. And very, very  cold hardy. Are they corms? Bulbs? Underground,   and they come back year after year after year. Wait a minute, they might be tubers.  Are they tubers? They are tubers. 

It may be that they are tubers – well you  have to look it up, there are these minute   differences between corm, tuber, and bulb.  But they are all dormant structures that hold   in nutrition for the year. Another name is geophyte.  Ah, geophyte. And that covers all of them. 

Those are easy, well for us, they are easy. The pulmonaria?  The pulmonaria. And what’s nice about them,   is if you have several in the garden,  they have very pretty flowers in spring,   blue flowers. And then, if you let the  reseed – the offspring – some have spreckles,  

Some are all silver, they are all variable, and  you can dig out the ones you think are boring,   and keep the good ones. Amazing.  And if you don’t want them to set seed,  you can just, when they are done flowering,  

You can just cut all the flowers off. This is  Jack Frost [Brunnera]. THe ones you can buy now,   are Jack Frost, and then there is one that is  all silver. They are a bit drought-tolerant,  

But if you let them get too dry, they can get  a brown edge. And you want them in the shade,   they are very pretty flowers, blue also. In the spring?  Yeah, in the spring. And then the  leaves last all summer. And – if it  

Hasn’t frozen, they are still out there now. The fatsia, this one, has a very particular name,   close it has very pretty variegation. I know, it’s amazing.  But That is very drought-tolerant. And you can  grow that, by the roots like see, there is the  

Redwood. But at the roots of like conifers, people  used to use them, just the boring green ones,   at the edge right by the entrance if it was  very shady. And it can handle dark shade,   and very drought-tolerant 0 can grow with root  competition, so it’s good for that. But the  

Variegated are much nicer, and if it gets too tall  – because you want to see the top of the leaf,   not the underside, you can just whack it down. Oh, perfect. And so thats another really   interesting lesson that you guys have  learned, because there are so many  

Large conifers in this area, and so are  there other plants that do really well?  Yeah, you know you learn after a while, by  douglas firs, maples, all these trees that   have shallow roots, and make shade, A) you learn  to put loads of compost on it, and just pile it  

On – it’s pretty much all growing in compost  because the roots are so aggressive. They suck   not just the moisture but all the nutrition.  And so you can only grow certain plants.  The oakleaf hydrangea was  another one that you mentioned?  It’s very drought-tolerant too.  Daphnes, fantastic. They like it  

Dry. Whats that honeysuckle called? The bush  honeysuckle…lonicera nitida. It’s a bush,   really, and I’ve never seen flowers on it,  but it is called honeysuckle. RIght by the   roots – fantastic. Yews – like they have these  beautiful bush yews, with yellow new foliage,  

Very pretty and you can prune them, like you  want, [and plant them] right by the roots.  And ferns of course. They don’t need to  have – I mean, they don’t do dryland,   but in the shade and dryer places around trees,  they do very well. I mean there are some that  

Wouldn’t, but in general, especially the  kind of crown big ferns, do very well.  And here’s another item we imitated from the woods  – they love rotten logs. We used to go to the   woods and get the rotten logs and dump them in the  beds. A) I think they look nice, you know, falling  

Apart, and 2, they are a magnet for fern spores. You know, the spore is so fine, it blows here   and there. And the rotten wood, because it holds  moisture – you ever go to an old-growth forest,   you see a log there, pull it apart –  it’s always moist, even in the middle  

Of summer. You get so many hybrids, that  I don’t even know who the parents are. Now on that one, the Aralia elata, sadly, not  available anymore, at this point. But I’ve   found another thing is that, if you want yours to  live a long time, it needs to be pruned each year.  

You can’t keep letting it get longer and longer –  the further away from the trunk the branches get,   the weaker they get, and I’ve noticed the leaves  fall off earlier. So now, I have this one,  

I just pruned it again, and the other one we have,  and man, it has made such a difference – really   rejuvenated and invigorated them. And beware of the oxalis.  Isn’t that the native oxalis? I know, and it’s a vigorous one.  It’s a native, but not all  natives are garden friendly. 

