Hi everyone, I’m Brie Arthur, also known as “The Plant Lady”! I’ve been gardening since my childhood days in Michigan, and now share practical advice from my home gardens in the Raleigh, NC area. I studied Landscape Design and Horticulture at Purdue University and have worked in the nursery industry for more two decades! My books, "The Foodscape Revolution" and "Gardening with Grains” are guides to help everyone grow what they love 💚 I hope these videos will inspire you to get outside and make the most of the ground you live on. Thanks for following my journey!
Thank you for this friendly guidance about sowing poppy seeds .🌱 Today my poppy seed pods are READY! I have viewed the WAIT video, and I have now Subscribed to your channel.
Need some edging to defend the bed against the Bermuda. Focus on drought resistant salvia, coreopsis, goldenrod, some edging day lilies, sedum, and the verbena looks good. Put some Joe pye in the middle for texture and more agastachie. Just need to keep the faith but really need some steel edging or brick or bottles ti keep the Bermuda away. A little spot sprayed roundup will help but get the non persistent mix and use some cardboard protection from drift. My poppies, nigella, and daffodils open my summer native borders in the spring thanks to you!!
I love your long sweeping island beds. I may have some one day when there isn't a need for ballfields and badminton courts in the middle of my yard, lol. I know you have expertise in this question. What are some sasanqua varieties I could look for to use as a future 12-15' faster growing screen? Thank you.😊❤
Ohhh you know I love camellias. Autumn sprit and autumn moon are top of my list. Purple haze is an awesome new one. Camellia forest has a great selection. There are so many great varieties!
@@BrieThePlantLady I love camellias too, currently I have 16. I love my Autumn Moon. Are there any sasanquas that get big, like around 15' and are pretty vigorous? Thanks from one camellia lover to another. 😉
Do you winterize a lot of plants in your greenhouse? or just specific varieties? I've always been curious how I could get next year's garden going earlier than I usually do ...(Eg. greenhouse, cold frame etc.)
The greenhouse was JUST built so no, because I’ve but had it long enough to try. There are big disadvantages to trying to get started too early so I discourage that. Garden with the reality of the outside seasons- tomatoes do not need to be started 3 months early. I do plan to try to overwinter some Tropicana in container that I usually winter in the crawl space with grid lights. But my greenhouse does not have a heater so it may not be warm enough. The greenhouse is for education and entertainment, not plant production so I do not plan on doing any major growing in it.
Good morning, Brie! Yeah that rain didn’t last long at all. I noticed a few things that needed some water yesterday. But we had a storm come through with some rain last night. Happy growing! 😅
Well done, Brie! This is where you SHINE, girl! It’s not about “gardening for pretty”, it’s about being a good steward of our lil piece of land. I’m lucky over on my side of town. The downpours result in standing water that always disappears in well under an hour. I’ve got a downward slope to the front ditch by the road (aka, Ephemeral Toad & Frog Breeding Pool) and a downward slope in the backyard that empties into a seasonal small creek in a buffer zone. I’m stunned at the FLOW you have from that water! Ouch, the erosion of all that good topsoil! Keep teaching 👍🏻
I wouldn't feel bad about your beds or think you need to import "natives" from some other region of the nation. Sure, the ground has been sorely abused in the past, but it's on the path to recovery and the plants you've put in there are doing their job. Next year, the beds will look even better after a winter of everything working to improve things. From my own travels down this path, one thing I've noticed in all the "nice" native gardens I've seen, is that the selection of plants is limited and the drifts are large. This gives them a sense of formality that I think most people naturally gravitate towards, while also being "wild". It's more of a storybook 'wild' than real 'wild', but that's okay because it's still getting the job done. Too many plants of different species....well, it can look weedy in a small bed. I've seen folks get around that by surrounding the bed with short hedges that outline things and bring in that "formal" look, but it's still a tough balance between the overall square footage and the number of species. I made up three beds in the last year, all of which are pretty small. While I wanted to go nuts with planting everything I could envision, I opted for a more long-term plan that allowed me to keep things looking