Three Easy Must-Have Garden Plants For My Front and Back Yard

Here are three must have plants I am using in my front garden and my back yard. They are tough, easy care, and very reliable. Which means less maintenance for me and less time trying to keep them happy. Check them out! #gardening #gardendecor #gardendesign #gardentour #cottagegarden #backyard #easter #southernlivingplantcollection

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Well hello everyone welcome to the Upper Terrace and signature style Saturday we have so many fun projects going today we’re going to topiary a sunshine lustrum we are going to start an Easter basket for our Easter table I want to show you a really dramatic vignette that

I’m creating in the back which is almost finished starring uh Platinum Beauty lamra well what do you say steuart let’s do it let’s do it well I had a group of about 30 here day before yesterday they were from a local walking group from a nearby church

And a number of people were asking me if I could name one plant that was Oklahoma tough for the summer and had really good almost four season interest what would it be and the first thing that came to mind for me is sunshine lustrum or I say

Lustrum you say lustrum um whichever way you say it it is absolutely wonderful in the garden and I grow it in a couple of different ways I like it kind of full and flouncy you know it can get to be 3 to 6 feet high or 3 to 4 feet wide and I

Like to grow it beautifully where there’s kind of movement to it and when there’s a breeze it kind of blows but where I like to use it a little more dramatically and that is when I kind of topiary it now at the other house I topi

Aried it into to kind of a conical shape and I used it back in the poe here on the Upper Terrace right in proximity to the beautiful East freezeland Salvia this is where I think it really is gorgeous so you might want to screenshot this image because it is just beautiful

With the blue and with the pinks it’s just gorgeous but I also like the fact that up there I have it clipped a little bit more tightly so how do you do that well as I’ve always said when you are toping anything you just have to be a

Little bit Brave remember if you make a wrong cut it will grow out so this one and by the way when you are shopping for yours and I just saw a whole big display of these at my local uh I think I can’t remember if it was Lowe’s or or Home

Depot but they had some gorgeous specimens and what you want to do is kind of buy one that’s already assuming the shape that you want so if you want it to be tall and flouncy buy one that’s kind of already assuming that shape but

If you’re like me and a lot of times you are clipping and pruning them into more of a spherical form or kind of a smooshed spherical form kind of like a pancake form then buy it as close to that shape as possible so you can do

This in a number of different ways you guys I sometimes just use scissors and you can do that because when the new growth comes out it is very tender it is very easy to clip you don’t have to have any special tools whatsoever just an inexpensive pair of shears that you use

Just for that purpose and sometimes after it’s already in place and I’m just trying to kind of clip it to keep it within that globular form then I use scissors when I’m first establishing the form then I might want to use some L handled pruners and you guys know I have

Two favorites this is my uh long hand or long bladed I should say Barnell PE pear and that’s hard to say that’s hard for me to say and I can definitely use these and I kind of start at the top and I work my way down sometimes when I’m pruning them

Before they get in the ground these are almost a little too long and in that case I might use these okasi pruners because they’re not quite as long and when I’m working on a table or something they’re a little bit more manageable in size and typically you know when I do

This it’s a no-brainer it’s Common Sense most of gardening is common sense I try to have something underneath to catch my clippings and then you just go around the perimeter this is easy but the difference between the for and after I think is pretty amazing and the thing is that this

Lustrum can it’s hearty all the way down to zone six so my family in Indiana was asking me if they can grow it and I said oh yes I think you can grow it and especially now with every place getting a little bit hotter look to a

Lot of the plants that have historically just been for the South and most of them um and certainly most most time in the Southern Living plant collection would fall into that category so I just try to get as much symmetry as possible and by the way if you want to

Take some of those clipping clippings and use them somehow in sweet tiny little bouquets they would be perfect for spring perfect for Easter without much fuss at all and when you have these established in your garden not only that you’re just pruning from your own landscape and it’s

An inexpensive way to make lots of tiny bouquets now I like the definition to be as much on the bottom as on the top I kind of needed a bigger table you guys so here is the first of my questions of the day do you guys if you

Grow lustrum do you like it more flouncy and cascading and full and billowy like that that I have on the east side or do you like it in a more spherical shape or do you like it both ways can you swing both ways so I okay so look at how pretty that’s

