How To Make The Easiest Hydrangea Wreath, Finishing a Boxwood Hedge & Topiary Pruning! 🥰🌿✂️

Hey guys, how's it going? So today we've got a couple of things we're going to be working on out here, and it's a beautiful morning. It's going to get 85 today, or it's supposed to. Blue skies. Oh, I'm loving it. And we are starting up here in the entryway where we've got most of our firelight hydrangeas because we are going to be putting together a really easy hydrangea bloom wreath. This one requires no glue, no wire. It's going to be super easy, and I want to give you a close-up look at these hydrangeas because they're so glorious. When we were done with this project, we got our hands on some more of the Independence boxwoods, and we are going to be filling in some holes where we've lost a few, and then we're also going to be continuing on where we planted all the boxwoods earlier this spring, sort of around the concrete fence section we brought back and put out kind of that area. First of all, let me show you the supplies we're going to be working with today. We've got a grapevine wreath form. These are really easy to come by. You can order them online, but you can also pick them up at pretty much, I think, any craft store, even Walmart. We've got a wreath hanger right here. We've got ribbon, which this is optional. Obviously, you don't have to use ribbon if you don't want to, but I kind of feel like that is beautiful with these hydrangeas, that color, and it keeps it bright. However, the chocolate brown is really pretty, too. I don't know. I think you can't really go wrong with either of those. And then, of course, our hydrangea blooms, which I am noticing as they've been sitting here longer and longer, they are starting to form up a little bit of kind of that brown look to them. We're going to be facing the brown side, if they do have one, toward the back, but all you do, you guys, is you take the leaves off the stem and you just weave them in like that. Keep in mind that they will desiccate or shrink a little bit as they dry, so you want them to be tucked in nice and tight, but you guys, that is it. We're just going to take these blooms, take the leaves off, and just work our way around the wreath form. Something I do like to do is determine where I want this to hang from, and I like to put my wreath hanger on prior to building my wreath, if I can, and it's easy in this case because I don't need to move this wreath form around very much, and that way we can work around this a little bit, and I also am going to determine where I want my ribbon, which I think I want it to be hanging down from this side, not down the center, and I think I'm going to use the thicker one. We'll try that first. Okay, I need two hands. Hang on. Okay, so first off, I am going to sacrifice a little bit at the end here because we've got a crease I can't get out unless I got an iron, and I don't have an iron out here, so you can cut it at a slant, or you can cut it like this. This is how I prefer to do it so that we've got this sort of tail right here, back you guys up just a little bit because I want to determine, and I can always cut these shorter, so I'm going to go longer than shorter, and then we've got to decide, do we want there to be like loops hanging down like there's a bow? Maybe so. Okay, here we go. I'm going to make a big bow here. For this part, I am going to need some wire. False. I can just tie it right around the wreath form. This is wired ribbon, which honestly, for a project like this, I would prefer that it would not be wired, but I don't have any of this color, you know, like satin. I think satin would be nice because it would hang and drape beautifully. This looks like a mess right now. Just give me a minute. Trust the process, people. I have these all lined out right before I pull too tight, so you're not going to see this part. There will be a whole bunch of hydrangeas around it, so just trying to decide. We can manipulate this once we work the hydrangeas around it. That's I guess the one benefit of wired. Okay, so anyway, that's where we're at, and we can mess with that as we work around it, but all we have to do at this point is tuck the hydrangeas in. I do want to show you these close up, though, and I have talked about different methods of drawing hydrangeas, and I did show you when we did the champagne buckets with these very hydrangeas in them. For the mantle, I put a little bit of water at the bottom of a vessel, and then we pop the branches in. They suck all that water into their system, and then they dry, and they dry really beautifully that way. You don't have to replenish the water, just that initial little bit, and they really do well. However, if you pick the blooms at the right stage, they'll dry beautifully just on their own without the water. So I have in the past used those little stem vases that hold a little bit of water if I'm tucking blooms that are a little bit more fresh than these, and that way it keeps them nice long enough for them to dry. But the ones that I just worked into our table centerpiece for fall, they dried exactly how they looked when I picked them, so I'm really happy with that. Look at this. First full season in the ground. Was it fall when we planted these last year, or was it getting toward the end of the season? I do know that, because it was still hot out, though, I remember. But the blooms were, yeah, I think they were starting to maybe turn a little bit. I'd have to look back, but they're so beautiful. Oh, my word. There are 29 on this side, 29 hydrangeas. These grow six to eight feet tall and wide. I think they're a zone three through eight. So it's going to be a fantastic, huge, impactful display, I think, as they grow. And then on the other side, right here, we've got two, four, six, eight, 10, 