Decorating the Portico 🇺🇸, Big Tree Installation & Planting Flowers! ❤️🌲🥰

Added: 2026-05-27

[00:00:00]Hey guys, how's it going? So today we have several fun things going on. First of all, you will notice a beautiful gator load of annuals, red, white, and blue. We are going to be dedicating the portico area and the two pots that are out here to the celebration of the 250th birthday of our country. I'm very excited for it. We've got some other decorations we're going to put out uh that I picked up, some pillows. We've got some bunting we're going to hang. I won't have it completely finished today.

[00:00:25]Maybe, maybe not. If my wreaths arrive today, we will have it finished today. I do have a couple of boxwood wreaths, which I swear I bought some at one point and I cannot find them, but I've got a couple of new ones on their way that I would like to put on the door with some ribbons and things like that. So, we may or may not get that portion of it done, but I will show you when we do get that done. Here's a look at some of our flowers right here. And there's one flat right up there. Our bunting is in this bag. When we are done with this, at the moment out in the dirtlands, we are having two large evergreens installed.

[00:00:55]I'm so excited about it. We also had a honeyloust tree relocated to a different area. I think Aaron captured most if not all of that process. So, we'll show you that and we'll kind of tour the area.

[00:01:06]And then also, I've been working over the last couple of nights at planting a nice little annual bed and then some more of our flowers out in the formal flower garden and I did capture that.

[00:01:15]So, we're going to walk through all of those spots. Let's take a look here at the area. We've got a couple of Quickfire Fab Hydrangea Standards in containers right here. We are going to have to tip this one because it was plugging up with water. This one always wants to plug up. So, we're gonna tip it and maybe try to fix whatever is going on with that. Hopefully, without having to remove everything from the container.

[00:01:35]Okay. And that's a mag pie.

[00:01:39]Really?

[00:01:42]Anything else?

[00:01:44]Oh, it's cuz Russell was in the flower.

[00:01:46]Russell, stay away from the mag pies so they don't get all feisty. Anyway, and then we've got our portico, which is my favorite it has ever been, I think, because we just recently replaced the benches with really comfortable furniture that matches the furniture we have by our kitchen entrance and also out on the brick patio area. I think they're absolutely beautiful and we love sitting out here.

[00:02:09]Hey, is that necessary? I see you up there stealing all of our cat food, creating a ruckus and obscene.

[00:02:17]goodness, we find ourselves out here in the evenings and out in the middle of the afternoon because this area uh gets morning sun and then it's pretty much shaded. Um so I've kind of stumbled upon a really good arrangement of plants here that I absolutely love the look of and they do really well. So we're going to be adding in just a few annuals in around what we've currently got going.

[00:02:37]So these are the dawn viburnums we planted as sticks this like late winter and then we got to enjoy their blooms and now look at them. So pretty. I do think I might trim them up just a little bit so we can see the boxwoods on both sides actually. Uh but I just want to pop in a few little red and white annuals. I don't have anything that's purple or bluish um that can handle shade. Uh so we'll just go with red and white here. I also have uh some stuff.

[00:03:05]So I've got these little blue and white vases. And okay, look away or don't look too close. These are faux hydrangeas.

[00:03:13]They look pretty good for being faux and I can't put I mean I could I could put cut flowers up here but then I'd have to change them every other day. They'd get hot in the sun in the morning and it would just be a mess. So I decided you know what we're going faux. I'm going to be putting some sand in these vases to make them one heavy and then two to help anchor our hydrangeas in. And then I'm thinking we're going to pop in like a few little flags. I think that'll be so cute. And one will be here and then we'll put one over there. I've also got some really pretty pillow covers.

[00:03:42]Look at those. And I'm hoping they're going to fit on some of my old couch pillows. I just stashed these away cuz they weren't too bad. Like a little dirty. But anyway, these covers don't Do these come off? Oh, yeah. There's a little zipper. But we can just cover right over the top of that with these.

