Spring Maplewood Garden Tour with Aimee & Matt

Hey y'all, welcome to the Mr. Maple Show. I'm here at one of my favorite gardens with one of my favorite people. We're at the Maplewood Gardens today. Instead of my little brother, I got my wife Amy touring around with me. We're going to show you around some of our favorite plants here at my parents' garden here at Maplewood Knoll. We're looking forward to showing y'all around the garden. Welcome. Babe, this one's catching my eye. Tell me a little about it. All right, so this one is Acer palmatum red flash. This tree isn't that old. It's probably been here about 10 years in this garden. Beautiful upright red specimen from Italy. This is actually one from Giardelli Nursery in Italy. The same people that named orange dream and so many other cool plants. Really nice upright heat tolerant one. One of the reasons this was called red flash, kind of like fire glow. It gets that flash of red in it. You actually get a real underside of the leaf. It's a bright pink. So when you look up into it during this time of the year, you get some really exquisite shades of red and that new growth really puts on a display. Matt, tell me about these two. Okay, so we've got a couple things here near this red flash. The big guy is benny hagaromo. Now that's one of the fastest growing trees. It can actually rival seriou. This tree isn't that old either. I put this in a three gallon of my parents' garden. It is, gosh, it's over 20 something feet tall now. Typically a foot and a half of growth a year is pretty common on that one. It's got that sessile folium style leaf structure and the benny refers to that kind of red shade it can get in as well. Now you're probably familiar with this one, amy. This one's one from our garden as well. This one's mayday. We got a few of these around the house. I love mayday. It's more of a yellow macaw style as you guys know. Ours got taken out by the amazon guy. Amy keeps amazon in stock buying everything, so all the packages arrive daily. Well, so many packages arrived that our amazon guy literally hit my mayday, took out the center of it, didn't even complain to him, but I have a mayday this size with a little bit of a hole in it in my garden. You guys love mayday. Let's go check out around this garden, babe. There's a ton of cool stuff to show. All right, here we have... Actually, I've got this one, babe. This is waterfall. It does great in the sun. Zones five through nine. And a great golden yellow in the fall. This one is an excellent heat tolerant one. Really older specimen here of waterfall. I mean, this one's been around easily 20 years in the spot and it does great for high heat sunny locations. Used to go with me when I'd be doing garden shows down in Columbia. People grabbed this one a ton when we were down at garden shows in high heat areas. Because it looks great even in shadier spots or sunnier spots, you're still going to keep that lush green look to it. Really great yellow fall color too. But if you're looking for a sunny spot tree, think about veritas or waterfall. JD Veritrees says veritas and waterfall are probably the same trees. Those personal notes, I'm sticking with that, guys. We have this one listed as waterfall here in the garden. Probably the same plant as veritas. All right, babe, let's check out some more plants. All right, y'all. Beside me here is our first graft. You might have heard the story. Tim and I brought this one back from Dave Vercade in like a thimble. This is our first graft of Vercade's jacques potus. Love this weird color this one gets this time of year. Kind of an apricot-y pink red. Another sessilifolium style leaf structure, which we're crazy about. It's just looking awesome here in the spring garden, guys. There are over 400 maples here at Maplewood Gardens. We can't show you them all, but we're going to try today. We're going to take you around and show you some of our highlights here in the gardens. Let's check it out. I can smell the mint I'm standing in right now. Guys, the flagpole got blowed over in a storm. We've got to get dad a new one. There's some fun plants in this area right here. We talked about this waterfall. Guys, that's one of the very first and oldest Peve starfish in the country. Acer palmate and Peve starfish. To my left here, really nice upright red. This one goes by the name of Red Spray. Really nice, kind of picked up reds going on that one. Now you're all asking what's right behind me, and that is Acer longipes gold coin. Sometimes referred to as Acer ample, and those dendrologists keep changing around. I guess they got to eat too, but