Looking and periodically I just torque it and then you can see which is the prettiest vantage point which is the most perfect and by the way of course over time as you continue to Shear it and as it continues to grow it gets more perfect in form if you’re kind of a

Perfectionist like Mah it gets more perfect in time so we’re going to put like a plant profile up right here Stuart on it and so you guys can screenshot this and look at its profile and see if it’s right for you so as I have said many many times

Probably one of my favorite combos is this chart trusy yellow especially in the springtime and purple so when all of my Larks spur is In Bloom it’s going to be fabulous so here’s kind of a planting tip if you are going to marry this plant with some others that are blooming I

Highly recommend any kind of Blue Salvia um I would recommend Larks spur I would recommend any kind of Veronicas in that lavender but if you like really bright primary colors I think it would look great with red too so right now my tulip palette in the front mostly pinks

But boy this would look gorgeous if you had a really really deep red as well so there you go here is a gift that keeps on giving through the seasons in containers and by the way it does brilliantly in containers um I have even planted it in

Window boxes before it looks great in kind of an ear where you’ve got this tight spherical form and then cascading around the edge and down the sides you could have some kind of seasonal color I think it would be fabulous with some kind of U cascading calbra COA or

Million bells in red or in purple I think that would be fabulous uh scaviola in that wonderful Periwinkle blue purple would be great so it’s just kind of how do you like to play with your Crayola Color box so there you go one of my favorite plants to play with sunshine lustrum and

As always you guys I’ll put a link Below will’ll come on in everyone to at least the dining patio in the backyard I’ve got it I would say 95% staged the way I want it to be there’ll definitely be more plants coming in that will populate the plant stands and things but and you can probably hear in the background Javier

And Sergio working on the other side but I want you to come in because this is what I’ve been going for this money shot so that when all of this stuff is grown out and filled in and mature it will be almost gasp worthy when you come through the gate and how I

Am achieving that is a plant I’m a little bit obsessed with right now I have shown it to you in the past I kind of thought I might want it up on the steps but I have changed my mind on that and it is platinum Beauty lamandre now

This is Hardy only down to Zone 8 but that’s why I’ve got it in pots so I can bring it in but when you come and you get the Long View over here to this planter box and I will be putting in one more stepping stone here it looks

Absolutely stunning flanking either side of the planter box and I love the way I love the way when you come into the backyard it’s a completely different emotional Vibe because the color palette is different there’s lots of Grays it has more of a Pacific Northwest vibe to

It I think more maybe even a little bit Mediterranean or Coastal and because of that I wanted a different color palette so back here I am playing with the more intense Reds oranges Golds those kind of colors in my crayon box and the Platinum Beauty lamandre gives me just the color

Kind of neutral color palette that I want and definitely a different more cascading form for all of these plants to play on so in the back here I’ve used lots and lots of mounded plants which I love that rounded mounded form I’ve showed you guys my inspiration picture a

Number of times so what I wanted was a dramatic Counterpoint to these rounded forms because that’s kind of what gives em emotional visual sensual interest I think and the Platinum beauty is giving just the feel that I want I love the way it Cascades I love the way that the

Variegation in it um kind of brightens up this space and how it punctuates the corner and then right now I’ve got just my favorite kind of tomatoey red I’ve got that in the box and obviously I don’t know steuart if you can see there’s there’s already bees over here

There’re they’re already loving my composition your pop of color my pop of color and and so these Reds now eventually the geraniums once it starts getting hotter and it’s time for peppers and cherry tomatoes and things like that to Cascade over the side these will move and this will be an edental container

With really ornamental Edibles that I think will be beautiful in here and I can just see those red cherry tomatoes cascading over and kind of insinuating themselves into the Platinum Beauty lamandre now in the past this is kind of what I’m excited about um I I have used

This with some people that I’ve worked with on their Gardens largely in a pool setting where we had them running up and down the steps walking down to a pool flanking the corners of poolside because they can really handle the heat they can hand handle um reflected light off of

Pavement but here I wanted to use them in a completely different way and it’s all trial and error so I just kind of kept moving them around until I got had my aha moment that this is where they need to be and I think it’s beautiful so

