Creating a Shade Container For Mimi’s Garden

We are planting Mimi’s ‘Weston Urn’ from Unique Stone for her shade garden, giving her color and texture all summer.

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Hey friends welcome to Gardening with Creekside today we are up at Mimi’s house again my mama here in uh her North Carolina Zone 8A Garden we are going to be planting a container for her you were with me actually this past fall when my aunt asked me to create a container for my mama for her birthday it was a birthday present from my aunt and so we did we installed it and now it is time to go ahead and put in her spring summer plantings for the container let me show you where the container is show you the plants we’re going to get it planted and then we’re going to do a little mini garden tour right here because I know we were just here a couple of weeks ago but so much has already changed in here and it just looks uh beautiful and fabulous this is the space that we are going to be working in today you can see that we have the unique stone this is a Weston ear right here and this is what we’re going to be planting in Mimi’s Garden right there’s zero grass lawn it is completely filled with plants perennials shrubs that’s her vast majority there are she does some annuals but for the most part it is perennials and shrubs sweet little Western ear sticking up right here in the middle of the flower bed that is right alongside their driveway that is their kitchen windows that you can see right there so this is a high visibility area where we’re going to plant the Western ear in the back of Johnny of course I have all of my supplies beginning with of course proven winter potting soil Land and Sea compost my biotone starter fertilizer that I always use of course we’ll add in a little bit of the continuous release plant food those are the main components right well less chalk plants my friends this container is on the smaller side it’s not extremely deep we’re going to go ahead and kind of quote jam-pack it so that it will be nice and full because we have Mimi has been so kind to allow her garden to be opened for the our Creekside signature experience so the people who are coming to the signature experience get to come take a tour of Mimi’s garden they’re going to see the container so we want it to look really great uh that’s going to be at the end of June this area right now is in full shade it will get a couple of hours of uh midday Sun so we’re going to kind of we’re skirting between full sun shade back and forth the main uh Thriller of this container is going to be our Shire Rose Bonia um if you have been around me for any length of time you know how much I adore the shires they can do full sun or full shade this will get nice and tall and filled in it will be the height of the show and this will be our only flowers in this container so sure fire Rose in this container it’s going to be probably in that 12 to 14 in when you’re looking at your tag where it says 12 to 24 that is your height 12 is going to be more in a container 24 is going to be more in the landscape again it can do anything from full sun to full shade so we have that then we’re going to do a really cute fun new colus this is a really nice chartreuse very uh segmented right very kind of frilly looking colus so we’re going to do this this is going to be nice and petite this will be our pop of color this also can do anywhere from full sun to full shade I said maybe let’s try it let’s see how it does here in this kind of mixed uh Sun environment let’s see what color it turns so we’re going to do that that’s going to be more of the filler another filler that we’re gonna have is this brand new this is the Shadowland Sound of Music hosta from Proven Winners it is so incredibly gorgeous love that color on it nice and kind of a bluish green on the outside margins little more sh Truse on the inside now you will notice that this is a court container sound of music is going to get to be a rather large hosta but it is a court right now it was a baby and so we’re g to we’re going to say a prayer that it’ll be great for this season um but mature it will be 30 to 32 in tall that will include your flower Scapes and then the spacing on the back says a minimum of um 60 in so my friends um I know that we’re going to be pushing the limit on this hosta never ever would I put like a gallon size of this hosta in that container it just would not work but because it is a small hasta it is a baby hosta I think she will do just fine for this one season and then in the fall Mimi takes it out and adds it to the Garden so if you’re looking at putting perennials in containers you you’ve got a lot of things to kind of play with as a general rule I would say this could never go in that container because of the size however it’s a small small plant and it’s going in there for one season I say go for it that’s what we’re going to do and then uh last but not least for we got to have a little Spiller right nothing too crazy but this is the variegated Swedish ivy I just love the color I just think that is just going to be fabulous because it has kind of opposite of the foliage of The Sound of Music in the fact of that