[00:03:59]Seriously, with the business. Okay. And then I did find two cute pillows at Marshalls. These might go in the chairs near the kitchen. We'll see. If I had four, they'd look really cute right here. Look at that. Oh, so cute. And then I got some other really cute like little ornaments that I think we'll use inside. You know those like little branch trees that you can do like Easter eggs off of and such? I thought, what if we did a little branch on the kitchen island and we can hang these? Let me get these out. I think the kids would really enjoy hanging these and it would be a fun little spot. Oh, this don't have a these don't have a string. So, we're going to have to glue a string to them.

[00:04:38]Did they come with string? Aren't they cute? They're little felted um heart flags. They're so cute. So, we'll have to hot glue a little. This will take some work. So, we'll do that a different day, too. And then the other ornaments I got actually do have strings on them.

[00:04:54]So, there's a blue star, a red star, and a white star. So, hanging all of these along with some of these, I think that's going to be super sweet. I mean, you could even hang them off the viburnums, but I don't want to get too much because we're going to have a lot going on up here. I think for color, we want to keep it keep it classy, I guess. Not too much. Okay, before we do the planting, we'll look at the plants, but I want to do all of the stuff that requires clean hands first, but let's take a look real quick at what we've got. So, for our more sunny containers, I did bring up some white out Superbena. Those are so pretty. And these are going to bloom white, too. So, I might not major on white. I brought them up here just in case. I might just go red and kind of purplish blue in the bottom and let the hydrangeas be the white accent. The same thing on that side. Of course, I also brought some cobalt superbina. And this is a new variety of salvia that's coming out next year. This is the perfect application. Get it out here. The perfect application to use it right up here because, you know, I don't do red all that much in the garden, but when we're doing an Americana sort of vibe, I'm all about it. And I think having those with maybe the cobalt around them and let that be white. I think that would be really pretty. Also, I brought these up and maybe we'll work some of these in. These are a sea spray felicia.

[00:06:12]Blue Felicia daisy is the common name here. They grow 10 to 16 in tall. And I don't know, maybe pop in a few of those.

[00:06:18]And those are kind of light blue, so a little bit off theme, but they still are kind of bluish. Let's try it with one of these. Oh, these cobalts are just wild.

[00:06:27]Oh, I don't know. I don't know if we're going to use them in here. I think maybe just the cobalt and the salvia. I have plenty of places we can use these. But for the viburnum containers, we are going to use the Surfire Cascade Red Beonia, which these are nice and bright. They'll do the shade. And we will pair it along with the diamond frost euphoria. So, of course, these viburnum are not going to be blooming again this season, but I think this will be a really pretty like kind of delicate blend. and the Cascade Reds. We'll look at the tag to verify, but because these are fairly new. Were they new out this year or last year? I know I got some last year and I tried them out in hanging baskets and they did really well in the high tunnel, but I didn't have them out in the landscape anywhere. These are supposed to grow better than like the dragon wing, the red dragon wing beonas that are out and are used a lot in hanging baskets. So, I'm excited to see what they do and I think they'll be a nice bright pop and they'll go really well with our theme.

[00:07:23]and diamond frost. Even though the tag is labeled fold aart sun, they're incredibly versatile and they do really well for us in shadier locations. Of course, they stay on the smaller end of the size spectrum, which is 12 in rather than maybe growing 18 in if it was in more sun, but they're just such a beautiful kind of magical accent to things. Kind of bring that sparkle and almost firework appearance. All right, guys. So, pillow covers and vases with hydrangeas first and then we will move on to our planting. So, I went around our entire town this morning looking for wreaths. I didn't find wreaths anywhere.

[00:08:00]Such a bummer. Most of the time, if we're doing a project like this, I have to be really organized and I have to make sure I've got everything ordered.

[00:08:08]Look at how cute these are, though.

[00:08:10]They're sort of Americana without being Americana. That makes sense. Like, they go with the vibe without being a flag, you know? Which obviously I like the flag because I bought the two other pillows. But how do these open? Here we go.

[00:08:24]I'm wondering if the green will show through. Does it matter? Maybe not. These are 20 by 20 in.

[00:08:34]I have a feeling these pillows might be 18. Oh, no. Oh, we're fitting beautifully.

