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Ep. 303 - Flower Garden Designs: Three-Season Flower Bed
•Episode 303
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Today, Rob talks briefly about black walnut trees inhibiting plant growth before discussing an article by Doreen G. Howard on Flower Garden Designs - where we discuss three seasons of color, garden ground rules, a three-season plant list, and tips for success for every season!
The season comes when, from her three-month's trance, The Earth awakens: already her deep heart Begins to stir, and send its life abroad. –Thomas Buchanan Read (1822–72)
Join Rob as he shares his many years of experience in the green industry as it pertains to today's article on Flower Garden Designs. Do you have a perennial garden? What’s your favorite perennial flower? Let us know in the group chat!
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Well, hello there, and welcome back to another episode of the All Around Growth Podcast, a show that provides insight and tools to build the life and homestead of your dreams. My name is Rob Kaiser, and I am your host. Today is Friday, March 11th, 2022. This is episode number 302 of the show. And as far as insight and tools to build the life and homestead of our dreams, we are going to talk about such things as cutworms, three-season flower beds, St. Patrick's Day recipes, and more. One of those things will strike my fancy as I make my way down the driveway here. Before we hit the road, wrap up the work week at the day job and prepare for another farmer's market tomorrow. So let's dive into some things. The question of the day is. Alright, real quick on this one before we look at some of these other topics. Uh there's a link in the show notes. Just click on the link for Friday, March 11th or March 11th in the show notes, and you'll find links to everything I've talked about, including the answer to this question. But if you've got a walnut tree several yards away, don't worry about it. Don't worry about the sticks and twigs. It's far enough away. You really just gotta worry about the root zone. Alright. So if you're wringing your hands about the jug loans that walnuts produce and how they're gonna impact your vegetables, then you you just got bigger fish to I mean, there's seriously bigger things to worry about, guys. Um grow more plants, do it differently. Full stop. Alright, we've got cutworms, cut worms in the garden. Um the best St. Patrick's Day recipes, how to grow lucky bamboo, and flower garden designs. A three-season flower bed. And how to eat in seven words. Let's look at three-season flower beds and touch on that a little bit and see where it takes us, okay? So for flower garden designs, we've got a three-season flower bed, which is going to give us a flower garden design for spring, summer, and fall color. All right. So if you want a design for flower gardens that are going to give you constant color, effortless impact, and easy adaptability in terms of size, what plants are being planted, things like that. This is an article for you. Okay, so I'm just gonna touch on some points in this and then to provide my own thoughts and opinions on this with years in the green industry and years of experience working with plants. So they are encouraging us to think about three seasons of color, and when I say they, this is an article by Doreen G. Howard, again, one that we'll be linked to in the show notes. But she encourages us to think about three seasons of color. So for spring color, we've got black lace, elderberry, roseanne, geraniums, foxtrot, tulips, king of hearts, dicentra, obsidian hookara, wine and roses wiggelia. Alright, all super durable plants for permaculture homestead type applications. Elderberry is always a solid. Black lace is an ornamental variety. It is uh almost like a cut leaf, like a like a like a dissectum leaf, and it is burgundy, looks very cool, flowers nice, flowers just like any other elderberry. I presume it fruits just as well, too, and the birds will enjoy it just as much as they do your other elderberries. So check that out for a little bit of diversity in your garden. It is a very cool plant. For summer color, we've got being recommended to us uh Connecticut Yankee Delphiniums. You know, they're they're gonna list off a bunch of different plants, but so we got delphiniums, rutebecchia, hellenium, salvia, asters, and heliopsis. Okay, so what the hell are those plants? Uh it's good to learn plants, and it's good to learn the Latin names of plants because oftentimes several different types of plants will share a common name. For example, snowball bush. That could be like an old mock orange, or it could be a viburnum, depending on what part of the country you're from. So what they are suggesting here in terms of summer color, note that these are all Delphinium, Rutabecia, Hellenium, Salvia, Asters, and Heliopsis are all summer flowering perennials. Alright? And some of these spring bloomers will still be pushing flower. Now for fall, they're encouraging us to think about monkshood and hardy aster. Not a whole lot going on in the fall, but uh a lot of these things will still be blooming throughout the seasons as we transition into seasons. So, some ground rules for their garden beds that the author has laid out is the bed is 16 feet long and six feet wide. The garden requires at least six hours of sunlight