12. So that's, what, 41 altogether, 41 fire hydrangeas. Yeah. Oh, my mercy. And we did add in these three this year, because we did have a spruce tree that Aaron and I took out earlier this spring that was pretty much dead. So we do still plan on putting another spring grove arborvitae in here to match the one on the other side. That way, we've got complete balance, at least up to that point. But of course, it can't be completely balanced because of the male house. But I think this wreath is going to be really pretty. Now, this will be exposed to some elements. So I'm wondering, I'm almost kind of second guessing, we might end up putting this on our kitchen door. Because dried hydrangea wreaths, I have had them outside, but I can't say that I've had them exposed as this area is. I'm thinking maybe this is a good spot for a faux wreath, which I did pick up a couple of faux wreaths this year. So maybe we'll go that route and place this somewhere where it'll be out of any kind of rain and any intense wind. Because that is one thing about this method of making a wreath, that it is possible if they get beat around too much, they could lose some blooms. So yeah. But these would be great for like our kitchen door, our portico doors that are kind of under the overhang of our house. Okay. So let's take a look here. So on a stem like this, we just take the leaves off. And I like to reach up here and get the little leaves that are up in the bloom like that. I'm going to take this out because I kind of want to start this right here by the bow. So you just take your hydrangea and yeah, tuck it in. And then we'll take the other one that I just pulled out and we'll tuck this one in. Hmm. Let's see. Okay. Let's do another one. The nice thing about working with hydrangeas right now, as opposed to when they're fully dried, is that they're flexible. So you can kind of squish them around a little bit. Oh, I broke that one. And you know, if you want to have a little bit more security, you could have a hot glue gun, put a little hot glue on each stem so that as it goes in, you know, it's adhering to everything else a little bit better, but look at how gorgeous that is. Oh my gosh. Loving it already. I'm going to need to go cut a whole bunch more blooms now. Can I see? Oh, I love it. Samantha has drawn me a picture and brought it out for me. That's beautiful, baby girl. I love it. Thank you. Can I keep it right here? So it's safe. Okay. All right, guys, I'm putting two cameras out so you can see it from different angles here because you do need to make sure to get the sides too. I mean, if you look at it from top down, it looks absolutely gorgeous, but you want to make sure you're looking at both sides so you've got full coverage of blooms on it. Oh my goodness. This is so pretty. Look at that. Oh my word. Okay. And I'm kind of taking a look around. It looks like we got all angles here. And the next test is going to be to pick it up and kind of shake it a little bit. Make sure that nothing's going to fall out. If something falls out right away, we can fix it really easily. That is so pretty. And I love this gold color with it. Okay. Give it a good shake. I think we're good. They kind of like stick together a little bit too, the blooms do, and then they'll dry that way, which will make them a little bit more like stable, I guess is the right word. Isn't that gorgeous? And so easy. What did that take us? Like 10 minutes. I'm just going to pop it on the door of the flower shed just for size reference. It might be a little bit too big for that door. I'm not sure. We're not going to leave it there, but I just want to see what it looks like. That's so pretty, isn't it? But it's going to shine on our kitchen door. And you know the other nice thing about making a wreath on a grapevine wreath form as opposed to like a wire wreath form, which I think the last time I made a hydrangea wreath for you guys, maybe it was on a grapevine wreath form, but I know I've made one on just the wire form. It doesn't look as good from the back. But this one, you still have all the natural elements and it doesn't look bad. And our kitchen door is glass, mostly glass. So you are going to see this from inside. So it's important to me that it looks, the infrastructure looks nice as well. So let's take it over to that door. Oh, that looks beautiful, gorgeous. I love it so much. Oh, now we just need like a little bundle of corn stalks right here. And we're going to do a little revamping over here as well. Most of these, these are freedom boxwoods. And if you, like this camera doesn't do close-ups, but they got mites so bad. Even in containers, they were doing so well for us in containers. And then, yeah, so I'm not going to keep those. This is a green velvet untouched by mites, even though it's right next to these. I don't know. So anyway, I'm going to do a little bit of a revamp here eventually, but we actually do use these chairs to sit and put our shoes on. Also, guys, it is boxwood trimming day. You can hear the crew. One more close-up look at the color of these flowers and they'll dry just like this. So pretty. Sorry about the noise, you guys, but oh, I love it when the crew shows up. We have a crew come twice a year. So spring, like mid-spring and right when the temperatures are about like they are in the fall to trim up the boxwoods. It used to be a job that I would do, but you know, as you go along, you figure out the things that, like, I would rather work more doing something else than have to trim all the boxwoods because it would take me to do what they're doing. It would take me a good solid week and it would like wreck my body. But they get it done in one to two days. Every single boxwood on this property, like they'll get most of them done today and then they will probably