it’s green on the inside and then it’s white on the edges it is you can see that it’s going to Trail over it is that part is a plr this uh so it has kind of a waxier leaf to it it will be 6 to 18 in uh tall and then the spread is about 16 in as well now if it get starts to get a little too long in the western ear that all Mimi has to do is give it a little haircut right because uh it could I don’t know I’ve never grown this particular plant but I have a feeling that if it were to Trail over and go on the ground that it could begin to start to root if you want it to root fine that’s okay but if you don’t then just keep it trimmed so that doesn’t make contact with the soil so what we’re going to do is we’re going to go ahead and get these planted up in the unique stone and show you exactly how to do it and then we’re going to take a little uh mini garden tour because uh-huh dear Heavens y’all I’m telling you so many gorgeous things happening in this Garden that I can’t wait to share Mimi had already gotten a head start only me with the pot so she’s already put her Landing seat in the bottom had put some soil in it but she ran out so I came in and just top dressed it with the proven Winter’s potting soil and then of course the biotone starter fertilizer because that is an absolute key into having some happy plants is to have happy Roots remember happy Roots equals happy shoots so we’ve got that in there I’m going to go ahead and because yes we’re using The Proven Winners uh potting Sole and it has some of the time relas fertilizer in there um I am going to add a little more Mimi does not need to be worrying about doing any kind of water soluble fertilizer so we’re just going to add a little bit extra in there and it will be fine now you can add of course the continuous release fertilizer you can add it you know to the bottom of the hole you can do what I did when you’re doing a container and just mix it in and it will be just fine the interesting thing about this container is that you really can see it from all angles so a 360° re angle you can see this however I’m going to go ahead and plant it um primarily thinking of coming down the driveway cuz she has a she has a little Stone path right here like this is going to be more quote the back and then this will be the front yes that’s what we’re going to do I think okay I’m sitting here changing my mind do we put Surefire in the middle well maybe let’s do that okay see y’all this is why yes I have a plan when I think about uh doing containers gardening in general rather but sometimes you know I just have to get into the space and like be in it and think about it and then I change my mind I was thinking that this was going to be in the back however we’re going to change our mind and put this one more in the center there we go all right easy as that sure fire Bonia she’s in the center now let’s go um thinking of her perennials that are around me she has got multiples in here that are going to have some height however where I am sitting I’m actually sitting on some of her hents I think um we’re going to put more the plectranthus on this side so it can spill over and then we’ll do the hasta and let’s do the colus next so I’ve got that Shire and the middle that is kind of you know my Thriller then I’m going in with the colus that is going to be a filler so we’re going to go put this in there right here now the colus and the Bonia all of these plants are really going to intermingle all together like it is going to be one big huge mass of a plant then let’s go ahead and come in with the sound of music so we’re going to take this and we’re going to ticket well we’ll wait we’ll do all the tags at once together so we’ve got this out we go a lot of people ask how um Mimi and myself keep deer out of our Gardens um praise the lord we don’t have problems with deer the only reason that I can really honestly give credit to that is perhaps because we have so much natural native landscape around us that the deer don’t need to eat the plants and we also have hunters around here people that like to hunt deer they eat deer um perhaps that is it I don’t know but we are blessed not to have deer here at in our in our neck of the woods so the hosta is here kind of do her a little bit off to the side now if I feel like or Mimi feels like the Shire is starting to take over anything um and really all three of four of these plants like the Surefire the co and then even the Swedish ivy she can easily come in here and prune them because if there’s a plant that we want to give um preference to it would be the hosta we want that one to grow up nice and big and happy for sure because it’s the perennial as a general rule your annuals can take pruning very well I cannot think of a annual that I would say uh don’t prune the exception may be a grass right um an ornamental annual grass but other than that they do really well to being pruned all right now y’all it is simple as that right now it doesn’t look I mean yes it’s very colorful and it’s very pretty but yes are there still holes absolutely but remember we’re planting this for longevity and this is not an extremely deep pot here in the South right our number one uh issue when when we’re