Fall is for filling in holes in the garden 🌿 Tucking in new plants

Hey everyone, Erin here. We're going to get into the video in just a couple of seconds, but I have been absolutely heartbroken to see the devastation from Hurricane Helena in the southeast. So I'm going to make this video a fundraiser for World Central Kitchen, which goes around the world providing meals and immediate support, basic necessities that people need in the immediate aftermath of terrible things that happen. And they go around the world and support people around the world in this way, but right now some of that support is needed in the southeast. So I'm going to donate all of the ad revenue from this video to World Central Kitchen. There will also be a donate button below if you choose to give something more. The good news is that for fundraisers, I checked, YouTube does not keep any of the funds that are fundraised. It goes straight through to the organization. Unlike some other fundraising sites, they don't take a cut. So you will know that any money you would give in that way would be going straight to World Central Kitchen. But the biggest way you can help, honestly, is like, share, subscribe to this video so we can get more eyeballs on it so that ad revenue goes up and so we can make a bigger donation to them. All right, off to the video now. Hi everyone, Erin the Impatient Gardener here. Well, it is officially fall, much to my chagrin, but it's a beautiful day today and I have a lot of things on my mind in terms of the garden, which is all the things that have to get done shortly here. It's a great time to plant, but it's really important to be getting things in the ground so I can get things established. Last year, our biggest snowfall of the year happened on Halloween, which has me really thinking about that because Halloween is like a month away. So I'm just very cognizant of the fact that there is a lot to get done. And what I'm doing today is just dealing with a few little areas where I want to fill in with some plants or change things up a little bit. And I'm standing in the area that's getting the biggest change. And this is a very small little corner of garden, but if you watch my weekly garden strolls and even the full actual garden tour video that I did, I believe I talked about it. This area that I'm standing in here, this is sort of the east side of our yard. Lake Michigan is behind me along with the neighbors. But in this area, I had planted several Tilt-A-Whirl hostas. Now that Tilt-A-Whirl hosta, I actually picked that up at a plant sale from a local garden club, I don't know, 10 years ago at least. And I'd been dividing it and just kind of threw it over here. The thing is, it never really performed well for me. When it looks good, it's a really pretty hosta. It's white and green, and it does have kind of a little twisty petal on it. But it never did well. It was a very thin leafed one. So a main target of deer and rabbits, I find that they go for the physically thinner ones, fat first. Same with the slugs, eaten by slugs. And it was in this area where it was just not happy. For years, I'd been walking past here thinking, I really have to replace those hostas. And I sort of decided, I've been thinking that for at least five years now, maybe eight years, I don't know. And it was never happening. So I thought, just do it, Erin, just get them out of there. So I have dug them out of here. That's what I have been working on is digging those out of this area. And then I put in a bag of Organics Mechanics planting compost in this area because the plants are going back, although the soil is not too bad here, actually. But the plants that are going in here appreciate a rich, well-draining soil. Well-draining, never an issue here. But rich can be because this can tend to be sort of sandy soil. So let me show you what's going on here. We'll talk about what's going to come in. So the house is behind me. So the house is behind me. This is the east, sort of the east border here. This is a circle of grass when it's actually grass. And what we have here in this little corner is this really lovely evergreen here is Picea. It's a white spruce. And it's Hudsonii, it's Hudson, is the cultivar of this. It's a skinny one. It's got kind of a hole on one side of it, which I don't mind at all. And we planted this actually in honor of our first new, who died, his name was Hudson. So we got this tree and I love it in this spot. Very skinny and sort of sculptural here. So below that we have Japanese painted fern. Behind that, this is quickfire hydrangea, firelight hydrangea. Over here is autumn joysedum that I just stuck over here. And interspersed in there, we've got some Hackanacloa all gold in here, Japanese foregrass all gold in here. And then back here, this is a perennial foxglove that I just cut the stems off of. It basically recedes around. Kind of cute little tiny yellow flowers on it. So this is always a hard spot to figure out what the sun exposure is going to be. And I think I always overestimate how much sun is here. So this is complicated, of course, by the fact that we're late in the season here. So the sun is quite low in the sky. But if you look around this way, you see that there are like in particular, this large maple tree right there casts a lot of shadow this way during the hottest part of the day because it's big enough to cast a shadow over there. We get obviously this spruce here will cast a bit of a shadow. But you can see even right now here, we're sort of early afternoon, but late in the season, you can see the autumn joy is in basically full sun. It's hard to figure out what plants will receive over in this area. But certainly along the front edge here, I'm going to say there's a little sunnier as we get farther back, we're obviously into quite a bit of shade. All that being said, I really love the Japanese painted ferns here. So I'm actually going to continue with those and then throw in a couple of anemones as well. So let me show you how this might all map out. Okay, let me show you how I've laid things out. First of all, I also want to point out I do have some European ginger down here, which has not really taken off. But maybe we can get that to happen over here. I do love that as a ground cover. Okay, so I'm just putting in three of the honoring joe bear anemones. Now this was a perennial plant of the year many years ago. Now, it's an anemone, but it doesn't spread as aggressively as most other anemones. It actually I think appreciates a little bit of sun. I mean, not a lot, not, you know, definitely part shade is probably as far as you can push it. I've tried to push it into full shade does not work. I would be very happy if these colonize a little bit. Then I have one Godzilla fern here. I'm tuck that one there, which should get huge. But it's very, it's a hybrid of the Japanese painted fern. So it will match those well. Then I have a few others that I've popped in here in the gallon size. And then you can see I stuck in three little ones in the front. And that is because I ran to the big box store yesterday, and all the perennials were 50% off. So those were I bought 10 of them because they were $3 each. So I'll just fill in with some small ones there. We'll go back here. And I think maybe in spring, because fall is not the time to divide and transplant warm