Thanks for bringing us along on your thought process on developing a garden plan for such a challenging space. Looking forward to watching your progress.
Consider ferns: there are many native varieties that work in dry shade, and they provide a nice texture. Gaultheria procumbens is a good native, evergreen groundcover for shade that would give you winter interest, but would need regular moisture.
STUNNING!!! You have inspired me to be more playful. I do a lot of plop and plant of things I love but I have become a better planner for my backyard. Thank you for making me think before I act!
Jenny, you are such a planner! I do enjoy that about you. Great to see what you have learned as a Master Gardener being applied in your planning now. My heart always breaks for you in the past when deer have destroyed what you’ve taken such care in planting. Very excited to follow along with this project. Put on you mountain goat boots🤣
Love your plan! Rosa Carolina is native to Maryland and will tolerate shade. It's native to Missouri, too, and we see it growing happily in the woods along hiking trails. It might need drip irrigation or supplemental watering to get started but should be carefree after getting established. It's has thorns, too, so hopefully that would deter the deer.
That will be beautiful! I fight the deer constantly! They eat my carex this winter. They eat all the leaves on my hollies. I love gardening and won't give up! I love all the choices you've chosen.
Wonderful plan, Jenny. It'll look great. You know, you should ask help with all the digging up that needs done ... I'm local to you and I volunteer to help. ❤ Seriously. ❤
I've had good luck with Solomon's Seal in dry shade (which is also native, juglone tolerant and deer resistant). There are some nice variegated varieties. Also, what about a climbing hydrangea for the shady section of fence (also juglone tolerant and never bothered by deer in my yard)?
Hi Jenny , love ur idea of planting native plants in ur driveway garden. It will look beautiful and not too fussy to grow. Learn lots from ur videos and contents.
When you were saying all your "challenges" my first thought was 'artificials"😅. But you've come up with a very nice cohesive plan! Can't wait to see it play out😊.
I love your plan!! It will be such an eye catching area when its all put together 🤩. I would suggest Zephryn Drouhin climbing rose, thornless and can handle a bit of shade. Also for the filler spots have you thought about lambs ear? Deer don't like the fuzzy leaves and the color and texture would work well.
I think it sounds super fantastic, especially the verbena! Wondering if it grows in Houston bc I'd love to plant some here! This new project is going to be fun to watch, Jenny! BTW, your hair looks so so pretty! 💜💜
You are lucky that the deer will leave your roses alone. They eat them here in my garden. I think Carolina Jessamine might be a very good vine option to consider for your fence in the third section. It does well on slopes, will be fine with part shade, can handle some drought, grow about 20 feet, and deer and rabbits leave it alone. 😊. P.S. deer eat carex in my garden, too, but one grass I adore that the deer did leave alone, and that looks gorgeous spilling over a rock edge and waving in the breeze, is Nassella tenuissima, now known as stipa tenuissima, Mexican feather grass. Not sure if it’s hardy in your area, but I highly recommend it if it is. I had it lining my sloped driveway for years and I adored it. It will spill over . If I was able to work on a steep slope now, I would repeat it here because I miss it a lot. Oh, and it doesn’t spread…unfortunately in my opinion. 😀 it’s also a native American grass, though not in your area.
My grandmother had a calycanthus floridus in her yard and we called it by another of its names, sweet shrub. Both my grandmother and I loved it very much and it was quite large. We would cut sweet smelling bouquets from it. It’s one of many precious memories for me. Sadly, after her death, my ass of a father bulldozed it down because he didn’t want to mow around it. I would give a lot to have a volunteer from hers. I love that the birds have planted a hedge of them for you.
Jenny I have used my local Facebook marketplace buy nothing page to remove plantings that have spread too much like the day lilies, yarrow and vinca. People will come and dig up the plants that they want. Check to make sure that the root systems are out and add new soil. Some people ask for a small amount per plant but I usually just say for free. People want some of those plants and are not concerned about natives.
That is a challenging and large space. Thank you for sharing what you will be doing there. You have a fabulous house and lovely grounds. You've done so much to make the grounds beautiful. I'll be following along to see how it progresses through the summer.
I recently watched the Impatient Gardener and if you read the comments you will know many of the invasives from others. When you said you removed the vinca, I thought-you think you removed them and then you said it’s growing back😂. It’s on my list to remove along with mysterious ajuga. If you can keep ajuga contained it’s ok, bit I noticed it has the power to plow down everything including thick turf. The black walnut I would take out. The neighbor let one grow and I am forever trying to kill that weed tree. I could see a low growing conifer along drive mixed with a repeat shrub. I think I would choose low maintenance as we age it will not be an easy to maintain area on a slope. Yes, grasses would be nice also. Good luck getting all the roots, I’m still fighting vinca, oregano, spider wort, black walnut, morning glories, buckthorn, plantain hostas, Steppables (low growing sedum with yellow flowers) and yucca. We have a weed that forms a mat also and has surface running roots.
Sounds like a good plan. I'm also dealing with a dry shade steep slope, a wet shade area and deer and rabbits. Also in Maryland. I've used carex, ferns, astillbes, ajuga , flag iris, and cardinal flower in the wet areas. The deer have destroyed all my hostas and I'm going to replace with solomen's seal and brunnera. Still trying to figure out dry shade slope. A lot of black eyed susan have self seeded and they are a native to Maryland.
After taking out the vinca minor, I'd lay down cardboard. Then mulch over it. I'd cut holes in your cardboard for your juniper. Also have you researched brennera. It looks much like hosta, but has fuzzy leaves the deer don't like. They also don't like lamb"s ear, marigolds and allium. When I see deer in our yard, I scare them away and it's infrequent that they come back.
