January 2024 Backyard Garden Tour | After a Hard Freeze | Zone 9b Texas Gulf Coast

Even though the garden is resting after the hard freeze, there are some bright spots in the garden I would like to share. I purchased multiple Salvia, yarrow, cuphea, and bee balm to brighten up the backyard. I had also protected a few pots in our garage, so those plants are also now helping bring life back to the garden.

Hello everyone and Welcome to our backyard well today I am shooting the January Garden Tour and there’s not a lot going on in the garden there’s some things there’s not a lot going on because we had a hard freeze a couple of weeks ago that killed most

Of um our plants that are above ground and so um I’m going to go through the tour because I did go out plant shopping and I do have a few plants that I would like to share with you and just kind of generally overall show how things are doing but my male

Cardinal I think it’s the male is kind of chirping so I’m going to focus in on him before I start and I apologize cuz someone’s got a loud vehicle that they are that they are running okay let me start the first place I’d like to start

Here is on my patio so in the freeze I covered up these four pods with four layers of frost cloth and these are tropical I best esus and it’s amazing they don’t look great of course there was a lot of damage but the plants are going to survive if we don’t

Get another another freeze um generally tropical hibiscus do not do well if I don’t protect them and these pots are very large and they’re way too heavy to try to um bring in and so I have wrapped them and I’ve had some good luck wrapping them but this is what they look like

Unfortunately until I can get them pruned um come springtime and I will cut them back probably by about a third so these two pots I had protected and um they’re doing um very very well I’m very happy with with how they’re performing and they were in my

Garage over the freeze but I did get a few new plants and this one what it was a Salvia that I was pretty attracted to because at the nursery it was amazing that there was a hummingbird there that was not afraid of me at all and just came

And visited the flowers like was right next to me and I watched the flowers that it visited and it really liked this Salvia this particular particular Salvia is called love and wishes and it is out of the wish series out of Australia that a portion of the proceeds go to their

Make A Wish Foundation but I just thought this color I don’t know if it can zoom in here I just thought this color was so striking and so I’m really excited to have um to have this Salvia both this Salvia and this one is called ember’s

Wish and they’re rated to about 20° so that is a zone 9 and that was just a little bit too low I wanted to protect um the Salvia so it would continue to um to survive and then I got another Salvia over here which is a part of this wish

Series and this is called Embers wish and this has the bright Coral flowers and again this is um good to about 20° but the flowers on these salvas are just so gorgeous and interesting and of course my hummingbird and um butterflies love them behind the love and wish is

Salvia I have new to me called hot lips and I bought two this is a salv that I wanted to get last year and I didn’t I thought oh I’ll wait and I waited till about mid spring and I couldn’t get it cuz it was sold

Out this leaf on hot lips is just wonderfully aromatic I love it and of course I really like um the blooms on it it reminds me the blooms remind me of um my mirino blooms and it also um you know there the smaller more delicate Bloom

And I do like that in the spring they do have the white and then this really nice nice red and like I said oh I really love the fragrance of the leaf on this Salvia so let me show you this particular tag for Hot Lips This is a Salvia

Microfil it blooms late spring to early fall planting in the full sun and it grows 30 in tall and you’re supposed to space them um about 2 feet apart it does go to Zone 7 so I do like that and I just really wanted one of these and a

Couple couple of you that have put in the comments on some of my other videos have said you’ve really enjoyed hot lip salvian so this is one that is new to me and I have a feeling the but both the butterflies and the hummingbirds are really going to like it

The the Bloom on it reminds me somewhat of the Mystic Spire svia that little delicate little Bloom okay I am going to go over here to this area next unfortunately I couldn’t protect my Vines so my red mandavilla um won’t surv it hasn’t survived it it froze and it

Will not come back from the roots and then my Mexican flame Vine oh I was really disappointed that I wasn’t able to protect it um and more than likely I’ve lost it also because as I mentioned we got down to 19° here um south of Houston which is

Just insane for this 3 years in a row for with these very cold um polar vortexes that that are coming through so I will want to replace this they don’t they didn’t have the vines in the nursery yet and so I still need to wait patiently before I can