come back tomorrow or the next day whenever they can fit it back in to do like little odds and ends. But there's a lot of boxwood hedging on our property. So something to think about if you're putting in hedging. It definitely takes some maintenance. Thankfully, it's only twice a year. It's kind of like, it's kind of like window washing. I mean, we do our windows four times a year. That's it. The Hartley gets cleaned four times a year, the glass. And it's pretty nice, just like with the change of the season. All right, you guys. So we're going to do a complete switch of gears. I'm going to go show you these independence boxwoods. So they're beautiful. We're going to load up as many as I can fit in the gator. And then Aaron said he would come and aug the holes for the ones that don't have holes currently. But I think I've got to replace three in that little swoop that we have at the end of the south garden loop. And then one in the hedge that we planted this spring. So I can do those four on my own. I could do all of them on my own, but it's sure nice to have his help. He's always so willing to come out and help with the auger. And he knows that the spot where we're going to be digging these, it's pretty hard to dig holes. In fact, I'll grab two different augers. I'll grab our five inch auger to do pilot holes and then the nine inch auger to finish them up. Look at these. Oh my gosh. They are so perfect that they look fake. Don't they look like fake boxwood reeds? You know, when you get a fake wreath, they kind of have this look to them. Like it's insane. They're really thick leaves and a little bit more waxy. And I think, I mean, we've only had them now for one solid year, but I think that that's what keeps the mites off of them. They just don't seem to be as affected as our other boxwoods. And we've got like some eight or nine varieties of boxwoods in our garden. And so far the independents and the green velvets have been, and the green mountain, well, no. Green velvet and independents have been the most mite tolerant, or not tolerant, mite resistant. And then the green mountain and winter gems have been the next best. And then, let's see, we have julia janes and mount brunos, which have been pretty good. And then we've got the freedom and sprinters, which have been horrible for mites. So I know it'd be different in every single area, but having them side by side planted in our garden, it's been kind of interesting to be able to monitor what affects them, what doesn't affect them, how each of them do, and that sort of thing. And these are a zone five through eight, and I think they grow three feet tall by three feet wide, which is really quite perfect, because I don't want, where we've got them, we'll probably keep them between two and three feet tall and wide in the end. Oh, I gotta clean up my stuff here. I used our little debris tarp as my work table today. Otherwise we would have been working on top of all of that, all that dirt. We'll fold up workbench here. How fun. Okay, you guys. So right here is our first one that we need to tackle. You can see that there's already a hole there, and I'm not sure exactly what happened, but it was one of the boxwoods that I had wintered over. I planted some of those in with some of the new ones that we had received. In fact, I started with the ones we wintered over by the urn, and they came to right here, because you can tell the difference. These are the ones we planted this spring. I planted two here, and I just, yeah, that one just didn't make it. But all the rest of them, you know, we took off down that area, and those are looking great, and we're going to be planting a couple more at the end of that little group. But we're also going to be planting some, let me walk you over there, and take in our fall containers on the way. They look so pretty. But we started here, we went down it this way. These have all done beautifully. It looks so good. They just provide that structure. That's amazing. And we made it all the way to the apple arbor over there. So we're going to pick up on the other side of the apple arbor, and we're going to continue planting to the edge of the grass over there. And I'm getting really close to pulling these out, even though there's some color left. These felicia daisies really have gotten large. Look at that. That's one right there. Because I'd like to get some fall stuff going in here. I'd like to put some pumpkins in here, and maybe some of our cabbage that we've got. I think that would be really pretty. Not today. The boxes are going to probably take up quite a lot of our time. But we're going to start with plugging one in this hole, and then we'll go to the south guard and finish those three up so that those are just done. All right, guys. I think I forgot to turn the camera on. All I did was bring our auger over here and made the hole a little bit bigger, just to kind of clean it out a little bit. Also to kind of dig down and see what the moisture level looks like. It's like dry. And the drips just ran yesterday. So I'm thinking that could be our problem. Maybe we're plugged here, and this particular plant wasn't getting quite enough water. So I'm just going to pop in an individual emitter. That is so hard for me to say. An individual emitter. Anyway, we're going to pop that in so that we're going to make sure that this plant gets enough moisture. And I also put some biotone starter fertilizer in the hole already. So we're ready to rock with this one. Oh, fresh plants. All right, and I don't have a hose really close to this one. So once we're all done with the planting, I'll bring the water tank out and give them all a really good drink. Oh, looks good to have a fresh one in there. Okay, one down. We can see the beautiful arbor on our way. Oh, look at it down