growing especially in the you know the summer is our heat and humidity and trying to keep up with watering none of Mimi’s Gardens are on irrigation so anything that has to be watered it’s either um the good Lord provides that with rain or it is that she hand Waters it so I don’t want to over stuff this container now the signature experience is not this weekend it is still uh you know a good two months away so we’ve got plenty of time for these plants to fill in and I don’t want to over stuff it remember when we’re planting containers Andor the landscape keep your life circumstances in mind understand what’s happening in your life and why you are planting and that will um really kind of determine how you go about planting both your landscape and your containers some years we just need it really simple we just we you know life is crazy you don’t have time to be out in the garden maybe as much maybe you have um a brand new baby in your life maybe you have aging parents maybe you have um a medical emergency of your own maybe you have you’re just moved right the list goes on and on and on and on so some years we have to keep it really simple and very basic and just do what we can and then other years like for us this year personally we’re hosting a wedding and the signature experience so we have a lot of eyes are going to be on our Gardens so we’re building them up kind of the same thing here with Mimi right so she has people they’re going to be up close and personal she wants it to look good we’ve got 2 months for this to all fill in and it will be fabulous so what I’m going to do right now is get this cleaned up get all my supplies back in then we’re going to do a little quick little garden tour and I’ll show you this up close now it’s time for a little Garden Tour all right start first with the container that we just did and got it all nice and watered everybody has a good drink of water we are currently experiencing uh normal conditions as far as temperature maybe even a little bit cooler than normal so mim’s not going to have to worry about watering this anytime soon last week we were in the 90s this week this morning was 37 degrees so ah welcome to North Carolina in the spring you can see we’ve got plenty of room here for everybody to fill in it will not take long for those plants to get nice and full in there and then the plectranthus that variegated Swedish yotti will spill over as well so fun little pop of color right here nice pink flowers uh different colors different textures different heights You Name It We got it going on all right I’m going try to uh share a little bit of everything in this Garden so what we’re going to do is we’re going to back out of here and we’re going to start up here because you know Mimi is kind of the queen of containers and pots and putting them together this is one that I just love it has developed quite a lot since we were just here a few weeks ago um and she’s got three more of the unique stone this is like the bath rope and weave I think containers same color same style just different sizes so she’s got this beautiful uh frosted ukara in here nice purple with some that Frost in it then she has got this gorgeous gorgeous hosta this is uh a blue one I’ll have to look here in just a second and then she has got her ghost Fern right here just I love ghost ferns because they have that beautiful silver foliage to it it is a cross between a lady fern and a Japanese painted Fern and that gives it its uh fun color I’m sitting here looking at the tag um she told me before we start oh Blue Angel that’s what it is Blue Angel so nice big really pretty blue angel her bruners right now are just going great she has multiples in her Gardens all different varieties so you can see some that have the variegation right and then she has some that are just that beautiful nice you know traditional solid green but everybody is doing their really sweet true blue flowers these are great perennials for your shade garden we’re going to just go around and then we’ll come back to where we started here if you are familiar with Mimi’s Garden then you know that she is quite famous for her massive mature or aelas you might notice they look a little different than when we were here a couple weeks ago Mimi has is and she currently still is going through the process of chopping all of her aelas down now this might give some of you heart attacks and panic attacks knowing that she’s going to have a garden tour here in you know two months but these aelas all of her ail and you can see she did the vast majority of them all the way through back here um these Zas are 45 years old and yes she has pruned them in the past yes she has pruned them this severely in the past but it has been quite a few years since she has done that why did she do this why did she try try to do it now or choose to do it now she is doing it now because the aelas were getting so large and they were starting to really stretch towards the Sun so you know that that they need to be pruned when they have a lot of the growth up top but then they look really thin and spindly down kind of at eye level so what she did is yes she went through and hand cut all of these aelas she said the hedge