What's up, gardeners? Devin is back. I want to do a quick planting demo of one of my favorite shrubs in the garden
the Oakleaf hydrangea, hydrangea quercifolia. It's beloved for this beautiful foliage that looks like the leaves on your oak trees
And like our deciduous trees, the foliage of our Oakleaf hydrangeas will also change color in the autumn
And that is just an outstanding benefit of any plant that you have
If you can get that multi-season interest from a plant, that means there's a good chance it is worthy of space in your garden
And oak leaf hydrangea, I have tons planted in my garden. So I wanted to show you guys how to get them in the ground, how to get them started so that you can have the most successful hydrangea quercifolia possible
Now today I'll be working with Ruby Slippers, one of my favorites, as well as Jetstream Hydrangea
Those are two of my favorite oak leaf hydrangeas. But first things first, oak leaf hydrangea, they are native to North America, particularly to the northeast, the forested areas around the northeast
And when you hear the word native, it should ring a couple bells
It's important to have natives growing in your garden for a few reasons. Number one, they naturally will attract pollinators that are also native to the area, which is something that's awesome
And the flowers on your oak leaf hydrangea will definitely do that. But the other thing is that when your plant is native to your region, then it's naturally predispositioned to do well
They are used to the soil conditions. They're used to the climate. So planting natives in the garden is always an awesome thing to do
Okay, so first things first, I dug a nice hole. Now, I dug a hole that when you plant it in here, I got sweaty before I started the film
So I didn have to be so sweaty on camera So you can see it a nice deep hole that fits all the soil of your plant perfectly well Now you notice here in eastern Pennsylvania I working with some pretty heavy
clay soils and the thing about shrubs, I'm a big advocate when you're planting shrubs in trees
do not amend your soil. Why? Because there's something called the bathtub effect. When you
plant your shrubs and your trees and you amend that soil and you go and water those water that
area well what can often happen is that the roots of your plant whatever they may be they may just
decide to stay just kind of confined in that amended rich soil rather than spreading their
roots into the ground beneath so I'm a big advocate when you're planting your shrubs and
your trees, in your garden, don't worry about amending your soil at all. Maybe it's going to
take a little bit longer to kind of like perk up in the garden, but in time they will definitely
outperform those that were grown in sort of amended soil. So here I have a nice hole in my
clayish soil and I'm in a rather shady sunny location. Oakleaf hydrangeas being native to
forested woodland areas, they're going to do great in the full sun, but they're also going to do great
in part sun part shade areas as well. So here I have kind of a part sun part shade location
and this is going to be the absolute, it's going to be an awesome area for this to be growing and
it's also kind of like a rock garden so it has this real kind of natural energy which is beautiful
and I'm really stoked to plant this whole rock garden out with a bunch of awesome native shrubs
So stay tuned and you'll be seeing more and more of this area getting filled out. Okay so the first
So the first thing we do we going to just pop it out You can see the roots nice and strong That what we want to see You want to see these roots around and like all of our plants we always want to break up the roots
just like this because we want to encourage our roots to grow. We don't want them to kind of stay
in the shape of that container. We want them to grow into the soil beneath. So we break them up
just like this, and now it's ready to put into the ground
Now we want this original soil line to be flush with the new soil in the ground
So it looks like I dug my hole a little bit deeper than I needed to, so I'm gonna backfill
a little bit initially. All right, let's see how that looks. Let's see, it's still a little bit low
And that looks just about right. Now we're just going to backfill with more of that soil that we dug out because remember
we want to introduce our plant to the soil it's going to be growing in
We don't want to introduce it to something that is not, you know, the soil that it's
going to be living in for the next 30, 50 years. All right, at this point, let's go ahead and water our shrub. Now because this Rottvarden is far
far away from my home, far away from the nearest hose, I will be bringing this bucket out and watering my shrub
for the first summertime only if I not getting rain once a week Otherwise I just going to let Mother Nature do her thing and keep my plant well watered By the second season I probably won even come out here at all to water this plant
because here in eastern Pennsylvania, we get rain about once a week. So if you're not getting that inch of rain a week
then you will need to give your plant additional irrigation. But I'm going to be just fine as well
When it rains, the water funnels this way. So smart gardening is using the land, using the natural flow of rain in your garden and in your surroundings to your advantage
And that's exactly what I'm doing here. I'm going to plant this area up with lots of stuff because rain naturally fills this area and it's going to irrigate for me, saving me time and saving, well, just saving me time more than anything
So upon this initial watering I'm going to give it that nice water, I'm going to let
all that soak in, and then I'm going to do it again
Alright and then the final thing that I'll do is I always label my plants so that I know
exactly what they are and when I planted them so I can track their progress, see how they're
doing. Just like that
Alright gardeners I hope you enjoyed this video. If you did make sure you click
a like, think about subscribing, click that little bell for notifications because
I do post videos every single week. So stay tuned because I will have a lot more
plan content on the horizon ciao