I’ve got this kind of verticality of them they even have a little bit of these flower heads in here and then I’ve got beautiful bold Lea just red pelargoniums and then I’ve got some elephant bush now this will again change a little bit as it gets warmer as I put

In edibles but what will remain what the fixture plant is is this Platinum Beauty lamandre because that you said it we had got oh yeah the elephant the elephant bush and this this will probably be relocated as I said the geraniums will probably be relocated but right now what

I know for sure is that this stuff is going to stay here for the duration and into fall and um up until it goes into the greenhouse in um when temperatures start to really dive so I think it looks wonderful steuart here let’s put up a profile of lamandre of platinum Beauty

And it truly is beautiful in all of its grassiness we’ll definitely put a link below but here’s my second question of the day actually it’s got two parts if you grow Platinum beauty or if you are going to grow it What colors would you grow it with I can see it looking just

Dynamite with um maybe gold sterm Rudbeckia some of the gold colors magenta I think would be a really dark Cardinal color I think that would be beautiful but it could also play with softer colors whites and pinks but this is how I’m using it so if you grow it if

You plan to grow it in the comments below give us all more ideas of how this brilliant really tough plant could be styled um and steart right here let’s put up a picture of not only the plant profile but let’s put up a picture of how we styled it over at my friend

Wendy’s by her pool we had it cascading up and down the steps it was such a fun such a fun day when we styled that so couple of different ways but I think it’s it’s going to give me just the look just the feel that I want back here on

The patio I’ll have not only the brilliant architectural look of it but it’s got movement and it kind of blows and it Cascades and it’s got kind of a waterfall effect so I I love that tell me your thoughts make sure to comment below well here’s another design tip if

You decide on your your color palette for a space see if you can carry that color palette through the seasons so obviously when it gets to be summer I’ll have the intense Reds of things like salvia and and maybe colus and and just different um o just different kinds of

Maybe pineapple sage plants like that that will bring in the red tones that I want but I’m mindful of that even in the spring so last year when I was composing I was thinking about what I wanted to do back here I knew that that was the

Emotional vibe that I wanted to have was with those Reds Golds and colors that were a little bit deeper and so I took that into account and the color palette back here is decidedly more orange and red and gold and you can see just a hint of that beginning right now with these

Tulips I can’t exactly remember which blend from color Blends this was but I love its arching form and I’m going to take note of that all of the ones that I planted in the front tend to be very chalice shaped very cup-shaped and kind of vertical and squatty this the stem is

Beautiful and it kind of arches and even before it blooms the bud itself is much more tapered and delicate and I love that so in my garden journal I am going to be recording that this is a blend I definitely want to use again next next

Year I’ll research what it was and I’ll make sure to put it in the links below one of my favorite things about spring and particularly around Easter is that I can cut things from my garden whether they are in bloom or they’re not to make my own Easter baskets Easter

Buckets Easter boots whatever it is that I am composing for the Easter holiday and I love this time of year because there’s kind of this uh transition between the Woody Brown of winter and the fresh green of spring and I love that and I think it especially speaks to

Kind of almost what I would call a nest aesthetic for Easter and one of my favorite plants to cut from really almost any time of year is Encore aelas so I’ve got some here that are not yet in bloom but they have just what I want they’ve got the fresh green growth

That’s coming out of the Woody stem and in some cases neon yes neon and in some cases you can even see on the Woody stem where the tender little newds are the new toughs of green that are coming out so I am willing as profusely as they

Bloom on this hedge here I am willing to sacrifice a couple of the blooms the these have buds in them but simply because I love the way the canes look and I love the color of the foliage on it so I’m cutting some of these to use in an Easter basket

Composition and soon enough it will be April which to me is all about aelas right now it’s still a little bit early but boy by the time these are in full bloom they’ll be spectacular so I’ve got some here that I’m using just for the

Stems and and the leaf uh Leaf color and the foliage but let’s go around here I see a oh a few Early Blooms that I’m going to cut Those well in the front I’ve often mentioned that I have mostly whites and pinks in terms of uncor zelas because I like that romantic color palette but the back has a different vibe so I have planted some Autumn Coral these little Autumn Coral right here I think it’s going to be

