Gabe and Rebecca discuss how to start planning your garden layout and they go deep on what, exactly, is a perennial.
Gabe and Rebecca discuss how to start planning your garden layout and they go deep on what, exactly, is a perennial.
Welcome to the first ever episode of leafing out a podcast about gardening. I'm Rebecca. And I'm Gabe. And we are not at all experts. We are amateur gardeners. And we just really like to learn about and talk about gardening. So much so that our friends were like, Guys, you should really start a podcast about gardening, aka stop lecturing us about what we should do in our own gardens. So here we are.
Gabe Long:Today, we're going to be talking about garden layout beginning at the beginning, and perennials.
Rebecca:So we thought we would provide sort of a general framework for how to think about creating a garden where there isn't one.
Gabe Long:Garden layout. This is not you know, like home and garden horticulture. I think when we talk about garden layout we're talking about you moved into a house and it has a lawn and you're like, how do I start? Or you maybe you have a patio and you're like, I want to do some plants and pots just like if you're a beginner the way we were beginners A few years ago, we're pretty much still beginner, what's the first step? How do you do it,
Rebecca:you really want to follow the rationale of thinking first about how you want to use the space? Do you want to have your garden be a respite from the outside world where you can find solace and read a book. And so maybe you want a hammock? Or do you want to throw big barbecues every weekend and have your kids have their friends over and have room for like 12 people to eat, what's your lifestyle, and sort of the layout can follow that. So the first step that you want to take is looking at your hardscaping, you kind of want to go big to small. And the biggest elements that you're going to deal with is what's already there, or what you want to add in terms of permanent things like a patio, any paths that might be there, including like your sidewalks somewhat borders, your property hardscaping could also mean the foundation of your house, if you might be looking to put a perennial border in front of the foundation. So should we talk about how what we did?
Gabe Long:I think so yeah, we moved into this house that has a roughly 40 by 40 foot backyard, it was all gravel, or I should say it was mostly mud and some gravel. It was like a gravel, mud pit. Yeah, you know, in our spacious,
Rebecca:so we thought we want to make this whole thing green space, let's pull out all the gravel and make a patio.
Gabe Long:And we wanted the feeling of sort of an oasis. Being in a city, you know, like something that felt like really, you walk into it. And it's kind of this magical garden that where you're enclosed in greenery. So what that led us to was a patio with a fire pit board or gardens around all the fence so that you in a few years, when things are a little taller, you won't really see the fence, you'll just be surrounded by plants, a few vegetable beds because I wanted to grow vegetables. And then sort of, we call it a lawn. It's not a traditional lawn, but it's like a flat green space where you can kind of, you know, we could run around with the kids. But those were sort of like, I would say that the big elements that we were that we worked out and then everything else was sort of like okay, well, when we have that there, let's start a little bit of time figure out what plants go where,
Rebecca:right. And this is what we mean when you go big to small. Figure out your big stuff first, starting with what do I want to do in the space? How do I want to feel? And then you do all your hardscaping stuff. And once you kind of have a plan of what you know where the patio goes where your grill goes, if you're going to grill in your space. paths, if you have a compost bin, where are you putting all that stuff? Where does your hose setup go? Do you want to have a bench setup for potting plants? All of those things, then you start figuring out okay, where do I where am I putting my big shrubs, what big shrubs go where how much sun versus shade, you know, start selecting the big plants
Gabe Long:just working big to small so the biggest stuff being like a patio. Then next, a large shrub or tree than you know a smaller shrub just kind of working your way down moving from things that are extremely difficult to move to things that are very easy to move.