a day. The 13 plant varieties are massed in numbers of each for maximum color and instant curb appeal. The plan is customizable to your best advantage as a border or an island to create larger beds, double or triple the numbers of plants. If space or time is at a premium, cut the length of the bed to eight feet, reduce the number of plants accordingly, and forego the large black lace elderberry shrub. Alright, this is just encouraging you to take a basic design and adjust it and modify it to your needs. There are also a best three-season plants list. Perennials that bloom copiously year after year, small shrubs with color foliage and plants that do not spread aggressively. More details on all of the plants that were previously listed. And here and furthermore, in the article, there are some tips for success every season. Before you start digging, arrange the potted plants on the bed so that you can get a general idea of what the garden will look like. That's always a good idea. That was something that we used to do at a nursery I used to work at, and we would do little sketches for clients and then deliver them and place them. The customer would plant them themselves, and uh that way they would ensure that they wouldn't be planting the plants too close because oftentimes with young plants that is a mistake that's made because they're small, we don't factor in how much they're going to grow, and we end up packing in too much. So they also encouraged plant from the back of the bed to the front. Always good practice, otherwise, you're gonna paint yourself into a corner, and tips on fertilization, mulching, deadheading flowers, things like that, just basic plant care. This is a this is a very basic article with very basic tips, and that's great because I understand that not everybody is going to come at gardening for color, especially with flowers with the same level of understanding that I have. I mean, let's face it, I work full-time in a nursery and a tree farm. I see this material, especially in peak season, on a on a daily basis almost, and I am very familiar with it. And moreover, I'm not just familiar with it, but I've been working with it for many years. And um so articles like this from the old farmer's almanac are really a solid choice because it's a great gateway to learn more quickly, and you know, utilizing the old farmer's almanac as fodder for conversation really serves as a good springboard for more homestead and farmy type uh related content, which is the direction that I am moving with my life. I've I've made some big changes over the years. Big changes continue to be made, and this is one of a number of um small changes rather in terms of how the podcast is done. So I hope that you enjoy how we are doing this as opposed to pulling from the devotionals as we often did. There was a time and a place for that, and the time and place for that may come again as time goes on. We will see, but for now, I'm enjoying this, and I am curious if you are as well. So if you are, or you have any feedback in general about the show, or you're interested in communicating with myself, other audience members, and want to participate in something bigger than yourself and be a part of something that's growing just like you, join us over on Telegram. If you're not familiar with Telegram, it is a messaging app. In terms of look and appearance, it looks like a native chat messaging app on your phone, iMessenger or Android Messenger, what have you. Um but it has an improved functionality, file sharing groups, it's really just a good platform to use, and that is where this community is most active. So check us out there. You can find us through searching t.me slash all around growth in your internet browser. And if you've got telegram installed on your device, it will switch apps and bring you right there. And if you don't have it installed on your device, it will encourage you to do so if you would like. So definitely definitely consider doing that. T.me slash all around growth. And that is about it for today's show. Some final wrapping up concluding thoughts as I pull in here and get ready to park. That's a little bit later than usual. It's going on 8.30. And um I decided to do something for myself last night, which resulted in me coming in and arriving to work a little early. I took a little mental health break and uh checked out a band called Goose. Link to them in the show notes too. I went, I had planned to see this band in February of 2020 before everything got weird but opted out because it was a weeknight show in Cleveland. I had a lot of regrets about that. Because I wasn't sure what the future of live music was going to be. So this was not an opportunity to be missed, and last night was a rocking show. It they it was it was ridiculous. Uh I had a great time, met some great people, and decided that it was in my best interest to sleep in a little bit and uh not push myself this morning. So there you have it, guys. That is why the delivery of the show is a little bit later than usual, because I decided to do a little something good for myself, and I would encourage you to do the same, especially if you've been hustling and grinding on the various projects that you are working on. Take some time for yourself. Make sure you care about yourself because you're not caring for yourself.
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