There is a variety of it, and it has beautiful  pink flowers, so it’s prettier than that one,   and it’s not so vigorous. So has this chocked out plants?  No, because everything growing there is taller.  But it would, if it would get going, it would  

Conquer those other beds in no time! So yeah that  was a mistake, we brought it in from the woods. Now we kind of have a motto of ‘live  and let live. And I tell the plants,  

You have to share space. Now you have to share,  now you can have both, but they need to live   with each other, and if they don’t, then  one of them has to come out. You know we   are not orderly gardeners in that way. I’ll tell you the trick about controlling  

Kniphofia, because it can be invasive. Do you mean the crocosmia?  I mean the crocosmia! What do you do to control it?  Well, in the fall, you know when they don’t look  like much anymore, you cut them back half. You  

Leave this much, so you don’t cut them back all  the way to the ground, and then you can dig out,   because you can still see the top. If  you do it early enough you can even pull,  

Because it still sticks to the top. If you do  it later you have to dig it because it just   comes off from the top and the bulb stays. And  then, you know, if you have known varieties,  

They are really pretty, and it’s easy [to sell]  at a plant sale, and they are not as aggressive.  The yellow creeping jenny – I really like. I  use it a lot, and if it creeps in the path,   I don’t care, because you can walk on it.  Sometimes, with the heathers, you have to  

Watch out a little bit, sometimes it comes up  in the heather and you don’t want that because,   you know it might creep over. But it doesn’t seem  to be very hard to control. You don’t want the  

Green one! The green one is really aggressive. That one is not easy to prune. This year Taylor   did it, it takes so long. Taylor, our helper,  he lives next door, he loooves pruning, I said,   Hey Taylor, why don’t you [prune  this one?] He went right to it,  

And it only took him one day! Otherwise, you  see here, if you leave it, it reverts back to   its normal state, and makes long [foliage] It’s a type of Port Orford Cedar native   to the coast. Lawsonii. Did you buy it like that,  

Or did you topiary it yourself? We bought it from Bloomers, and they had some,   they weren’t doing quite that with them,  but they were…if you just let it grow,   and don’t prune it at all, it just kind of  makes a floppy – they call it a ‘ghosty tree’. 

That’s right, a ghosty tree! ‘Ohhhh  you want a ghosty tree?! ahaha  Yeah, and they are just very graceful  and full, but it gets too big for that   spot so we started cutting it and we noticed  wherever we cut it it made congested growth. 

What kind of growth? Congested. You cut it and it makes kind of this   ball, and we thought, oh that’s kind of cool. Isn’t it something with   juvenile and older foliage? Yeah, that’s got juvenile foliage.  This is the juvenile foliage. So it would  revert to floppy if you didn’t prune it. 

Do you prune it once a year? Yeah about – would prune it   more often if it weren’t so time consuming! That’s ‘Star of the East’, which is very pretty. Very similar but it doesn’t have the dark eye. And it’s a little taller.

It actually has sort of a yellow eye. And it can be in shade, and it’s   tall, and it comes up very late, so you  can have another plant there before it.  one of the tricks is to plant a papaver  orientalis [poppy] and they are really early,  

And they are really ugly when they are  done. And because there is nothing there,   they die back, and you plant that [crocosmia]  in the same spot. And then it takes over later.  That’s an eriogonam. That one we got from – what was   it? Little cuttings or seed? Seed 

At Crater Lake. We sat on the edge up on the  cliffs, and it was growing there. It’s easy   from seed, I mean they do grow from seed.  And it’s the most beautiful silver variety.  Who put that there? I did! haha.  Perfect for the chaparral garden!  What’s the Latin name of that?  

“Terantralis rubberis!” hah, ‘rubberis’!  We never mulch that [the chaparral  garden]. It wouldn’t like to be mulched.   It has gravel on top and sandy soil,  it’s unadulterated – our native soil. And I know it looks like we’ve gone back in  time, but this is actually a different corgi.

And so I just want to thank you guys for inviting  us to go ‘Over the Fence’ and see your wonderful   garden. Sure!  And a corgi that wants to bite your hand! haha! And so, we’ll see you soon, to see the garden at   a different time of year! Yeah!