(happy music) – Interior designers tell us that the first fifteen
seconds into your home someone will form an impression
of the rest of your home and so I wanna take that
same theory outside. Because I believe the
same principals are true with the way we landscape our home. The way we maintain it and
the colors that we chose. The planters that I
have here at my columns I like to keep them where I can rotate the plants seasonally. So you can tell I have my
beautiful Easter Lilies. I’ve chosen the Skyrocket Juniper here, in these containers because, number one, they will take this intense
sun in the afternoon. They also are very low
maintenance as far as watering. And I’ll, on the surface of these planters I have, as you can tell,
I like to pick up rocks and so I have always used these because it might conserve moisture and it also keeps planters
from blowing over. And then another thing,
that I did with my rocks, so that I don’t have to
maintain a lot of weeding and grass underneath
them, I just went ahead and put a little foundation
of rocks underneath them. I’m standing with my Emily Bruner Holly. You know, they say at
the corner of our homes we should always have an anchor plant. Well at one point in time the contractors would put maybe a Hemlock that has the ability to
grow way out of size. You couldn’t prune them. Next came the Foster Hollys. The Foster Holly was here
but I just got tired. It will grow fast even though you can cut the
main leader out of the top. It still required more trimming
than I wanted to maintain. Emily Bruner is another,
it’s a very dark leaf, glossy and if you’ll see, it
has very dark red berries and they can sometimes even turn black. Now, when I look at the
rest of my home here I have, the way my house is situated, it sits back and comes forward and then with the addition of the porch I had created a another
offset out of the house and so in order to not
have too much mulching and areas to maintain, I
took that into consideration. But one of the plants
that I have utilized here is the Domestica Nandina. I love them because of their red berries and because I have part
brick and part siding on my home here, the
red was a good contrast. Well, the plants I have in front now are the Otto Luyken Laurels. And then do have a white blossom. But the way I went at arranging these I actually took two Laurels on each side and then I brought ’em out to the front and I put two more Laurels. So I encaged the Nandinas
because they do get tall and I don’t really have
to do anything with them. We did lose them to the
ground two years ago but you can see they’ve already put out
new growth for this season and so I’m satisfied that now they have reached the point that I don’t really have to mulch in here, except along the, when I
have them trimmed back. Now as we progress along
I have put in some things that are actually deciduous plants which sometimes we don’t really want to do that in the front of our homes means that their barren
in the winter time. But these are White Dwarf Crape Myrtle and they’ve done exceptionally well here. These are what you called
English Wood Hyacinths. Some call ’em Spanish Bluebells but these have just reseeded
and naturalized here. I had a friend in the garden club that gave me just a couple
of little bulbs to those and they have naturalized
through this area. Now then, this is a plant
that’s called a False Holly. I wanted to have some variegation of color and so the one mistake though, that I actually did with this, this is one of those hollys that will, once you cut the top out of it, it’s not gonna grow pyramidal anymore. It’s going to start to bush out. So this one had sort of
outgrown it’s boundary so this spring I’ve cut the top out so that it can bush a little further out. This is a little plant
that’s called Deutzia. And so on each side of my porch, now, I have mirrored the False Holly, the three Boxwoods, see
I had to come out again because I had a large area
back here to mulch and maintain and I just didn’t want that. So I grouped those together and then by putting the
Deutzia here in front again I’ve allowed it to come forward and this is not an evergreen plant. But, again, it’s backed up
with plants that are evergreen. Deutzia’s come in a lot
of different varieties. There’s one that’s this size that has chartreuse leaves
to it that’s really nice. And then we have the
old fashion tall ones. Now, this is what I think a beautiful specimen of
the Gold Coast Cyprus. This shrub has not had
anything done to it. And I have allowed it to
just flow out into the yard and this section I have
problem with Bermuda grass. So I don’t even have to worry about getting that out of the planting beds. But the only thing that’s
ever been cutoff of this is in the winter time I might put it in a floral arrangement,
centerpiece for Christmas. But it’s just, this is it’s
beautiful time of the year. The new growth and the winter also puts some of the gold colors into it. One of the things that we think about in, when trying to keep our front symmetrical, sometimes things happen and one plant will even pass away. One will grow faster. But the plants that I have
chosen along the front of my home I knew that they were slow growing. They are easily pruned. That’s why I chose the American Boxwood. That’s why I chose the Laurels. So in choosing your plants
if we keep that in mind, if I have to replace one, I can’t say that I can find ’em always, but because they grow slowly then it’s easier to work in a new plant or you may have to go with something else. But you can usually work it out. – [Narrator] For inspiring garden tours, growing tips and garden projects visit our website at volunteergardener.org or on YouTube at the
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