tidy and see how different plants would grow. So, one bed up at the road where everyone can see... got two Panicum virgatum 'Cheyenne Sky' to help dress up a sign post. The rest of it is just leaf mulch and the stone border to contain the mulch. It looks like a bed that's being tended. The leaf mulch went on very thick so there's been zero weeding needed in the 9 months since I made the bed. And while I watched it to see how the Panicum performed over the summer, I prepped some Asclepias tuberosa to go in there as well. I always thought the bright orange blooms would be nice, but my main goal is low-growing plants that don't block visibility on the road. So, two different plants in a very large, empty bed.... and it looks fine. It doesn't look weedy or unkempt or "natural" The second and third beds are more mulch, though this time I was given a slew of chipped crepe myrtle - the only thing that nasty tree is good for. So I brightened up those two spots and planted one with Carex pensylvanica and the other with Chrysogonum virginiana. Both are new to me and I was unsure how they'd take to the beds, but the slow and steady approach has given me time to really learn about them without feeling overwhelmed. Beds of bare mulch look good, imo. Better than grass, obviously, and the mulch is helping to fix the soil that's been hurt so much over the past decades. It might take me awhile to get filled up with more plants, but I'm focusing on the 'formal' look as much as possible, trying to keep things as neat and clean and tidy as possible. To get blooms throughout the growing season, I'm focusing on one plant for each time of year rather than trying o have a few things blooming all the time. I hope this'll create a sense of continuity throughout the landscape even if it means I can't have as many plants as I'd prefer. On the upside, I have really enjoyed learning about growing natives in pots on the front porch, so maybe I'll have to grow more potted plants!
I’m not complaining because I am very happy with the rain but my chapel hill grit is all washed into the beds. I will say the carex Appalachia loves the CH grit. Next week I’m installing a drain and heavier gravel soon after. fall projects coming soon 😊
Your cat is hilarious. I hate bermuda but love centipede. At least centipede creeps mostly above ground. Are you able to eradicate bermuda when it gets in the beds like this? I just keep pulling it out and spraying it. Your laboring looks great! Sidewalk bed is much cleaner and nicer looking .😊
I'm curious if the fire ants go into areas with deep mulch? I live in Florida and I don't have a single fire ant hill in my yard, despite having them all around the neighborhood. I'm wondering if this is because my entire yard is heavily mulched with no grassy areas. Any thoughts...?
I’m so relieved that it isn’t “my garden” causing the neighborhood to flood. I knew it wasn’t but I made the necessary changes to ensure that water can flow.
Donna struck Charleston years before Hugo. Hurricanes are nasty and do damage much further inland than people expect. Hope your parents didn’t have major problems.
Wow! That’s a massive amount of rain! We got 3/12 inches from Debby. Love the gravel solution. I need to invest in more for around our chook run. Continued blessings.
Very helpful. We have a water/erosion issue from a hill. I've been putting down river stones, for several years to make a dry creek bed, to slow down and divert the water. It's helped but a continual problem.
Hey Brie, I do a lot of native gardening in KY. I too didn’t like the messiness, so I learned that if I planted 60% native grasses in sun (especially little bluestem) and many different sedges in part sun to shade, all the gardens looked much more organized and looked much better in dry spells. Then I just edit the remaining 30-40% with flowering native perennials. The ones that do better, I plant more. The ones that don’t, I remove. And I have learned that a lot of full sun natives don’t mind a part sun area. But the full sun grasses flop more in part sun rather than dry soil with full sun, which they love. Just keep editing and it’ll come together like all of your other gardens.
Brie, Here is a link for Chihuly at Cheekwood 2020 in Nashville. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-J3g21KzOP3M.html (The last minute of the video is the best). We got there around 5:00pm on a Friday so we could see the outside, then the inside, and then hang out late to see the outside at night. And if you are ever in St. Pete, FL there is a permanent exhbit there. I love Asheville and the Biltmore but do not get there often enough from Memphis. Love all of your plant videos (especially propogating) and seeing you on Growing a Greener World with Joe Lamp'l. Keep making more videos. Thanks!