Absolutely beautiful these guys are dwarf and they’re going to top out at 2 and 1/2 in high and 3T wide or 2 and 1/2 ft I should say High and 3 ft wide and so once they ultimately mature I may move some of them to the back but right

Now it fits in perfectly with my color scheme and with my low mounding plant palette that I have surrounding the dining deck and I think it’s going to be beautiful and look here I can’t wait because I am seeing I do too they have much like uh pointier yeah yeah the

Foliage yeah it it tends to be more of a sword-like leaf and I’ve got a butt on it already and these were just planted so when these oh yeah so when these are in full bloom I will definitely show you those because April is I just think April is aelia month and specifically

Our favorite reblooming aelas on corelia so nice they bloom twice well as long as I’m going to be going around to the other side of the cottage I am going to take this moment to kind of Groom along the brick wall a little bit and just appreciate how spectacular the

Tulips look I mean at first I wasn’t real pleased with the performance of the blend and that was because some of them just bloomed by themselves a little too early but now it is spectacular if I do say so myself look at that yellow orange guy all by himself right there an’t that

Gorgeous yeah that’s Sunshine look oh this car right here isn’t it beautiful that is I think that I’m not sure that might have been an interloper so we’re going to walk along here I’m going slower and this this is a fun little fact this one right here is called aabon say what

Aabon I think it’s probably a Japanese name it’s got that beautiful yellow yellow fol or yellow p palal but tinged in red on the end a great yeah great color Echo I love that so I’m going to appreciate these as I walk along the wall not only to appreciate them but

Also to look and see if there’s anything else that I might want to cut from in the garden and I spy a couple of things that might also have that kind of vibe of the encor zelas and that is a couple of stems of Kaleidoscope abilia okay so

This has that look that early spring look of Woody Meats emerging Leaf growth that I just love so I’m going to cut a few of that and the more I cut believe me the Fuller this will get Obsession Nandina for me is more of a fall thing but I’m going to Round the

Corner Corner can we take a second to enjoy the fact that the light has already lasted this long yeah the light is just incredible today really really incredible it’s making everything pop and then why don’t we take a break here and I will meet you back on the other

Side okay we’ll come on up to the Upper Terrace I still have I still have to clean up after toping my sunshine lustrum and I will do that a little bit later but it is happy happy work because everything looks so beautiful out here so I’m going

To let steuart just kind of give you a glimpse of the pretty Garden while I come over here and I clip some branches from these encor that have some more BL looms isn’t that bird song Amazing Okay I really want the ENC course to be the star of this composition and I’m going to cut some of these blooms over here you see I’ve got some of these I think this is the Moonlight Encore but look at how prettily that’s coming together and how the just the

Different foliage looks just so gorgeous and so springy so I am going to cut just a few and the nice thing the thing I love about corelia is I know I can cut from them and I don’t have to be stingy because since they rebloom I will have plenty more flowers

To come look at how pretty that is a perfect shot isn’t that gorgeous isn’t that gorgeous while I’m here I might cut a little daffodil to play in the mix this is what I call kind of um gardening by Tessy messy where where you just hold something in your hand and you put

It together in a composition and if it looks beautiful in your hand then it will probably look beautiful in a vase now how springy does that look it’s pure spring and again I could get a completely different feel you you concentrate on that Stuart I’m going to come over here I could get

A completely different feel in my Easter bouquet if I used a different color oh well and I’m kind of I don’t know I’m kind of I’m kind of grooving on that white it definitely but look at how different it would change if I brought if I brought in pinks works really well

And I believe this is pink carnation it will get more intensity of color a little bit later but really for as far as a shrub goes on corelia are absolutely indispensable and as much because I love the looks of their stem as anything else um and even on occasion even if I don’t

Have any other blooms if it’s a time of year when the encor aren’t In Bloom maybe even in Winter a lot of times I will just use the stems and then I will add my own blooms so Stuart what do you say let’s take these Beauties to the back and put together our

Centerpiece okay I have all of my beautiful cuting with encor zelia stems kind of being the diva in this Easter basket composition I’m just using kind of a oh a Rus rustic Meats delicate kind of a Hyo vibe I just have two of these galvanized buckets and I’m going to make

