Gardener Spots A Buy One Get One Free Deal On Small Spiraeas At The Garden Center And Snaps Up All Four They Had Left For Her New Garden Space

Every gardener knows the little thrill of spotting a sale sign over the plants you were already planning to buy. For the host of the Main St Gardener weekly vlog, that moment came at a Virginia garden center, where a buy one get one free deal on small spiraeas had her reaching for every plant the shelf had left. She snapped up all four, and she calls it an incredible deal.

Gardener in a teal shirt pulling a cart of shrubs in her garden beside a display of colorful begonias

The plants are Princess spireas, a newer, improved small variety that stays compact, and they are headed for a brand new garden space she is building. Her fall week was packed with planting, flower picking, container cleanups and a cozy first fire pit of the season, and it makes a nice template for anyone wondering what to do in the yard before winter arrives.

A fall outing that started with a sale

The shopping trip happened the Sunday before, when her daughter was in town and the two spent the day exploring. They visited Abernathy and Spencer Garden Center in Virginia, which she calls one of her favorite places, then drove through the countryside and its fall colors to Hope Flower Farm.

The flower farm was holding a clear the fields weekend. With light frost already arriving and a heavy one on the way, visitors could pick a whole bucket of flowers for a small fee. It was a windy afternoon, but the dahlias were still gorgeous, and her daughter helped her gather a mix of blooms for an arrangement she says she enjoyed all week. That evening the wind died down and the family lit their first fire pit of the season.

Why she bought all four spiraeas

Back home, she says the Princess spireas were the highlight of the haul. They stay small, which makes them a good fit for a garden where she wants every plant to earn its place, and the buy one get one free offer meant she could pick up four for the price of two. She describes it as one of those deals you cannot walk away from, and she has been piling up a stash of plants she has bought and ordered for the new bed.

Spiraeas are tough, forgiving shrubs, and she has plenty of experience with them. She has large ones along her driveway that she normally prunes twice a year. They lose their leaves in winter, which she points out means you can prune them at nearly any time, and she calls them hardy, great plants. This fall, though, she plans to trim them just once more, in the spring.

Laying out a new garden before planting

Tuesday was devoted to designing the new garden space. Rather than digging right away, she sets the potted plants out where she thinks they will go, then lives with the arrangement. Sometimes she sketches the plan, sometimes she does not, but she likes to move pots around and sleep on the idea for a couple of days. She often gives a large design almost a full week and makes tweaks along the way.

Her reasoning is simple. If she is planting just one or two things, she already knows where they belong. For a bigger garden, she wants the structural pieces, the shrubs and large plants, right the first time so she is not hauling them out of the ground later. She calls Monday and Wednesday the big planting days, with a ton of plants going into the new space.

Winter prep around the yard

Her week also included plenty of fall chores. With a freeze pending, she cleaned out her summer containers. The petunias had faded, but the greenery and fillers kept thriving, and she thinks all that foliage is why her containers have lasted longer this year. She also gave the patio a good blow with her leaf blower and washed off the pots.

One afternoon she potted up a fresh container of succulents so she could bring the originals indoors. Before moving plants inside, she inspects them for scale and other bugs, shakes off the old soil to check for disease or damage, and repots in fresh potting mix. She says you can plant succulents deeper and they will root in along the stem, which helps them last. Indoors she waters about once a month and uses a capful of cactus fertilizer. Next spring the whole container can go back out into the garden.

She also moved a compact holly into a shady corner near a large hydrangea and a baptisia, where it fills a gap like a ground cover. Hollies, she says, do nicely even in dappled shade. And because her driveway is a narrow single lane, she keeps her ornamental grasses and shrubs trimmed back so they do not scratch cars, a courtesy her neighbors and husband appreciate.

A little time off for autumn

By Friday she had taken a lunch break with her son to stroll the historic area of downtown Frederick. She browsed a garden-inspired home store, admired fall and Thanksgiving tablescapes, and came away wanting to pull out her antique plates and platters for the holiday table. She also spotted a book with a foreword by Bunny Williams that now sits on her Christmas list.

She closes the week by encouraging viewers to enjoy the season, from apple cider donuts to hot cider to fall hikes, and she has a nature hike planned for the weekend. It is a good reminder that a busy garden week can still leave room for the small joys of autumn.

Willow and Hearth