[00:08:42]I mean, look at that. They're so pretty. We need to relax a little bit, but Oh, I love that. That's super cute. Now I got to go up to the closet and get the other three. I only brought one down cuz I thought I don't want to go to the effort of carrying four pillows down here if it's not going to work. Be right back.

[00:09:00]Okay, got them.

[00:09:21]My shirt has a big bunch of holes in it world.

[00:10:55]Okay, I just got to show you a before shot because no wonder this pot always plugs up. The hole is so little. My pinky doesn't even fit in it. For a pot this big, that seems kind of unacceptable to me.

[00:11:17]Oh, nice.

[00:12:27]Oh my goodness, you guys. It's coming right together. We've got most of it done except for the bunting which we'll hang up there. But the pillow covers look so pretty and the little containers with the white hydrangeas and flags.

[00:12:40]That looks really cute.

[00:12:43]There's our shade mix right there or part shade I should say. It's not deep deep dark shade in this area. The sun of course just went behind a cloud so it looks a lot darker than it normally is.

[00:12:55]But uh the sun does come in here for the first like 2 to three hours of the day and then it's just bright for the rest of the day. Uh but never deep deep shade. I think these are going to do really well. So again, the Surefire Cascade Red Beonia and Diamond Frost Euphoria. I did four of each in each one of these containers, one on either side.

[00:13:13]And then flags out of the boxwood containers. Here's the other side looking well the same. And these turned out cute, too. I did end up using some of the white because I felt like it needed that pop down below. But we've got three of the sunshine red salvia, three of the superbina white out, and three of the superbina cobalt in both of these containers. And these are looking really healthy, really good. So, I'm hopeful that we get some nice blooms on them. They took forever to break dormcy.

[00:13:40]In fact, I came out here a couple of times thinking, are those dead? Like, did I buy two dead hydrant trees? I bought them when they were still sticks.

[00:13:47]They hadn't leafed out at all yet. So, uh, it was kind of one of those faith and planting sort of situations where I put that in knowing that it would carry forward to, you know, summer and into fall and all of that business. Uh, but it didn't really have much on it for spring or during spring, but we had beautiful haoras and those um pansies and ferns around them. I really enjoyed them. And you can see here, this one gets a little bit more sunshine than this one, but that one's still unfiltered and we're like mid to late afternoon at this point. I just love the look of this porch. It looks so cute.

[00:14:19]Now, we do have these same chairs over here. Oh, and a rag and a cup because why not? But I honestly don't know if it's worth putting pillows on these unless they had some real strong velcro on the back of them to hold them in place because the wind whips through that area really uh pretty fiercely and it just blows stuff everywhere. So, anyway, I don't know if I want to be fighting pillows blowing all over the place for the whole season. I also popped the flag pillows over here in these wicker chairs. It kind of worked out nicely because I've got tan colored cushions right here. And there's actually some tan in here. There's like tan creamy colored stars and creamy colored yarn that kind of match that a little bit better. And those just brought a little pop of color. Very fun.

[00:15:05]Also, like you saw, Paul drilled out the bottom of that container. Like that hole was so itty bitty. It was probably like that big of a drain hole for that huge of a container. There was nothing that we could tell that had like clogged it up at all. I could stick my finger and like move it around in the soil up in that container. It was just a too tiny of a hole for the amount of water that we were putting in it. And here comes Aaron with the ladder so we can hang the bunting. Any opportunity to use the new cart.

[00:15:30]>> Here's your delivery.

[00:15:32]>> Thank you.

[00:15:33]>> Here's your delivery.

[00:15:35]>> So we will.

[00:15:36]>> Okay. So Erin's got the ladder set up. I think that's plenty. Erin, I think I can reach.

[00:15:39]>> You want to give it a shot?

[00:15:40]>> Sure.

[00:15:41]>> We have one bigger one.

[00:15:42]>> Do we?

[00:15:42]>> You want to try it? Yeah. All right. So, we're just going to figure out how to hang our bunting and we'll get that part done.

[00:16:12]All right, guys. There it is. All done.