there. Oh, boy. That is just such a beautiful addition. I love it so much. Oh, the grass is wet. Okay, so right down here, we've got a row of limelight prime hydrangeas and then a hedge of boxwood. We need to pop one in right here. And then a single line of Supertunia minivista white. So you can see what a single line of those does, how it performs. They're absolutely beautiful. And then we're going to pop two in right here. So we did lose two. And the reason for that is, I think, twofold. One, we planted them late in the season and we did not come out here not one time during the whole entire winter and water them, which it's something if we've got long dry spells, we have to do that. We've got to come out here and we just didn't think to do that. So they didn't come out of winter looking awesome. And then to kind of double down on not getting enough water, the drip was not functioning in this area for most of the season. In fact, we just figured out that the zones that were out here, somehow they got tapped together. And there was one zone running this entire outer ring. And that's way too much. So there just wasn't enough water getting to anything, especially to this area. So I think that's why our limelight prime blooms are so small this year, as opposed to other years. They're usually nice and big and the boxes have struggled. So anyway, we've got it figured out and I think we'll do OK. We just need to replace these three. OK, I'm going to redefine their holes first. All right, that is done. Now we have a complete hedge going into fall and winter. I love that. So we've got the two right here and then the one right there. And I did water those in. We've got a hose right there. So I was able just to pull it straight out. One spot that we do really, or I would really like to have a hose, is somewhere right in here. Because the next one we have is down behind the London Plain tree and it's hard to get the hose all the way around everything. And then the other one, you know, is around the curve. It'd be super handy to have a faucet just with a little fabric hose down here. That looks really pretty. OK, guys, so this next part is just going to be some elbow grease. I'm going to run over there, place all of these and then I'll go grab whatever else we need from back by the high tunnel. I'll get them all placed before Aaron comes out and then we'll get the holes dug, biotone in the holes, plant them and then I'll give you guys a look. Oh, we really need to take after that topiary one of these days. That is a topiary. I know it doesn't look like it. OK, I'm leaving this spot empty because I want to put a cone right here. I want to end the thing with a cone so it looks like an end cap and it's something we can repeat on the other side. I think that looks good. OK, so those were a couple of Russian sage that just seeded themselves over here. So I've dug them out and there's a total of three. So I'm just going to dig holes and just see if they'll take. But they were right in line with where we needed to plant some stuff. So we had to get rid of them. I also cut back the baptisia because it was completely done and it had struggled with mites this year. So I don't want to risk having new boxwoods like right underneath something that might have mites. So anyway, so this is what we ended up with. It's a little itty bitty root ball, but thankfully these are pretty tough plants. And then I've got a couple smaller ones. OK, so I've laid these out and we got the four Russian sage. So one, two, three, four moved. We scooted those back. I'll water those in here shortly. And I don't know, I kind of want to stop right here because this whole corner fills in with beautiful stuff every year. And maybe, you know, we can carve out a little bit more and put a cone here too as kind of an end cap. However, I'm going to ask Aaron when he comes out here. We may wait to plant these because we are taking this big evergreen out. This angle, it doesn't look horrible because it's in the shade on the side. Let me show you from the other side. It was one of those that last winter, it came out of the winter looking dead. Pretty much, there was a little bit of green at the base and in the very center toward the bottom of the tree. But everything else was just brown and crispy, but it pushed a bunch of new needles and it was trying really hard. But it's doing pretty much the same thing, where it's pretty much brown. There's a little bit of green in there. I don't know, it's a hard one. And we almost figured like, well, we just had to remove the one behind the greenhouse and barn, that spruce tree. We're going to replace it with a Leyland Cypress and we could do the same thing with this one at the same time. And get a Leyland Cypress going, which they do really well here. Better than spruces for us. So we'll see what his opinion is on that. I just don't want to plant these and have them be all up in his way if he wants to get in here and get that done this fall yet. But the ones on the other side, we can plant. So we'll probably start with those. Okay, well, I just talked to Aaron about those boxwoods and I do think we're going to hold off on those. He said it's not so much getting the tree out that will be a problem, it's getting the new one in. Because typically when we get a Leyland Cypress or any tree from Jake or they're in the great big B&Bs and it's really hard to move them unless we can get them in with a tractor. So I think we will hold off. I'll just leave them there for now. They're not hurting anything. We can water them right where they're sitting. And what we'll do is plant these right here. And then instead of planting those other, that other group, we will trim up that topiary, that juniper topiary. What a great day to do that. Okay, so I'm just going to start