trimmers they wouldn’t cut through they were just too thick so she went through y’all and every single one she just went in and clipped with her uh her little hand pruners and it has been a massive work but she is doing it they will thicken up they will completely refl flush with foliage and she does it now not In the Heat of the summer because it’s less stress on the plant and it has plenty of time to put on all that new growth and to set its flower buds for next year because these traditional old aelas Bloom on Old growth so she do it in early spring like right after they flower go ahead and do it and then there you go she’s also the queen of fun and Wom this stump right here is this massive stump this was a tulip popper that they had cut down several years ago because I mean it’s like really close to the house and they were afraid that if it fell which if it did and it fell in the house it would completely crush the house so they had it come they had it removed and then Mimi took that opportunity and turned it into a little planter right so she has got a rock and deep purple grown in there she probably from last year maybe I don’t know if she planted it this year she’s got some lemon Coral Sedum and then look at that giant mushroom there’s these mushrooms just growing out of the tree so there you go something fun something different right and then of course you’ll see all sorts of kind of fun Whimsy garden art this was like an augur out of one of Daddy’s old uh Farm machineries so she’s like well we’ll just prop it up and make it look fun so there you go we’re going to kind of stay on this side so she has got Holly ferns in here um she has little paths that you will see as we walk through um all sorts of just a great assortment of H pastas and um things that I don’t even know about y’all I mean like she’s got Jack in the pulpits she’s got more ukas she’s got trilliums these are cinnamon ferns I know they are cinnamon ferns because they’ll they’re going to throw up a little um looks like a little cinnamon stick right there you can see right here she’s got Maiden hair like a maiden hair fern right there here we have another Bruna that’s a solid green um but between her in her path right so she has the little stones but she has these low growing grasses so you can easily like step through the path without stepping on the plants but it’s just something fun and different she also has the pulmonaria I believe all of these I could be wrong I know these two um are shrimps on the barbie because it’s it’s just a fun one we did this we grew this several years ago at the nursery and so she grabbed some of those but just gorgeous color and you can see that they have those really nice pink flowers so shrimps on the barbie she has got four pulmonaria in here um I know at least three of them are shrimps on the barbie throughout here but coming back over to this just fun mixed border this is why shade Gardens are so much fun because you can literally have plants just grown right on top of each other intermingled gorgeous Japanese painted Fern um I mean like just look at all of the cool plants in here like I said I don’t even know what all of them are but just multiple different types of ferns now this is the other Blue Angel she actually had taken this Blue Angel and divided it and put that one in the pot but y’all this thing is every bit of 4 feet wide just stunning right you’ve got the fern coming up behind it and just like this is my hand look how big that leaf is isn’t it beautiful I mean oh I wish I could grow hostes this big at my house just beautiful uh and then yeah more Burns right and then this one that she has in the pot this is a summon substance um classic right beautiful nice chartreuse yellow now keep in mind with your hostas that the lighter the color like your summon substance right here the more sun it can handle this area actually does get some good sun and so that’s why she has it here the Blue Angel the darker the Bluer they are the more shade that they need so kind of keep that in mind when you’re putting out your hostas so if you have Sunny area that does only get say 3 hours or 4 hours but maybe it’s hotter sun go with your lighter colored and then all y’all these are volunteers that she has down here right at the base of her steps look at these ferns just popping out and so they’re not a tripping Hazard so you know everybody just kind of steps over them we really just go up the center one right there um really great and then these hydrangeas are just the good old classic uh traditional macril hydrangeas I want to say they came from my grandma mother my daddy’s Mama’s house um every couple of years she’ll come in here and she will whack them just like she whack that aelia because they just get too big y’all I am so excited because these plants are absolutely covered in buds these are of course the traditional big fat classic what we think of as a hydrangea Bloom this is what they are because we have acidic soil they’re going to be in that blue purple family um I think there’s a total of there’s either two or three in here but you can see they really take up this whole area and that’s why she does have to right because I mean look at the steps right