[00:16:14]Bunting has been hung. I used a little drill bit to make a pilot hole and then used those little cup hooks, you know, the little screws with the hooks on the end to hook up uh the the bunting up there. And I kind of did a little cleaning while I was up there. It needed it really bad. Actually, everywhere does around the top of the house. Just don't look very close. I love the containers.

[00:16:34]I love the whole setup. It looks so peaceful and pretty. There's that one. I tried really hard to get them to sit straight.

[00:16:42]And it's like no amount of trying to manipulate them. Like I can get them looking really good and then a breeze goes through and blows them out and blows all the pleats, like the folds out. So whatever. It looks It looks pretty. And it makes me happy that this is done in time for Memorial Day as well. So we'll have it up for Memorial Day through Fourth of July. And who knows, maybe we'll just we'll keep of course the red, white, and blue will stay in here all season long. Uh and I don't know about the bunting if we'll keep that up all season, but it sure does look festive. Now, we're just going to have to see how strong the containers are or if they're heavy enough to stay here during a wind. This one I know will be okay. It's that one. When the wind, you know, comes down the side of the house sometimes it can kind of come in here and we'll find, you know, maybe a cushion on the floor or something. I'm hoping though with the sand that they're heavy enough. Like they're they're heavy for me to move even with one finger. And while I don't normally use faux things, they look pretty good. And I'm glad we're not going to have to mess with them. They're just good to go now. I was also thinking maybe I could put some of that, you know, like plumbers's putty underneath the container, like between the container and the table. It won't hurt the surface of the table or the container, but might provide just a little bit more stability, I guess. I don't know if stability is the right word, but you know what I mean. Okay, they're all done installing the trees.

[00:17:56]So, we're going to go take a look at that next. And then out to the flower garden.

[00:18:19]Hey, hey, hey.

[00:18:38]Oh my goodness.

[00:18:40]So, these two right here, you guys, are brand new.

[00:18:44]Oh, they look so good. That Norway is so tall. Wow. You know, we initially bought that Norway spruce right there to replace the one that's by the dumpster that we thought was going to die, and then all of a sudden, it just pushed a bunch of brand new growth. So, we're going to give it some time and let it sit there and hopefully it it comes out of whatever funk it was in. So, we just thought, well, we'll use that Norway somewhere else uh right now. And it's just absolutely stunning. My goodness.

[00:19:11]As well as the blue spruce. So, in order to get these here, we had a shade master honeyloust right here. And we were kind of kicking ourselves for planting it there because we really want a thick evergreen border along the edge and then you know more deciduous things as you go further in and then you know of course on this side as well. So we had that moved. We'll go look at that spot here in a minute. And also in order to get back in there we had to dig out the aronia which remember I planted like a drift of them through here. So there's three there, two here. So what I'll do is I'll go back in with those um as soon as we get this area kind of leveled out, cleared out. You can see they did a really deep watering job on these trees.

[00:19:50]So anyway, I could not be more thrilled with them. They just fit in absolutely beautifully. And look at that row. It's such a beautiful mix of things. Got the Norway, the Colorado blue, there's an Austrian pine, there's a diodora cedar, another blue spruce. Uh down from there, we'll just keep walking just a minute. I guess there's some beautiful arboritas.

[00:20:14]Those are the spring groves right there.

[00:20:16]Three of those with a I think this is a perfect purple or a something like that crab apple. And then we've got some Hollywood junipers, more another pine, another uh spruce. There's a heritage birch in there. So, it's really turning into that beautiful mixed border that we were hoping for. Oh my goodness. And the really fun part about this too, I noticed when you're over there kind of driving down our lane initially, you can see this one in particular like towering above everything else.

[00:20:43]So pretty. And we were just getting close to the window where we couldn't move them. So it's quite perfect. We've been told that, you know, moving pine trees in the heat is not as bad. Like they don't shock as bad as spruces do.

[00:20:59]So they try to do spruces in the spring, you know, before it gets into the 90s at 100 degree temperatures sustained.

[00:21:04]Ideally, they're moving them in the winter time. And we have had them installed in the winter time. Um I think we had one installed the first week of January. Maybe that was last year.