Remember a man made line on a map isn't recognized by any wildlife so why stress. Plant things that grow well with little care that are behaved and absolutely help wildlife. For example, I like sabals 2 are native to NC but many others are near natives and will perform great (such as Sabal x brazoria could be considered a half native because its a rare natural hybrid of the two from TX) and the pollinators and birds love them. The same could be said for Agaves and even your verbena, I also have some and like it.
I’m avoiding agave because I don’t like prickly things that can hurt you when you aren’t paying attention (from experience) I should get more yucca. Sabals love the back gardens but I can’t keto these front beds wet enough for palms. I just can’t get excited about a full sun native garden, and I’m actively trying. The effort doesn’t seem worthwhile. These borders would be incredible with seasonal annuals as the ground plane instead of perennials.
Those native beds are tough to design. I think they look best when they’re a whole field in bloom. It’d look great if it was all Rudbeckia. Maybe, a Blue Ice Arizona Cypress or Carolina Sapphire to anchor it?
Those cypresses often die here from the high water table. Juniperus virginiana are better suited. Obviously I have a lot of work ahead, that I’m not particularly looking forward to. I can’t help it- the native plant palette does not excite me.
Thank you so much, I am so tired of those Chinese tripods that are useless, they only work half a summer season and then just throw them away, Tractor supply is charging $75.00 just for one.
So helpful to see others' experiences with natives in the southeast -- it can be a struggle! I will say that my rattlesnake master usually stays upright after year 1 so I assume it just needs a stronger root system and base to really support its weight. You might also like nodding onion since you mentioned liking the smaller rudbeckias -- it stays fairly compact and neat looking all summer long. And I love your idea of adding a longleaf to that front bed. A little bit of shade always keeps my coneflowers and things a little smaller and less floppy. I really think everything will look good next year (of course I'm a gardener so I always think that :)
i think you should admit defeat with the bermuda. i don't believe anyone is a persistent enough weeder to win hand weeding against bermuda. i would pull the plants you want out then put down 3 layers of card board over the Bermuda with mulch to hide the cardboard and leave it for A FULL YEAR. you might have replace the cardboard if your soil is good and breaks down the cardboard too quickly. i am not much of a carex fan either, it looks weedy. i believe it is hard to make native gardens look lovely without really clean edges and forced structure (pruning). in my garden, i do it with paver edges, pruned yaupon hollies in globe shapes. i contrast the globe structure with tall grass clumps (pink mulhy and little bluestem). my ground cover is frog fruit. it looks good when i keep it cut like asian jasmine. it looks horrendously weedy and unkept if i let it go willy nilly all over the place. it still blooms and has bees all over it despite being kept inbounds. i water my native gardens just as much as any other garden right now because it is fairly new and on a slope. i quit growing agastache because it only dies in my yard. y garden (you tuber) has a stunning hell strip that is mostly native garden. She has to work at it too.
I appreciated your honesty in this video! I'm also in Wake County. When we had our super hot, dry spell earlier this summer, the only plants that seemed to do well were the Texas, Gulf coast, and South African species. Of course, now that we've been getting all this rain, who knows what they will look like in a couple of weeks. I, too, have contemplated putting 'full sun' natives in part sun to see if they will do better that way. This has been a tough year for gardening!
Hello how are you? I started watching your videos and I really like it, I'm from Portugal and I'd like to sow this beautiful papaver flower, can you tell me what you add as fertilizer and to prevent pests?
I don’t fertilize much- I focus on adding organic matter to the soil. I don’t have any gardening experience in Portugal (though I hope to spend more time there sooner than later) but compost is always a good idea. Too much fertilizer will make the plants stretch so use one with NPK values under 10.
We have Silphium and Rudbeckia growing next to Phlox and it's interesting to see the different pollinators they each attract. Butterflies and hummingbird moths are all over the Phlox, but native bees of different species are monopolizing the Rudbeckia and Silphium. It's fun to watch them all though.