Replace my Mexican flame Vine which I will I was also able to get Salvia nemorosa my Salvia nemorosa I lost this past summer in our 100 Dee um plus summer that was just a very very diff difficult summer for us it was um drought and then it was super super high temperatures one

Of my Bloom stocks on the salvan Osa got broken um at the nursery unfortunately in transit um but I thought this was a really interesting color my other Salvia nemorosa was purple this had has kind of a magenta color to it but I do like this because my butterflies and Native bees

Really also like salvia neosa and let me pull the tag on this this is called Rose Marvel I’m going to stand up here and look at the tag and it does um flower spring through fall I just bees Were Always On My Salvia emosa just constantly and this Salvia is rated for

Zones 4 a through 9B and it gets about oh 10 to 12 in high and 10 to 12 in is wide and I like I just have a um I just like this with this kind of magenta color and so I was happy to see this and very

Happy to snap two up they only had three last summer I was very pleased with this plant this is sparkling amethyst and I saw this at the nursery and I wanted to get it again um sparkling amethyst is a super Bea and I was so impressed with how this attracted the

Hummingbirds the butterflies especially the swallow taals and the hummingbird moths loved this plant and so I wanted to get um it again and I didn’t know I didn’t really want to order it through the mail and so I was really really happy to see that this was also at the

Nursery you’ll notice that this goes to um Zone 8A and it’s a it’s an annual lower in the lower than that zone but for us it’s should be um a perennial and so it’s I had it in a container which I was very happy with how it trailed over in the

Container but one of the places I was thinking on putting this was in my raised trellis um bed and this is where I have all of my passion vine and this has happened now 3 years in a row because we’ve had very three very difficult and hard

Frosts and um you know I hate to see it last year I did lose a couple of my passion Vines but most of them came back and what I did this year is I mulched really heavily with leaves and this is last year’s Passion vine that I saved and mulched with and

You’ll notice these happen to be the graa daisies and they did okay so close to the close to the ground and heavily mulched was able to survive our 19° yuck another plant I just got at the nursery is a variety of kfia called David Verity and I this is probably my

Favorite kfia or cigar plant it grows the largest and I really like the flower production on it it does need to be in full sun though I did have one in partial sun and it did not perform as well but in my tree bed which you’ll see see got zapped pretty

Well I have it in a pot I love this pot and I have the David Verity in the pot and it just grows beautifully and so I going to replace this even if it survived by The Roots I was not happy with how it performed this

Year and so I am going to replace it um re refurbish rejuvenate the the soil and also replace it with the new David Varity so I’m really excited about that so all along in my tree bed the plants that were above ground did die in the 19°

Weather but this is my greg mist flower and close to the ground and I was not able to protect this but close to um the ground and more inside here protected um it’s still doing well so we’ll see this should come back pretty well I do have a

Nofia or a red hot poker back in here that I probably need to move because it doesn’t get great sun and with all of my wonderful mounding Lantana I’m very hopeful that these will come back from The Roots they did last year and so I’m very hopeful

That they will again this year now where’re you see green plants it’s either I had them protected so I took these in and I did take my red Porter weed inside the garage but I did not on my purple and it it died and I will need to replace

That most of the plants in my raised bed that I call my 4×4 are annuals except I do have a flocks that I love this is the John fanic flocks and it is going to come back and then I also have back here the blue chiffon Rose of Sharon and that is

Deciduous so it loses its leaves in the winter but then it comes back um beautifully in the spring but the rest of what was in this bed were annuals as I want my Rose of Sharon to be the centerpiece here but it’s going to it’s taking a while for it to um to

Take off so when I pan in my South bed most of my pots I did take in so my most of my giant milked I have still in the garage this happens to be my blue Porter weed I brought back out because I want to um it just wasn’t

I didn’t want to keep it in the garage it needed to come back out and then my um trellises of coral honeysuckle of course this is winter but I was really surprised to see I’m going to get a little bit closer here and I do have a bloom here and

There which is wonderful to see those of you that have seen my channel you know I’m a huge fire bush fan and um I do also have have a cape honeysuckle back here unfortunately neither one um survives a hard Frost above ground but again I

Mulched down to the root I mean right at ground level and so these will come back pretty strong um they should come back pretty strong for spring and this growth was about 7t tall on the fire bush and that happened in one year and so once they’re established they do um