[00:21:13]because it the weather was fine, the ground was hard enough, like it wasn't super soft that they were able to get their equipment in and get that installed. So anyway, we were just thrilled that we hit the window just in time to get these in. So, let's go look at where the shade master honeylas ended up because it changed the area where it's at for the better. Where the mop top butterfly bush little duo out here is looking even better today than it did yesterday. There's a whole bunch of little butterflies around it. So cute.

[00:21:43]Oh jeez. Here. Here they come.

[00:21:51]Oh, you guys, look at one of my baptisia that we just planted. It got flattened in one of our windstorms and there's really nothing I can really do about it. I can't tip it. The root ball's straight. So, I just have to let it be leaning to for this season, I guess.

[00:22:08]Okay.

[00:22:11]Look at the burm on the left hand side of the lane as we approach.

[00:22:26]Okay, I'm starting just kind of a little bit a ways back so that you can get perspective of our lane where we placed the stone and planted some perennials here. The new um pathway and this is perennial rye. But there's the shade master.

[00:22:42]Isn't that beautiful right there?

[00:22:46]Oh my goodness. And that can just go to town and create shade all over around here. It's perfect. And the reason I don't know if I said this already, the reason we were kicking ourselves that we planted it over there looked great. But it gets so wide, these trees do that there's no way we could have planted any kind of evergreens behind it against the fence. It was too close. So, we were just kind of leaning on that to be our kind of block and our part of the screen and then you lose that during the winter time, you know, and you when trees mature and get bigger, they get thick enough to where they do create some kind of a block, but it's not the same as an evergreen. So, we were like, "Oh, man."

[00:23:21]So, it worked out perfectly because they were coming this way with the the digger. And so, they got this one moved.

[00:23:26]This one can live on beautifully right here, do its thing. I just love it. Oh my goodness. And now that we've got some really good anchor pieces in this area, we can continue on with our planting.

[00:23:38]You know, we planted this diodor cedar this year. The Norway spruce was installed. Oh, I can't remember. Maybe we can put a date on that like way early this season. Was it spring or fall?

[00:23:52]Can't remember. It's one of the newer ones though. And then we planted a Russian hawthorne multi trunk on that side and our zyico twist here. And this is a sequoia that doesn't get very big.

[00:24:00]It's like 8 feet tall. 8 ft or 10 ft tall, maybe 8 ft wide. So, now we need to get in here with some black light celerberries. Wouldn't that be gorgeous?

[00:24:07]Have some great big beautiful structure in here with that really deep color. And then I need to put some kind of like bright blue. I need a bright blue evergreen in here as well. Oh, I just noticed the uh is it the Donald Wyman is a crab apple, right?

[00:24:24]What is this kind of um lilac? Does it share the same name? I can't remember, but it's a really late blooming lilac.

[00:24:32]Look at how gorgeous that is. Look at that.

[00:24:37]Oh, very much so. Recommend this one. I love the size of the leaves. And the leaves are different than normal lilac leaves. They don't look quite the same.

[00:24:46]It has the fragrance. Oh, and there's the ladybug.

[00:24:51]I don't see any pests on here. No aphids. Boy, that's a stunner right there. Okay, so now let's take a look at the projects I got done over the last couple of nights.

[00:26:09]Heat. Heat.

[00:27:16]Okay, we're coming up on the first project.

[00:27:20]Oh my goodness, look at this area.

[00:27:24]So, I did this one last night and I had such a good time. I used the senorita Rosalita cleomi. I don't know if that's how you say it. Uh spider flower is the other name for it right here as a centerpiece. And these don't get overly wide. So I I kind of spaced them a little bit close together in here, but they grow upwards of 48 in tall. So they'll be a really beautiful like just mass in here. And then I dotted around like one play in the blues here, one play in the blues there. Let's see. One right here. There's a little grouping of three there. and just kind of dotted that blue color here and there that can kind of be maybe about the same height as a spiderflower. They'll kind of it'll be interesting to see how that all plays out with those. And then I popped in some of the sweetheart lime sweet potato vines just here and there. So they can be a nice bright kind of just pop of freshness even down here. So you can see the one playing in the blues and one of the sweet potato vine and then super tuna mini vista white. That is going to be the star of this display for sure.