guys, quit changing the dang names on me. It's hard enough as it is. Gold coin though, showing out in the garden. Hey guys, this is Moonrise. This is one of my absolute favorite trees. It's actually the first tree I ever noticed because of its different colors. It goes from pink over yellow, and it's just a beautiful tree. This is a really old specimen of this tree. Matt actually planted it when we first started dating. It was big then too. To get this thing off a truck, it was massive. So this one came from Carl Munn. Carl Munn helped introduce, well he introduced Moonrise himself. It's one of his best introductions, and it's one of our best golden full moon maples. One of the best full moon maples for the south in general. We're here in zone 6b, and this one gets a lot of sun, and as you can see, it is a regal old specimen. You should have seen me trying to get this thing off a tractor trailer. I had to slide it down a board myself. Lucky I'm still here after all that, but guys, check this thing out. It is absolutely gorgeous, and that fall color with the reds and oranges, you're going to love it. Again, works zones 5 through 9, so a lot of places, but a lot of you looking for an Acer Asylum here in the south, you've got to think about Moonrise. All right guys, next up here, we're next to a big specimen of Acer palmatum, Germaine's gyration. This is an incredibly fast growing species. I mean, I remember when they first planted this, and it has grown a lot since then. Typically 10 by 10 in 10 years, this one gets out there. Another name synonymous with this one is contorta. Now this one gets some contorted branching to it. Germaine seems to be the original oldest name, but guys, we don't even prune this one for shape. It gets such a cool design to it naturally. Great orangy red to yellow fall color. You normally get a bold orange on this one. Heat tolerant, and if you're looking for a Japanese maple, it's going to get big in your lifetime. It's one that kind of gives you one of those Biltmore house like kind of sizes, even in 10 years. This is Acer Pictum Usugumo, also known as the Batwing Maple. This is a cool plant, y'all. I had to get this one on camera. A lot of you probably haven't seen an Usugumo this size. It's an older specimen. I absolutely love the weird variegation this one gets on it. If you're a longtime viewer of our channel, you might have seen me dressed up like Batman talking about this one back in the day at Halloween. Tim's dressed up like Spider-Man. What you didn't see is that we headed over to Black Mountain to Amy's family's house, and she was dressed up like Robin later that day. So we were being all kinds of goofy with this one being the Batwing Maple, but a really cool, fun plant, and I love the variegation on it. That big, weird leaf is just something that catches the eye, and I want to show you the specimen, guys. They're rarely seen at this size. Lovely plants, especially when they get a little bit more mature in the landscape. This one's just soaking up the sun here in western North Carolina, doing great. All right, y'all, this is Acer Palmatum Bazinga. All right, I can't even get in the shot with her on this one, but y'all love variegated and red macawas. This is a fun red macawa named by our buddy, Ed Shin. Y'all probably know him as N.J. Acer. Obviously, this one was inspired by Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory. His catchphrase is, Bazinga, you're going to want a Bazinga in your garden. We're here in late April filming this. Still got some great color going on on this one. One of my favorite macawa variants. Bazinga! There's a ton of maples around us right now. Tell me about them, babe. All right, we got a whole block here. I'm on the spot. You're putting me on the spot. I gotta pull this off. This one is Akita Yatabusa, Great Dwarf Compact Form. There's a bunch of cool things all around us, guys. I've got a large Acer Japonicum Fairy Lights. You know, our girls like the fairy garden. Grandma has some little fairy figures around this thing sometimes. This one's Japonicum Fairy Lights. Guys, there's a ton of cool things. From this other side over here, we've got a garnet providing all that dark red contrast. Behind us back here is a big Acer Japonicum Emmett's Pumpkin, one of our fastest growing Acer Japonicum selections. Now, from one of the fastest to one of the slowest, this is the Mujishi, the Baby Cub Lion. This is the smallest of the Shishigashira forms. This one is a 20-year-old specimen of Mujishi. Guys, there's so many crazy trees. There's over 400 trees in this garden. We could go on all day. I