there um so that’s why she has to come in here and whack on them every so often then this great little collection again to bring some height she puts things in pots so yes some of the hostas are in the ground but then she has summ in pots she has an Old Log right here on the corner that she has um little some of her little containers in she’s got the hens and chicks she still has a little container of violas right here a little ukra she’s got some auga she has her cute little turtle I would say that this is supposed to be like a to hide a key um I don’t think they have a key in there no so you know one of those little cute things where you could put by and hide your key in there um that’s probably what that is but there you go so so sweet now this is the cutest prettiest most striking Columbine I think I have ever seen a friend of hers gave it to her another Gardener friend gave it to her I have absolutely no clue what variety it is Mama doesn’t either it’s called Coline from Dana that’s what it’s called um so this beautiful col Bine but y’all look at these flowers are they just not Exquisite and magnificent I mean you pull up and I’m like Mama what is this thing oh I’m absolutely in love and in awe this thing is probably 2 and 1/2 feet tall um so and and it’s the only one it it only needs to be the only one because it stands out and is just um yeah quite a little showpiece now throughout the center because she does get some sun in here she does have a lot of the rocking series of the salvas and these will come back for her so she’s got like a deep purple she’s got a fuchsia back there um so they’re dotted all throughout there but because they come back every year they’re a little bit small right now so they will they will come out and oh my gosh the hummingbirds right you can see that she’s got her feeder right there the hummingbirds go nuts in this area because of all the great plants that are here between the Salvia the hosta blooms um and everything else that she has that attracts those hummingbirds they do love it now one last thing I want to show you is another hydrangea because like we talked about this bed is interesting and you’re starting to see where are starting to get some light on it it is 10:30 in the morning and so the sun is starting to come up basically it’s right here and then it’ll set behind the house over there so it’s shade in the early mid morning and then the Sun starts to come out she was having a problem here trying to figure out which hydrange you to put she had tried panicles they didn’t get enough Sun she tried some Max they got they just didn’t do well at all so she’s gone with a sarata the these are all three of these are tough stuff so these are lace caps and y’all they’re clearly very happy this is one plant right here and again look at all the buds this just makes my heart happy as a gardener I don’t care what Garden it is that I’m visiting if I see a hydrangea that has this many flower buds on it oh my gosh I’m excited because I know what is to come in this Garden so this is just one plant this is every bit of 3 and 1/2 4T wide um it’s probably one of the larger ones um but all three of them are just absolutely covered in buds I me they all have those sweet little buds on it a beautiful ukara right here uh I don’t know if that’s I don’t think that’s Southern Comfort it might be like um caramel caramel however you want to say it um and then of course the last tough stuff the Little Foot path with our unique stone right there and then if you’re going to ask because Mama does have a ton of the wind sculptures so this is from Lyman Whitaker he is the artist I believe he lives in Arizona so she has a lot of his sculptures in her garden she has collected them over the last 20 years or so this is her newest one and so you can find them um I guess like at an art gallery so if you’re interested and you live I don’t know just Google Lyman Whitaker um and try to find a retailer near you she the closest art gallery is um in Asheville North Carolina right near out of builtmore it’s a builtmore village and so I’ll try to put the link if I try to remember um the art gallery but that has them that that you can get them because we’ve had multiple people ask about those and then uh yeah so another great morning here in Mimi’s Garden a huge thank you for Mimi let me come uh play in her garden and pot her container and do another little garden tour um and so we have we have Rose Bud say hi Rosie so uh Rosie is Mama and Daddy’s um Doberman so she is their quote Brena so she came to say hi to me and um no Brena is not here uh Brena is at the house because even though they’re doggy cousins uh Brena is you know a couple years younger than Rosie and um Brena likes to chase play Chase with Rosie and Rosie doesn’t like to play Chase so sometimes BR kind of not Terror well she kind of does terrorize her but she just likes to play and run and Rosie doesn’t like to do that so just to keep the peace we I just kept Bruna at home today so there always something around here my friends anyway as always we hope you found this fun informative and inspirational I’ll keep you updated on how the container is doing we’ll see you in the next video bye guys