Rebecca:Right right. So for us it was putting in a pretty fast growing shrub called ninebark. And we have one that's that's called d A bolo. ninebark that it has really dark purple leaves, it's beautiful and it's going to grow, I think 10 feet tall within six years or something where we live. So we put that in the ground. We put a Rhododendron back in the back of the garden in the shade, and kind of worked our way out from there saying okay, what might look good next to these things and started shaping from there, what the beds would look like. And once some of those were in then we started looking at Okay, smaller perennials, you know, what do we love? What do we want to plant where? What's parts on what's full shade? How much how much moisture do we get and where and this is where you start? to really have fun because you start to find out the tiny little details of the microclimates that exist within your garden, even if it is like ours, just kind of the back parking lot area of a house, you know, we've learned, okay, this area's a lot more moist, because it gets a drip line from the garage that it faces. So firms grow really happily over there. And this area gets like a little more sun and heat than we thought it did. So some things are really happy there that we didn't think would be happy. That's when you start getting into the like, painting with colors of flowers and matching things and using contrast and all of that fun stuff that you kind of think of as being what gardening will be like, it kind of has taken us a few steps to get to that really fun, creative point. But it's so worth it to do it in this order. So that you kind of establish things in line with your vision,
Gabe Long:and you're not having to move trees. It's a pain. Don't move a tree. It's so rough, Gabe did it. I did it once. You can do it. I don't want to I don't you know, I think that it's important to sort of like, be encouraging or whatever. But I think that like, Yeah, but another thought that came to mind, just as a way of sort of conceptualizing it as maybe thinking about it in terms of like, what are your anchor plants, you wouldn't plant like a whole bunch of two foot tall plants, and then be like, where does the 10 foot tall plant fit amongst these, of course, it makes sense to work the other way where you're like, Okay, this, you know, we have a really beautiful witchhazel that sort of anchors one corner of our garden. So we thought for a long time about like, what, okay, we definitely want a plant there that is going to, when you're sitting by the fire, obscure your view of this alley that's between our house and the next house, kind of make you feel enclosed. So we went through making a bunch of lists of like, what would grow there, what you know, would look pretty what would be really, you know, bushy, so that it wouldn't just be like a tree that sort of is up and over the fence. But actually something that would have leaves from almost ground level up to 10 feet tall, and settled on the witchhazel, which I think was a which is a great choice, and then built that whole corner around that witchhazel. Okay, we've got the big one. Now, what little ones we want put in there. Oh, that one didn't do too well, let's move that over here. Maybe it'll be happier over there. Let's try this, that color would be fun. Once you get down into those, you know, lavender or Sage are those other like sub shrubs, some people call them, those are so easy to move that you like you're saying you can just kind of play with them a little bit and kind of move them around and have a little more fun. Less thinking more gardening. So what are what are our takeaways? All right, big, big to small. Don't move trees. Yeah, and I guess the other I'll do a little devil's advocate as our as our finisher here. I will say that, like the point of gardening is to have fun. So you know, it should be a fun process. It doesn't have to be a perfect process. It can be something where there are mistakes, you can you can move a tree, you can cut down a tree, you know, do it in a way that is fun. Just kind of imagine there's a balance between just like having fun and being at the garden center and being like, Oh, this plant looks great. I'm gonna buy it. And the frustration of not having your plant thrive. I do love an impulse buy though. You got to do some
Rebecca:I love it. I definitely have come home with so many. Here's these three, three, here's three of this plant that I have nowhere to put it but we'll figure it out. So cool. And that's, you know, you can't take the joy out of that.
Gabe Long:Yeah, yeah, keep your impulse buys below five feet mushy. Now we're gonna move into a segment called stuff. I googled. That's right, my favorite segment, give what is this segment? Why are we doing this? That is a fair question. If you made it here, you have access to the internet and YouTube and Google things. But what we want to do was take a topic that we spent a fair amount of time googling fair amount of time researching, and give you the sparknotes the key things that are helpful to know about a certain topic.
Rebecca:So today we're going to talk about the word perennial. You hear it all the time in gardening. What does it actually mean scientifically? What does it mean in common usage gave what is a perennial,
Gabe Long:the scientific definition of a perennial is any plant that lives for more than two years.
Rebecca:Okay, so that's interesting. I totally didn't understand it. That way. I usually think about perennials versus annuals, you know, something that lives versus something that's just gonna last this summer. But you're saying that even if a plant lasts through one winter and comes back the next summer, it's not necessarily a perennial?
Gabe Long:That is right. So we're talking about what is a perennial, but that really requires us to define the three broad lifecycle categories of plants. Which are annuals, biennials, and perennials. So animals grow flower, create seed and die all in one year. biennials grow roots stems and leaves in their first year and then grow flowers and seeds and die in their second year. And perennials come back for more than two years. So you can have a short lived perennial like Columbine that might only survive for three years. Or scientifically speaking, the red oak that we have in our backyard is a perennial, and that can live for 400 years.
Rebecca:Okay, so I guess that brings us to the question of like common usage, because if I go to the perennial section of the garden center, if I go to Lowe's, usually there's like annuals over here and perennials over here. They're not selling oak trees in the perennial section, right,
Gabe Long:right. If you go to Lowe's, I don't know that they sell oak trees, but certainly they would be selling peach trees, and those would be in you know, the tree section, the rhododendrons would be in the shrub section. The common usage definition is the important definition. If you're getting started gardening, you want to understand what the perennial section is, you want to understand what somebody is talking about when they say they planted a perennial border garden. They're saying that the flowers, grasses and ferns and other non woody plants that they planted are perennial, which, like we just said, means that they come back every year. So given that definition, what are some of your favorite perennials in our garden?