Two starting with this one right now so all I’ve done is just got my cuttings here and then I’m just going to start playing kind of using the aelia as a framework because in addition to being beautiful with this dark kind of amber color stem it also makes good structural

Support for the other things that I put in now I’m going going to take my pruners and I’m going to do a vertical cut right there so that it can absorb the water more easily see what I did there okay and then I’m going to insert the cuting into this wood pulp

Oasis now I’ve told you guys about this before and I like it a lot better than the other synthetic stuff it’s compostable and I think it’ll work fine and ignore all just ignore all of the activity yes sart I don’t know we may have to shoot this again but I apologize

There’s just always activity and right now I think we’ve got some weed eaters it will probably Fade Out over time okay so right here maybe I should just go quiet I should just go quiet okay so I’m going to do the same thing here and I

Like to put in the aelia stems first again because they are Woody and they are a good support system the other thing is is I kind of like to put them around the perimeter so that they will kind of overhang can you see that that wood pulp

Yeah in there got a shot yeah yeah and I have really really hydrated it it’s been soaking for about an hour and I of course will keep watering this and I’ll probably have to J it a little bit before Easter cuz we’re still a week out

Out but I’ll probably have to ju this Arrangement so it still looks beautiful in time for Easter but why is that easy to do because these are all cuttings of aelas from my garden and this wood pul makes it really easy to insert them so

That they kind of torque or arch in the direction you want them to go has a very real organic look to it does it’s very we would call that con constant spry and constant spry was just a wonderful Victorian time um floral designer and she was the

One who made cuttings from our Gardens a more gardeny look if you will she was the one who really popularized that prior to that it was more kind of I don’t know kind of FTD looking ooh that’s a gorgeous Branch right there and you know what Stuart while we

Are waiting for the noise to go away why don’t you so show some pretty pictures of The Encore aelia arrangement we made a couple of Falls ago and it was Encore aelas and Apples now A friend of mine I really like I really like this white the ones that I planted in the front are largely white um and a friend of mine who only plants white in her garden has planted a lot of I believe it was Moonlight or it

Might have been one of the other varieties cuz you know Encore has so many different varieties and different Hues might have been Autumn Lily also a Linda yes also a Linda Linda Linda cavan now I want a little bit of verticality and I want to play up oh

That one’s cool just how sparse they are on it the whole way up yeah yeah reminds doct SE yeah and I may tuck a little bunny or something in here now a trick that I’m going to use for these daffodils is something got in my ears something gotcha something gotcha I noticed that

The mosquitoes are already out oh no I thought I might have just built one so a tip when I insert the daffodils first what I want to do is take something Woody and puncture it so that when I get ready to put the daffodil in place

There’s already a hole for it to go oh cuz it’s not a very sturdy the stem is not sturdy it’s a lot softer ah good advice that was a tip it never fails that when we are ready when we are ready to meet you guys and shoot that somebody has to come and Blow and we wait till they were finished but you know I’m getting ready to go to the Home and Garden Show here shortly and meet a bunch of you so we’re trying to get this done so how’s it looking Stuart so this is where I need to kind of go like this

It’s kind of oriented that [Applause] way and then I will finish this up here is one and then I will do the big reveal of the both of them on my Easter table which I am so thrilled Stuart I may have not been able to have Thanksgiving out

Here in the back but I am definitely going to be able to have Easter at least thus far that is what the weatherman is telling me and I’ve got a big crowd coming Over so this kind of garden Vibe will just be perfect oh I like the way that looks I think it looks very sweet very very springy very befitting the holiday and the season and all with cuttings from my own garden starring the lovely on corelia so there you go I think it looks

Absolutely beautiful I love it it is Garden Fresh encor aelas are simply brilliant I love it U make sure to come back and see what it looks like in the context of my beautiful Easter table I think we’re going to be able to uh serve and have Easter Outdoors at least that’s

What the weatherman Is Telling Me Maybe not Thanksgiving but definitely Easter also make sure to tune in this Wednesday because it’s going to be all about about boxwood I’m going to start talking about better boxwood um the blight resistant boxwood but also Lots answer lots of questions I’ve been getting about

Boxwood in general so just stay tuned for that and in the meantime you guys enjoy the rest of your Weekend