More Winter Blooming Plants!/Garden Style nw

Hi everybody and welcome to Garden Style. Well today I'm going to be covering with you some more winter blooming plants and in this case winter blooming shrubs, namely witch hazel. Now witch hazel has long had an astringent quality to it for reducing swelling, eczema, psoriasis, a lot of it is found in your shampoos for washing your hair. So witch hazel definitely has medicinal purposes and practical uses as well as looking fabulous in your gardens. So today I'm going to be covering three different varieties of witch hazels. They actually, what I have here sitting behind me, I have three different colors. A lot of folks don't know that a lot of witch hazel varieties can come in a dark red as well as a yellow and an orange and once these start blooming it's a sure sign that spring is not far away. Now what I have sitting behind me right here is a dark red. The common name for this particular dark red is Diane but this happens to be an even better variety than Diane and of course can I remember the name? No. So the name of this one is called a Reuben witch hazel. Now it's a little bit better variety just due to the fact not only is it more fragrant but it's also very tolerant of cold temperatures. Most of your witch hazels can be found in zones five through nine. They're not too picky about the soils that they grow in. They're actually a really tough shrub. They prefer a nice loamy soil of course but if you have clay soil they're actually very tolerant of that which is why they're so popular. A lot of people like to have them in their yards. Now witch hazels do more than just bloom in the late winter. They also are replaced with these beautiful green leaves during the summertime which makes a great background plant to any of your shade gardens or partial sun gardens. Witch hazels do prefer to have a little bit of sun at least six hours during the day and I like to call that morning sun. I try not to have my witch hazel out in the late afternoon blistering heat as with all that leaf surface they will have a tendency to singe. But if they're getting lots of morning light or early daylight at least six hours you will find that you'll get a lot of blooms on them and they look fabulous in the back of a garden. Now most of your witch hazels will get about five to ten feet tall. This particular variety right behind me the Reuben variety can get up to 20 feet tall but you can always control that with pruning and with any blooming shrub I always recommend that you prune your early blooming shrubs after they're done blooming not before so you don't take a chance on cutting off next year's blooms. Now witch hazels have been with us for a long long time and a lot of them are native here to the United States and they're becoming more and more popular just due to the fact that a lot of us starve for a little more color during the winter time and they can definitely fill that void. They kind of have a vase shape structure to them they can be a shrub and some are trained as an actual tree especially if they're getting up to 20 feet tall and witch hazels are just so easy to grow look fabulous in the back of the garden but the other cool thing about them is most of your varieties also have beautiful fall foliage before they drop their leaves and witch hazelers are usually the one plant that is the last thing in the garden to drop its leaves so you get to enjoy its fall color even longer as they become a deep scarlet red sometimes they'll turn yellow and then turn to a scarlet red or vice versa just depends on the variety that you have chosen but what I like most about witch hazels is the fact that they smell fabulous and I've been known to walk out and cut some twigs and bring them inside because they have that beautiful fabulous floral scent that just fills up the room during late winter so what a treat that can be and then I'll also be covering viburnums this particular one is just starting to bud out and bloom I'm going to see if I can get them up here in the camera so you can actually see the blooms but they start to bloom on the ends of their twigs here and you talk about fragrant those are almost like a heady type of scent now there are probably thousands of varieties of viburnums available out there this particular variety that I'm talking about today happens to be a pink dawn viburnum it's a very common variety viburnums again are also a very hardy shrub this particular one I'm going to read how high he gets this one can get up to eight to ten feet tall and six to eight feet wide so it can be a fairly good size shrub great for filling in those big spaces within your garden if you need a nice shrub for it now this one also takes about six hours of sun however it prefers the morning sun more than the late afternoon sun so you can park these underneath some of your deciduous trees so they get a little more shade during the late afternoon but viburnums in general are pretty darn tough and they grow pretty fast the different varieties of viburnums just depends you can get the pink dawns here which happen to be a late winter early spring bloomer and as you continue on you can get other spring bloomers in the viburnum varieties and I will definitely be going over those as they start to open up start blooming and I'll get to talking about all the different varieties of viburnums a lot of you may be familiar with the snowball bush which is also a viburnum and that's kind of a late spring early summer bloomer and you get the big huge snowballs on them and then there are other varieties of viburnums where they actually look like a dogwood when they first start to bloom just because of their clusters of flowers and if you're not real certain what that looks like just refer back to my May video where I'm standing in front of a huge viburnum which is drop dead gorgeous has a horizontal habit to it and the flowers just look like they're kind of layered within the shrub and they smell wonderful and they're beautiful and I have found that the flowers on those can last you up to two months before they finally drop and then they are actually replaced by berries and I have red berries on mine last year some of these other varieties of viburnums get replaced with blueberries during the late summer early fall and then on top of that they also have this fantastic fall color where they'll turn these deep scarlet reds beautiful colors before they finally drop their leaves so you actually get two to three seasons of interest out of these shrubs which is why I love them so much and they're not real fussy about where you put them as far as soil is concerned of course as with any shrub they always like to have a nice composted soil to them but they can tolerate more clay soils or a little bit crappier soils they don't like really wet feet so you want to make sure they have good drainage but other than that you can have all the luck in the world with viburnums as well as witch hazel so they're both super easy to grow and a lot of good companion plants for these can be spireas or magnolias as they all kind of require some of the same elements as far as light and water goes so yeah run out to your nurseries as a lot of them have them on hand now as we do and it's just a beautiful way to put them in the during the winter time or late winter before we actually enter spring so I hope that answers a few questions for you I am going to have some close-up shots here towards the end of this video so you can actually see what their flowers look like the witch hazels are very fascinating as they kind of have a spidery type of petal to them and they will hang on to them really well for about three to four weeks as long as you're not getting a heavy snow or a really deep freeze where it actually freezes the flowers they fall off and sometimes that's our luck up here in the northwest as we tend to have wet winters and when it freezes it'll zap the flowers off the branches but we've been pretty blessed this year as we've had no super cold temperatures as of late just a lot of rain as it's been doing today it's kind of been sideways breezy rain and then now the sun's coming out from what I can see all right you guys so a few more winter blooming plants for you I'll definitely be covering some more next week namely camellias as our camellias are starting to open up now and that's a whole video all by itself as we get into the camellia family and of course I'll be traipsing around the nursery here looking for other winter bloomers so I can cover those with you as well you'll notice also right behind me we just got our first shipment of primroses so that's a definite sign that spring is right around the corner we've been selling them like crazy over the last couple of days so visit your nurseries they're starting to already get in some of their late winter early spring flowers such as primroses and pansies and of course hellebores my personal favorite we just got another new shipment in just this past week all right you guys hopefully you are having a good winter late winter I hope the weather hasn't been too severe where you live and if it has bless you hopefully it'll get better soon meanwhile we'll talk soon and see you next week bye for now