A gardener ordered bare-root native plants from Tennessee Nursery during a winter BOGO sale and saved hundreds compared to container plants. She's planting witch hazel, elderberries, Christmas ferns, and milkweed in a shady woodland garden behind a 1900s shop, designed to attract birds, bees, and monarchs.
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Oh my goodness, it is an exciting day, a good mail day when plants come. I have two boxes of plants that I want to open up and show you because, you know, I've been working on this planting area behind me, and I painted this side of the shop, I put in a little seating area, I added the pond, and now it's time to put the plants around. And I'm so excited because I ordered almost all the plants I need from an online nursery called TN, or Tennessee Nursery. And the reason it's so exciting is because when I planned out what I wanted to put in and how many plants I actually needed, I thought I was going to have to do this in phases. I thought this was going to be like, buy some plants, wait a few months, buy some more plants. Because if you've bought plants lately, you know plants are expensive. So, uh, I really thought I was going to have to stretch it out, but Tennessee Nursery ships all of their plants bare root, which means they're coming in the winter right now while they're still dormant, and they will just naturalize to your soil. They are not going to be root bound. They are going to just wake up in the spring in a new location and grow like they would from plants in the garden. And because of that, they are so much more affordable. So I'm excited to show you what I got because I placed an order, which is this big box here, and then I was emailing, uh, with the folks over there, and they sent me another box with some free plants. So let's go through it, because the theme of this garden is like woodland fernery nature habitat. And obviously I want to make a space that is nice for the birds and critters and frogs and all of the things in my yard, uh, but it's on the north side of the shop, it's very shady, and also I have a historic house. It was built in 1900, so while that was right at the end of the Victorian era and my house isn't quite Victorian, uh, ferneries and stumperies would have been very popular around that time, so I thought that would be a nice theme. The other thing about this nursery is that most of the plants they have are native, so the birds and the bees and all of the creatures here will likely really enjoy these plants. So let's open it up and see what's in the box. Also, right now they're having a buy one get one free sale, uh, on a lot of their plants, which is part of why I was able to buy, uh, so many of the plants that were on my list because I was getting 2 for 1. So, um, if you are planning a new bed right now, or even if you just want a few plants, uh, I highly suggest that you go check them out. So here they are. These are my shrubs that I ordered, and what I ordered was a witch hazel that blooms really late winter, early fall. And because they're buy one get one free, I got a second one that I'm going to put in a different part of my yard. I also ordered some elderberries because I have a specific spot in my yard outside of this bed where, um, not only do I want elderberries, but I want something to grow up big and tall because it's the one spot where there's a street lamp that shines into the backyard. Um, and I think in a few years this will cover that. Now, like I said, it is a fernery, and so the main ferns that I'm putting in there are Christmas ferns. Uh, they are evergreen here in Northwest Arkansas And, and again, native. And so you can see how they come. Look, they're already— these are the little ferns— are already coming up and beginning to unfurl. So I'll put them in the ground, and within a couple of weeks there will be greenery. The next thing I got was a grass to kind of fill in. This is a Carex, and you can see this has some greenery on it. And so this will fill out nicely throughout the area around the ferns and kind of around my pond area as well, giving cover for little animals and birds that need to hop away and be protected and covered. Um, and then I got some wild ginger, which has a really beautiful lush leaf that will go mainly around the pond edges. And you can see again, look, they're already starting to put growth on, so I will be getting these in the ground today. And then for some spring color, I have Dwarf Crested Iris. And so this will be, you know, before a lot of other things are happening in the garden, the irises will come up and bloom in the springtime. So that was my order, that was what I put in. And then in addition, um, what the nursery sent me— they sent me butterfly weed, and I think they sent me a couple. They also sent me swamp milkweed, and when I looked them up, they have the same Latin names, so I think these are the same. And this— the photos look similar. And so these are milkweed, which is the host plant for the monarchs, and I have not had great success growing milkweed from seed. And so I'm really excited to try these from Root and see how they do this year. They also sent me some additional Christmas ferns, which is great because I have— my bed is going to continue along on the other side of my seating area, and I wanted a few more ferns. So extra Christmas ferns to go in that area. And oh my gosh, That is a lot of plants that I need to get in the ground now. I'm so excited for— and I'm going to show you as the summer goes on, the spring and the summer, kind of how these grow and how they fill in. Even if you buy gallon-sized plants from the nursery, they take a couple of years to fill in. So I'm excited to see how these bare root plants do compared to the handful of larger plants that I've purchased here locally that I wasn't able to get online. So if you're interested in checking out the nursery more, uh, just comment plants below and I'll send you a link with the list of plants that I ordered and links to the nursery as well. And I can't wait to show you how this bed grows as the year goes on.