it. We'll see how far we can get. Maybe we can get it done by the time Aaron gets out here. Save him a little work. We go every other one with digging, otherwise you're kicking soil right into the hole next to it. So it works well to do it this way. So I like to set them all in their holes before I kind of nest them all in with soil. Especially when I'm planting a hedge and that way I can shift one or two if I need to if I feel like they're not lining up properly. I also texted Aaron and told him don't worry about coming out here. It's a lot easier digging and I think the reason why is that we're right next to a lawn. And so this area's probably got a little bit of overspray which softens the soil as opposed to the ground along the lane when we were digging that this spring. It was a nightmare to dig. So this is, this was much easier. Way better than I expected. See that way I can tell this one right here needs to be shifted forward a little bit. So if they're not nested into their holes we can make adjustments really easily. It might just be a matter of twisting the plant. This needs to be, there we go. Oh yeah that looks way better. Now when you're planting a hedge it doesn't make that much of a difference because they'll all be one in the end. But I like to try to get them as straight as I can at least. And look from this side they're all looking pretty darn good. It's so fun to see the continuation of this room kind of form up. There they are. They look so good. A beautiful continuation in this area and then we'll put in our cone boxwood when we have a pair that we can put in here. Okay I'm going to go grab the hedge trimmers out of the barn real quick and then we will go get that topiary trimmed up. I think that's the perfect thing to end today's projects with. Okay well here's another look at it before we take after it. This has always been an odd one because well we dug it up and moved it out here and the top is really big. Really big and the bottom is really little and I've never stayed on top of it enough to get them to kind of balance. I do think we're going to have to do a rejuvenation prune on this blueberry, no blue muffin viburnum but I think I'll wait till the spring. We'll enjoy the fall color so I don't know. We're going to try to try to pin it back somehow. Do I have string? No I've got wire though. And we've got the hedge trimmers so let's go. Okay it's not perfect but it is so much better and I took it down pretty hard like I was cutting into big branches in there especially up top here. I don't know if you can see like that right there and I exposed a lot of the lighter colored undergrowth so that the stuff that was showing before was much more brilliant green and I'm hopeful that this stuff comes around to that. I do see a spot on the back side of the bottom one that I missed right there. I'm going to grab that before we're done here but anyway it's looking much more trim, much more tidy and I did my best trying to get the little bits out of the plants beneath but those can be cleaned out when we cut all of the perennials back. We've got beautiful asters. These are the monk variety. Is it monk? M-O-N-C-H I think or M-U-N-C-H and the cobalt supervenus. Super beautiful. Also white wands veronica. This is one of the top pollinator plants in our garden for honeybees in particular. It's interesting to see which pollinators are attracted to which plants because the echinops are a definite honeybee attractor. The eryngium attracts honeybees but it also attracts tons of different types of wasps and flies and different types of bees. I see honeybees on it too but not like these. This particular variety even over the other colors like there's the pink potion and the wizard of oz and purple illusion. They're all great and the honeybees like them too but the white wands is just the winner for sure. There's always tons and tons of activity on these. I could just sit down here and watch them for a little while. Super peaceful and part of me really wants to take after that viburnum like right now because that would improve the whole overgrown unkept look of this space. If we could cut the you know the big mangy growth but it's going to be beautiful fall color out here really soon so I want to be able to enjoy that before we take after it. And next spring maybe we can come in and just do a full like rejuvenate prune and just cut it way way way back. And you guys that is going to do it for our projects for today. The hydrangea wreath was so easy so so much fun to do and it just brightens up that doorway and I really oh boy if it just didn't totally ruin the look of our entryway I would be making wreaths for every door like that because they're just so simple so so simple and the nice thing about it too is the hydrangeas will dry like that and then you can keep that hydrangea wreath out I mean indefinitely until it basically gets too dirty that you just want to do something else and you can just pull all those blooms off and you've got your great vine wreath form to use again. And of course you'll get longer life out of it if you have it somewhere protected and even more if you have it inside somewhere which I love to put wreaths on mirrors in particular I think that's really pretty and on inside doors as well. I'm also really happy to have boxwoods going you know have this hedge all complete again just have those little things those little holes taken care of before we go into winter because that's such a huge part of our winter winter structure around here and when you see a gap in the line it's just kind of like oh you know you just wish it could be full and then the juniper was an unexpected project I'm really happy we did it so anyway thank you guys so much for watching I hope you enjoyed it and we will see you in the next video bye