Tried the cardboard mulch solution, and it slid off the hill. I love all the plants you listed, but I'm hoping to find mostly native solutions for this hill.
Hi Jenny 🌺. Beaitiful idea for drive way the roses and clematis and the phlox and verbena also golden ragwort they are going to be amazing and you can plant weigela also lilac and butterfly bush . Have a wonderful day .🌺🌻🌺
I love blue junipers, that will be very eye-catching! I'm so glad I don't deal with deer in my garden. Just squirrels, bunnies and voles. Are you looking for pure natives or also nativars? I love growing the Monarda cultivars in my garden. They are so drought tolerant and low-maintenance and I leave the bloom stalks up for some winter interest. 😊
I have a couple Eastern Hemlock teees by my driveway as well, which has the adelgids. I plan to use insecticide that the roots take in, just for one season to save the trees. 😢
I have long given up on candytufts because of the deer, they love it here and demolish it. Might be a different for you. One suggestion I would make is maybe a few less plant types and more repetition of what you have, Carex is an excellent choice, I would use as much of that as I could and maybe forget the sedum and ice plant. Good luck
Deer here leave my candytuft alone, thankfully. Re: repetition, I really forced myself to do repetition already! Haha! It’s so against my nature to have long stretches of the same thing. Repeating the junipers, phlox, carex and verbena is already more repetition than I usually like. 😜
Great garden plan Jenny…it will be a treat to see it all come together…I also had that ditch Lily take over a large section of my garden but I manage to dig it all up 🙌 now it’s my dahlia patch…it’s hard work but I know you can do it!
That is a great way to plan! And the new garden will be beautiful! I just got golden ragwort from someone on HoCo Gardeners last year because my garden was missing any spring yellow. It made me so happy to see it come up this year. 🌼
Hi Jenny! You should contact Walters Garden in Zeeland MI they may have plugs and as a You Tuber they may send them out for you to trail in your area 🌼🐝
Good morning. What a wonderful plan to do in that area. I feel that in the end it will be a real stunner. For me I am always looking for native plants as I live on the West coast in BC. My front garden has lots of native plants and slowly I keep adding native plants. I too do alot of research to make sure it is what I like and want. On my south wall of my house it has a slight slope and for the last three to four years we have been trying to keep the grass however living in a rainforest every fall to early spring it reverts back to moss and dirt. So this year I took some wildflower seeds and white clover seeds and just threw it down. The clover is a ground cover and it brings in benefical insects. It also puts in nitrogen back into the soil and if you have pets that pee on the lawn it does not react to the acid in the pee. So I will let you know how that goes.
Maybe once you get the invasives cleaned out, you can lay some cardboard down to try to help smother any that may try to come back. We struggle with lots of weeds here too on our wooded plot and the carboard works pretty good for at least a few years and then the weeds do start creeping back in. But it might buy you some time to get the plants you want established and then when the weeds do start coming back, hopefully your new established plants won't give them much room to thrive. I feel your frustrations....we have several problem areas around here too and we also struggle with so much deer pressure. I have learned to let them win most battles, but I still have a few things that I'm not willing to give up on quite yet. Good luck and I will be excited to see how things work out for you.
I have a big native bed, part shade and part sun. There are very few deer resistant natives so you would wind up with just a few kinds of plants. They eat my Culver's Root that I love and also eat almost all of my native coneflower which I love.
Another sweet native is yellow Bellport. It isn't in my native bed it's up in the front flower garden. It is up and blooming already. I am going to watch this video again. I think you mentioned a couple I want to see if they are native and available where I live.
Thanks for sharing your journey! It sounds like a great plan and I cant wait to see your vision come to life. Have you been to Patuxant nursery down in Bowie? I feel like they arent quite as $$ as Homestead but their staff can help you with ideas too!
Good morning! So happy for this topic as I have very similar conditions as you. Are you concerned about deer eating your roses and phlox? They obliterate mine. (They eat the rose blossoms right off the vine and munch my creeping phlox to the ground.) Candytuft is a great idea, I need more of that for sure. I'm looking for sedges too. I hope you will share your sources! Can't wait to see it as you go!
@@HarmonyHillsHomeandGarden wonderful! They say it really depends on the herd. My herd doesn't touch skyp laurels but I seem to remember them eating yours. You never know!
I have the same problem with deer. We are actually in a path that they travel daily. I was wondering, do they not eat your "ditch" Lillie's? I actually like those (I'm in a Nashville suburb, zone 7b) but thought deer loved those. So I have never planted. Plus none of my neighbors have them.
I like your design repetition with Maryland native plants and the climbers! I started googling your list of must-haves and found: "Maryland Native Plants for Wildlife Habitat and Conservation Landscaping". Although the pdf talks about Chesapeake Bay Watershed, it is a good source for solutions you're looking for such as deer resistant native plants, dry meadow, and slope solutions. I'm sure you know that Maryland Extension and DNR are also trustworthy sources. Other plant considerations could be Ferns, Baptisia, Monarda, or Penstemon which are natives for your location. The BEST way I found for eliminating unwanted invasive plants and weeds is the No Dig/Cardboard/Mulch Method. It transformed our front garden that was riddled with Snow-on-the-Mountain (Bishop Weed), ribbon grass, and crabgrass to a nearly weed-free garden space, but you have to overlap and use THICK layers of wet cardboard (to shape it to your slope) and then top it with three inches of wood mulch. This method works because you are depriving the unwanted plants from sunshine. We forfeited a growing season to give this method time to work and it did work like a charm! If you can't wait, I think you could remove all traces of invasives where you want to plant the climbing rose and clematis and put the cardboard/mulch within 4"-6" of each plant giving them room for water and root growth.