[00:28:25]and it goes all the way around the backside and it cruises down to there and then I ran out. But we'll pick up like we did last year and we're just going to do little groupings of different stuff and make it kind of interesting and bright and fun and colorful along this whole lane. It's one of those things too that I have to watch. So like last night I of course watered everything in after I was done planting. But then the drip system ran today and you can tell where the drip system is based on like water saturation. Like I can tell right here that these plants are great. They're getting plenty of drip.

[00:28:53]So, I just go by each plant just to see what it looks like.

[00:28:59]Like, nope, that one has water by it.

[00:29:03]Those look good. I think this zone just ran. So, we're coming up on it at a really good time. I think all of those are great. I don't break the drip system all that often for as much digging as I do, but I broke it and I broke it good in one spot. Like I had it so twisted around my augur that I had to spend some time un winding it from the augur and then I had to go get replacement tube and make a repair right there. Oh my goodness. I just really went for it. See like this one is not getting enough water. This one has a little moisture from when I watered it in last night, but you can see moisture here. There's a drip tube right here that goes by it.

[00:29:39]So, it's possible there's a little bit under there I can't really see, but we're just going to have to watch him. And it looks like maybe that one needs an extra. Luckily, I put a little hose right here. Gosh, I love these fabric hoses. They are so lightweight and easy to use. And the sun doesn't heat them up like they heat up like uh the regular is it rubber hoses where it takes forever if the hose gets hot for the water to come out cool. It just seems to come out cool like right from the gate out of these fabric hoses. So, I don't think I'm going to have to supplementally water much here. But, I'll make sure that these get some for a while because they're such big plants.

[00:30:15]While they're trying to root in, they'll need a little extra love.

[00:30:20]And last year, what did we have in here?

[00:30:22]I think I did I cobbled something together. We had play in the blues. We had some petite pink gar, some sparkling amethyst, super vina. Was that it? Those three things. I don't know. It was very pretty. I really enjoyed it. But I think this uh mix is going to be a really fun one to watch grow. Okay, then the other thing I did was finished up. I've got every quadrant planted out here in the formal flower garden except for these two which I'm waiting on. Oh, they're here. I was waiting on those couplers to be installed and they have been installed. So now we're going to plant this one with zenyas and this one with cosmos. And those are the only things out here we are planting from seed. So I just saved those. They're very colorful and they're one of those crops that look good all season. So I saved the very focal areas for that. But we got our green globe artichokes planted right here.

[00:31:06]I got to remember which ones I did. Did I do Let's see. We did these together.

[00:31:11]The gumrina maragolds feverfew. I did the China aers right here. They're looking good. And then let's see. This one's all done. And I think we did most of that together. Oh yeah. I had one section where I had planted some crispia and I didn't have very many plants. So right in here, crispedia is this row and then a tiny bit of that one. So, I had some echanatia perparia that I popped in here. So, it didn't even make up the whole row. There's a little section right here. We can pop a couple of things in here if we feel like it. But I love echanatia out here in a cut flower kind of situation because they're amazing for bouques. So guys, that kind of sums it up for today's project. Super happy with the portico. I think that turned out so sweet. And I ordered all those little elements, the pillow covers and the flags and things like that all kind of separately. So, I had to wait till they all came in so I could get that all done. and all set up. I kind of wanted to do it all at one time and I just thought I'm not going to wait any longer for those wreaths. We'll just do it when when they do get here. But I absolutely love how it turned out. And the trees, oh my gosh, the trees are awesome. There's nothing better than seeing something like that be put in.

[00:32:16]It's just just I don't know. Everything out there is just really starting to fill in. I feel like so many areas are this year. Erin and I and Paul, we were sitting in the great room today and we were talking about how like this year feels like it's been the best year that we have ever had. I mean, in terms of plant health, in terms of just things buttoning up, having such a great help here. It's just oh, it's just a great year. So, anyway, guys, thank you so much for watching today's video. I hope you enjoyed it and we will see you in the next one. Bye.