don't know if you can see this behind me, but there's another Emerald Lace back here. There's so many crazy plants in this landscape. I think we should go in the front yard and show them a little bit going on over there as well. Hey guys, now we've come to our Golden Falls. Now, Amy and her sister Katie like to joke that they're Golden Falls and Yellow Cascade. They've got the two sister seedlings right there at Buckholtz Nursery, so we'll throw that picture in. Amy was like, oh, we could name one for Katie and one for Amy. Sorry, Amy, they're already named. You've got your hot blonde plant. But Golden Falls, exceptional plant here. This one is getting a good bit of sun here in western North Carolina's zone 6b. We find this to be one of the more heat tolerant of the Weeping Yellows. Gets a little bleached out in the summer, but just providing a ton of great contrast here in the landscape. Guys, in front of me here, I've also got a Kurohime. I know you're going to ask, absolutely love that one. One of the best forms for like multitude of colors. It's interesting right now, but I actually love it late summer when you get that pink new growth going over top of that kind of greenish older growth. There's a ton of crazy plants going on here at Maplewood Gardens and yeah, let's just keep taking them around. All right, guys, we're here with a 20 plus year old Macawi at the booth, so you know this one, babe. Yeah, it's the one I put Christmas lights in. Oh my gosh, yeah, she does. I gotta get out here and drag the Christmas lights around this collection sometimes. Guys, this one is a big specimen, very durable. Y'all know Macaw if you watch our channel. Very heat tolerant, work zones 5 through 9. This one can handle a good bit of sun even in that high heat further south location. Mom and dad have tied it off. This guy's getting so big it's taking up some of their paths, but yeah, just a gorgeous specimen and this one's going to be an orangey fiery red in the fall. Hey babe, we've got so much color going on around us. Tell me about this corner of the garden. All right, there's a lot in here. We packed a lot in a little spot. Now, a lot of these have gotten bigger over time. I know Bryce Lane even came to this garden and he said, I remember the garden being bigger. Well, they get bigger and then so there's less garden space. Guys, in front of me here is Monticello Gardens. That is a very heat tolerant weeping red developed out of a little south of Columbia, South Carolina for being exceptionally durable. There's some just great plants in here. Beside me is a big Cotonoito. That's that heartstring maple has that kind of, you know, feathery, airy, wispy look to it. I love the winter loblums because they just kind of give you a peaceful gracefulness going on in the garden. Another giant fairy lights back here. Guys, I don't know how much you can see behind us, but there's a Sioum Kaku back here. That is kind of like Makawa. I show people this one a lot. That big Makawa is right up here and they'll say, oh, you got two really big old Makawas in this garden. One thing I love about Sioum Kaku is as it ages, it kind of thickens back up. So it starts to look more Makawa-like, gets there faster than Makawa. This one's actually only 10 years old, where the big Makawa is closer to 20, but it's starting to look a little bit more like a Makawa yatsubusa. And then back here behind us, that bright red with all that winter loblum goodness going on, that's an older Bidiotaki. I actually planted that one with the grafting rubber band still on it here. So I grafted that one. It was a young plant when I got it out, but there's so much color going on here in the garden. You can see how much color contrast you can create just with Japanese maples. It's beautiful. With age, they get a little bigger, but my wife still loves me too. Thank you so much for visiting my wonderful in-laws garden today with us. Guys, we love bringing you maple content. Make sure to like and subscribe. We put out seven days a week content here on the Mr. Maple Show. Let us know if you'd like to see Amy in more of our maple content. I'm going to twist her arm a little bit, get her on camera more with me this spring, especially some of our local shoots. There's so much color contrast going on here. I'm sure we will revisit touring you guys around Maplewood Gardens. I hope you enjoyed this quick tour. If you're at one of our open house events, sometimes we'll do scheduled tours of this garden. Don't miss it. The big one is always on Memorial Day. Thank you so much for today. Take care. God bless and have a great day.