season grasses. I think in spring, what I'll do is bring some more of the hackling clover back to this back corner here, divide some that I have, and sort of fill in this back area with more hackling clover to fill that corner in a little bit there. All right, let's get these guys planted. So I just want to show you look at this little egg sac I found. I don't know if that's from the roly polies that are there or slug eggs. Those will be destroyed. Okay, there it is all planted. Hopefully these plants are happier here and look better here than the hostas. By the way, these two plants are much more deer and rabbit resistant than the hostas were. So that's another little win. So the next little corner that needs a little bit of attention is this spot right here. So we're coming along the path from the patio there. And this garden, you know, it's kind of been an experimental corner. I'll say that. So originally, one of the things that was planted in here was this Carex right here. And this is called beetle mania. And it's, it's cute. And it's a little stripy. But then I realized, and that was like two years ago that I basically just had that. Then I add Carex, I think it was Carex, Carex humilis. Or Yeah, I think it was humilis in here. And that is this one, same form, basically, not very good. It looks it was not a good look. So then we added in some European ginger right here. And then the next year, or somewhere in there, I added in some gems. This is Mai Tai. This is my first experience with gems. I have always sort of poo pooed gems, because I didn't really get it. I felt like they were not a lot of bang for your buck. But then I grew these and I realized like, oh, gems are pretty cool plants. Okay, now you can see there are other things in here. I also added in some Heuchera velosa, autumn bride, you can see like it's flowers. In fact, I should trim those off deadhead those other ones because the rest of them look really nice. And that is such a good plant. And that's kind of all through here. But we had a real bad jumping worm problem here. And I lost several of the Carexes. I think I lost a few other things in here. And there were some big holes. So I went and got some Veronica. This is the purple. This is the purple form from Proven Winners, the name of which I cannot recall off the top of my head. Sorry about that. And I thought that worked because over here along the path, I also have Veronica, this is skyscraper pink. And then the rest of those are white ones, which were all cut back to the ground and did not have a good rebloom this year. Usually they re re bloom very well, but not this year. All that being said, there are some holes in here. And I'd like to fill this in a little bit. So I thought let's get some more gems. And I got a different one. And this one is supposed to be still kind of in that orange family gets you out of the shade here. This is Alabama Slammer. This is one that's been bred by Brent Horvath from Intrinsic. So deep orange single and double flowers are highlighted with red on top of burgundy red stems, one inch wide clumps with the flower stems starting 15 to 18 inches, blooming in spring. Now this one should bloom later than Mai Tai does. So that's why I got this one because I thought I could extend the bloom period a little bit on gems. And one of the things I've learned about gems is that the key to keeping them blooming is deadheading them. So mental note, that's what's going to happen. So you can see where there's some natural holes here. We're just going to kind of clean this up a little bit and pop those three in this is what they look like. They're small plants. It's the end of the season doesn't matter. We're not expecting anything out of them now except to root in for winter. I forgot to mention I have stuck some Dalmatian peach foxgloves in here too. So that's what like that is right there, which that should be here next year. Here's another one right there. Okay, so you can see I've stuck one kind of down here because keep in mind that the heuchera will not be nearly this size when these are big and blooming. And then two more back there that I think should fill in that area well. So I guess one way so you can see where I pop those in and I don't usually leave the tags with plants. But I did want to make sure that I knew which ones were the Alabama slammer and which were the my ties. I think this area is sort of like a mini matrix planting. And I have not nailed it yet. So this is an area that I'm constantly changing up obviously, since I've told you about all the changes. And keep in mind that all of these carrots look terrible at this time of year, at least these do. So once we get some, you know, those get sheared back in spring, once we get some fresh growth, this area actually looks quite nice at that point. So again, we will see how this see if that is the ticket. But I was quite encouraged by the fact that I don't believe I lost any of the gems that were in this area from the jumping worms. So that's why I thought gems were pretty safe bet to stick in this area. By the way, I only found one worm, but it wasn't looking like too hard. And then finally, I just want to show you the last area where I threw in some more perennials. And that is right here. And you can see that I've added in some additional millennium alliums here. Now there's a few in here already. Here's some little guys right there that I had planted there. I had these at one point and I in this kind of in this area, I think there were summer beauties actually. And I don't know if I took them out or something. They died for some reason. I don't remember, but I do love alliums. I think this perennial alliums have such nice foliage and they look good all year. I think it'd be a really nice foil against the purple leaves of the Eclipse Hydrangea back there. So those were $5 each, which is a huge bargain. And actually they are big enough that I could have even divided them. But I didn't feel like it because I feel like there's so much to get done that I'm like, that's not the time for that. Easy to divide in spring, by the way, as well. I actually think I'm gonna go back and get some more. They had a lot of them. They were in such good shape. They're really healthy plants. And that is like the price is right on that. So I'm actually feeling kind of proud of myself for doing this. Fall is not usually a time where I actively think about improving existing flower beds. I'm often making notes about what I should be doing for spring. So right now is such a good time to be doing this. First of all, some plants are on sale. Second of all, we all know that fall is such a good time to plant because the soil is still warm, but things are cool. There's usually some moisture in the ground. I think it's easier for plants to establish. But more than that for me, honestly, it's that I have so much to do in spring that anything I can do in fall, it's like buying myself time in spring. And so all of these just little spruce ups here and there become a whole bunch of extra time in spring. At least that's where my head's at. Okay, that's what I'm doing in my garden today. Love to hear what you are up to in yours. I think we're all working hard here with a lot of things on our plate. So keep plugging along. Have a great day in your garden. We'll see you soon. Thank you for watching.