Garden Design Ideas for Home Gardeners A Garden From Scratch

Well this week I start laying out the plans for my new secret garden in Kentucky and it all starts with two simple plants to create some structure on my sloped back garden. As a reminder I just moved from an established garden in Michigan to a brand new garden here in Kentucky and the house where we're living will be a temporary house until we build our forever home. So this project needs to be done on a budget but I am determined to make this space beautiful while we're here. This week I'm going to show you how I'm starting to create the new structure in the backyard. So let's get started. The back garden is sloped and our idea is to try to create three separate areas that we divide up into different terraces and this week I'm starting on the first terrace that's closest to the house and closest to the patio. Last week I shared that I found a great price on some Oakland Holly shrubs on the Home Depot website. I purchased those plants and I'm planning to use them to create a hedgerow that will divide the first terrace area from the rest of the back garden and I just used the time this week to try to stage what I think that those trees are going to look like and I found a great price online again on the Home Depot website on some Invincible Mini Mavette hydrangeas. This variety of hydrangea is an arborescence type of an Annabelle hydrangea. It's got unique purple blooms that are held on sturdy stems and they bloom from summer through the frost. They're very cold hardy and these particular plants are supposed to grow between two and a half to three feet tall and wide. I think that they'll be the perfect addition to kind of hide the edges of the deck and just add some beautiful greenery as well as some color. I am a huge fan of the regular Annabelle hydrangea and we had a number of them in our Michigan garden so I think that this new Invincible Mini Mavette is going to be a great add to the garden. Our idea for the first terrace area is to have a curved form that hugs the top portion of the hill. We want to lay a path using large patio blocks to connect one side yard to the other side yard. But the one thing that we are keeping in mind is that the ground under the one maple tree is pretty rough and is definitely going to pose a challenge for a path. So most of the time this week was spent clearing out the weeds in the turf from just around the patio area. My plan is to use a no-dig method and luckily we just moved to a new house and I've got tons of cardboard that'll be available for me when I want to actually start making flower beds. But I don't think that that's going to happen until later in the season. So I decided that I was just going to brute force my way to clear some of this turf out from underneath the patio and I'm really glad that I did. It really cleaned up the area. So here is a quick picture of what the patio area looked like when we arrived at the house. This is what the patio looks like today. I still need to round the turf out around the patio and get the Annabelle hydrangeas in there but I really really am liking how the patio area is starting to come along. This week I also accomplished another really important task and it's because of this little visitor here. So one of the things that I noticed when I got here was how reflective the doors were and so I purchased these window alert stickers. So what this does is it lets the birds see the window and you use it on the exterior glass and all I got to do is I got to clean the glass really well and it says that it's best to apply the decals when the glass is warm above 50 degrees which it's it's pretty hot here right now so that's fine and the instructions are saying that I need to try to get the decal spaced four inches horizontally and two inches vertically so they said to work in the center and then work your way out. Yeah and they just stick right on there. Yeah so these are pretty cool they were super easy to install and if I put it in a place and I wanted to check it out or change it I just can peel it off. According to the documentation it says that the uv protection on here lasts for at least up to four months before it fades so that uv coating on there is what makes it so that these are very visible to the birds. I'll be sure to leave a link to this product in the description of this video. I am really excited that I found two great plants the Invincible Mini Mavet Hytrangea and the Oakland Holly. I think that these two plants first of all were super affordable found on the Home Depot online website and not only that they're going to look great in the garden. That first terraced area is coming along I can't wait to get these plants put into the ground and I'm excited to get this garden project going. I'd love to hear your opinion of the new plants that I'm installing and also the new idea for the terraced garden. Well that's it for this video friends thanks for being here and we'll see you in the next one.