Rebecca:Oh, my gosh. So perennials and our garden right now. I'm sure there's a million that come in the spring that I've already kind of forgotten about. This is the fun to me as of gardening, as I'm always like, Oh, my gosh, it's June. It's suddenly there's that thing I forgot that was here. Yeah. That's kind of what the fun is a perennials in general, too.
Gabe Long:There's a magic to it.
Rebecca:Yeah, seeing things come back that you forgot that you planted and they died back to all the way to the ground. And then like, what is that poking up again?
Gabe Long:Oh, my gosh, that's that thing, just like a phoenix.
Rebecca:Yeah, Phoenix Rising from the mulch. Um, I think that my favorites right at this moment are definitely the akinesia that we have, which is very common here in New England. akinesia, also known as coneflower. The ones we have in the garden are purple, pink, they're dramatic. They kind of make nice cut flowers I love like chopping a few and bringing them inside native, their native eaters, the pollinators are going crazy for them. And then, alongside the coneflower, we have a lot of this thing called leatrice blazing star. So I'm using the scientific name followed by the common name here, but it's typically called blazing star, and it's about a flower for us. And it's like these big tall towers of sort of furry looking purple flowers. And I don't know, I really like plants that look like Muppets. And they these are these are an example of that. And they're also native and the pollinators love them and they look really great with coneflowers. They're nice contrast to each other both in sort of like the growing habit and the color, they just look good next to each other that you can like kind of mix them all together, and they look good. I'm also really loving this year Penstemon, which is commonly called beard tongue, we have pencil and growing up, I think, is a varietal called dark towers, the leaves and stock of the plant are like a dark purple and dark green color. And there's really cool and kind of witchy looking, and then the flowers are sort of a lighter purple and white, and it's just dramatic, and a little bit strange looking, which is something that I like, not everyone goes for that but we kind of have like a witchy woodland vibe going in our garden. So I'm really enjoying that and maybe an opportunity for illustration. If
Gabe Long:you went out into our garden in January, and you looked at our Penstemon, what would you see
Rebecca:nothing? Well, in January, you'd probably see some desiccated you know, remains of the foliage that died off once frost hit in fall, because we don't really do a lot of yard cleanup until well into spring. But it would look like there's a bunch of dead shit sitting there. There's nothing to see and why don't we do much yard cleanup until
Gabe Long:well into spring?
Rebecca:Well, I'll tell you why. Because there might be some insects that might be making their home in some of that desiccated stuff and also below the ground. Sometimes the dead foliage and plant matter that's sitting on the ground is kind of providing protection and insulation for insects that are I don't actually know if it's right to say that they're hibernating or they're pleading a portion of their
Gabe Long:lifecycle. Yeah, they're
Rebecca:like gestating, sort of as pupa or, you know, whatever. They're living in the ground underneath. And so you want to give them that portion. action by just leaving your leaf matter and plant matter until the following spring. And I'll
Gabe Long:take a you know, you're talking about sort of ecological reason a, you know, garden ecosystem reason to leave it. I'll give a stylistic reason I think, get older, the landscape designer talks about leaving up your grasses and your other perennials to give the snow something to land on. I think it's his phrase, which I always like,
Rebecca:yeah, there's something kind of weird and beautiful about seeing snowfall all over your dead remains of the garden. We have a friend who always is like, Oh, I love it New England and the winter, the fellow fee you think of that what I'm looking out over are like, totally messy winter garden that we didn't clean up. Because the other reason we don't clean it up is laziness. laziness,
Gabe Long:laziness. I will say though, that that to kind of gives you this real sense of the cyclical nature of the garden. And when, you know, if you went out and like, clean up all the leaves and did like, you know, superpro fall cleanup, you just wind up with like a blank. Nothing. To me, one of the things that I love so much about gardening is watching the uniqueness of every cycle unfold, and to see all of that plant matter that is tied back, you know where the pencil is, you know where the Acacia is, you know where the ferns are, because you see those totally dried out pieces of them. And to me, it's sort of like this reminder of like, the amazing fact that there's a rhizome or a tuber under there that's holding all this life that's going to kind of spring I guess, pun intended to life. It's pretty cool. So I guess that's perennials. Did we sum it up? I think we did it. I think we did perennials. That's our episode. Thanks for coming. So that's our first episode. We hope you've enjoyed leafing out and if you ever have a gardening question that you want us to weigh in on, you can send us an email or better yet, email us a voice memo at leafing out pod@gmail.com and please follow us on Instagram at leafing out pot