Come back well it’s just disappointing to see this when you get a hard freeze but that’s okay it will come back in November I showed you what I did with a couple of of my hanging baskets and I have happy cheery violas some flocks and some wonderful alysum and these are butterfly

Favorites and they’re growing really nicely I’m over close to my shade bed and there’s a couple of plants that I wanted to point out I do have some issues with fire ants so I’m having to deal with that ug G hate fire ants but the Dill oh my goodness this Dill is doing

Beautifully love Dill it is the host plant to the black swallow tail butterfly and I do have bronze fenel that does very well in ground but the deal was so gorgeous um at the end of November at the nursery that I wanted to pick up a couple of

Little pots and so I did and potted it in my pot and it’s just doing well I did protect it during the freeze and it’s doing great I also have a larger pot of snapd dragons and flocks and I have two colors of flocks in here the purple and the

White I think I need to find a better spot for it I don’t think it gets enough Sun and then another plant I wanted to show and share with you is this is going to be the first time in my yard that I am going to plant a yo or a

Yaro and this one is called New Vintage violet and Yaro also does attract butterflies this one is not going to get very tall 12 to 14 in and it is Hardy from zones 4 to 9 so I am curious how this is going to

Do um down here in our hot and hum humid in my hot and humid Garden okay so as I look over my shade bed is mostly annuals although I do have some caladiums and my caladiums I’ve had good luck with them coming back and so they will come back in the summer

Typically so we’ll see how um how they do but this is where I had my colus and of course colus don’t survive freezes which is fine um they are annuals but down here I want to show you what my pipe vine did so I covered the pipe vine with

Leaves so they were completely covered with leaves and then I put two layers of frost cloth over them and they didn’t miss a bead which is wonderful because I love this white vein Dutchman’s pipe vine because it’s really Hardy here it’s more of a ground cover and it is the

Host plant to the PIP Vine swallow tail which is a black with a really iridescent gorgeous blue um gorgeous blue to um the lower half of it and so I’m really happy that this um this did well so the north bed is looking pretty bleak that is not

Unexpected I did PR protect and take in my blue butterfly clar odendron and then also on the other end I took in one of the the porter weeds so we’ll see what comes back in this bed typically my bronze fennel does very well I was surprised at how my cone flow

My purple cone flow did not do well last year and let me come down to the end so I was surprised actually that my bush Salvia which is called mirino I am surprised that this didn’t die back all the way um to the ground but it it

Didn’t so I will need to prune this come springtime so this comes back each year very well but I will lose some of my Salvia so and I knew that The Rock and fuchsia um I knew I would lose I’m pretty sure my Mystic spires will

Come back and also my Misty but we’ll see got some weeds that are growing and they’re like oh let me Sprout up here so um I’ll definitely see what Salvia comes back this happens to be a r plant and Rue is also a host plant to a couple different caterpillars and some

Gorgeous butterflies and so I did protect that take it in it is potted but my bronze fennel is coming up all over and so um I just have a really good really good luck with bronze fennel in this North bed and the fennel is like the

Dill it is a host plant to the black swallow tail which of course I love having in the yard so even though it is Bleak and I do have losses I have lots of birds in the yard winter birds and I have two hummingbirds in the

Yard and so I wanted to get some Salvia for them some blooms although I do have feeders for them I can see one over there on the feeder now I have a two different kinds of hummingbirds in the yard I have a female Ruby throat and then I have a Rufus let me

See if I can zoom in on on this one so while the feeders are very important because unless you go out and purchase blooms they’re not going to have enough blooms to survive the one thing that I do have which is wonderful is native bugs and so they are

Feeding on all the bugs in the beds and in The Vines and you can hear them click and that’s when they go up and they’re feeding and and they’re catching a lot of bugs they can catch the midair but they’re also in the beds and so I will

Keep even though it does look Bleak I will keep the The Vines and the beds intact and not cut them back until the new growth starts and that’s purely for the bugs and the the little bugs in particular that the birds and the hummingbirds do

Eat so even though it is a little bit Bleaker I do have some bright spots in the yard with some of the plants that I purchased and of course the birds that are in the yard well thanks for joining me I hope you all all have a wonderful

Day and I really hope to see you again