August 2023 English Garden Tour & Giveaway Winner 🎉🎉🎉

Hello everyone, it's Jeanette here from Enthusiastic Gardener. Welcome back to my garden and I thought it's time for the August garden tour. But first, thank you so much to you all who entered my giveaway for these wonderful Farmers Defence farming sleeves which I tested out last week. They are fantastic and so let's pick out the winner. I have all your names in here, loads of entries. Thank you so much for taking part. Here is the winner chosen at random. Here we go. Congratulations to Judy Wolf. Judy Wolf, thank you so much. These Farming Defence sleeves are great. They are going to be on their way to you. Can you please send me an email Judy? My email address is at the bottom here. If you email me then we can speak and you can give me your address and congratulations. Anyway, without further ado, let's go and have a walk around the garden for August. We've had such a lot of rain throughout July and August and of course apologies to all those of you in other countries who haven't had a lot of rain. You're experiencing incredible heat but this is what it's like here in England. This time last year it was incredibly, incredibly hot and all the plants were definitely suffering so it's a lot different this year. First of all, I still haven't moved the three Picea glauca daisies which I will move I think because it's a little bit hot for them and as you have pointed out against that red hot wall on the afternoon sun it's just a bit too much. The window box however is thriving and it's all down to these gorgeous begonias. Begonias are my new go-tos. I'm always going to have begonias. I always thought they were kind of like old lady plants but that could be because I now fall into that category. Look, one plant, one plant produces all these and I've hardly deadheaded and it's in amongst some sweet potato vine. There's another one, really, really pretty. The Santana rose, that's done well this year and let's walk around here because all the way along from here up to the very end I've done quite a few changes this month which I'm very pleased with. So starting off with the olive tree, I haven't even pruned the olive this year, actually I did tidy it up, took out some brown leaves but I painted these, I don't know if you remember, these were kind of the glass and they were orange colour and they were fading so I got my paints out. There's three of them, there's some more dotted around but how pretty is the pelargonium patch and the hardy geraniums, so pretty. And my new fountain, we have the formium brown sugar there, we have some sweet william, dianthus. Over the back, this is one of my canna lilies, this one is called Stuttgart, not very impressed with that. And then the Fatsia japonica, wonderful because I struggled with this and I cut off a lot of the branches, you may remember, and I thought I was going to lose it but look, we have new leaves and I think I've rejuvenated it and it looks wider to me. Here's the new fountain which we've had on a lot when it's not rained anyway. Flanked by the flamingos and over the back is my Schneewittchen rose which is white normally. We have a van der Waals pine pyramid there and I've trimmed the yew tree, finally got round to that, but aren't these just beautiful? And my lovely new fountain. So moving on up to the corner garden, Cedar Water and Joy, it's beginning to turn to its beautiful pink colours. The Chinese plumbago, I really hacked away at this and it's come straight back, very beautiful. But here's my new corner garden which I'm really loving. So in the pot we have this Euonymus greenspire, doing well, it's been in a couple of weeks now that has, with some ivy and I love the pot, it has the dripping colours and the colours graduate to different greens. Around the base of the pot we have a mixture of, these are Islets and then we have these which are beautiful junipers called Blue Star and I'm loving the colour combination. We have heucheras around as well. I painted this roof on my little cottage and my cottage is there because it covers over an electric point so it reminds us where it is. We have the pumpkin that I've decided to leave there. We have Miss Ruby Buddleia, a Little Salvia and this is a Stochesia from the Aster family, just blooming. And I did paint my little balls, you'll see there, so they've kind of got a similar colour to the pumpkin. Trachycarpas of course, so I'm loving this whole area, it turned out beautiful. I hope you agree. Going round the corner, Osmanthus, we've trimmed that a lot and this Euonymus was a huge big bush and I decided, Linda Varta has declared it topiary month, I thought well let's have a go at this and I did and that's the result. Over the back we have my Rocky Mountain Blue Arrow juniper, that's another accent of blue. This salvia here in the pot, need to deadhead that because that's looking a little straggly. Look at the glorious colour on my Nandina, very vibrant. This is a very good plant the Nandina, I'm not sure which variety it is though unfortunately. Mahonia is lovely and we have more Osmanthus here, the sun's coming out now. I think my Petunia Pink Crispy is very happy here and at the moment it's small, it's a foot tall but it will grow up and it will have bright pink in the spring and here we have my Unknown Rose and this is one of the only things in the garden when I moved in. Practically everything in the garden I've planted myself apart from that. Now because the sun's come out it never looks very good in a video so I think I'm going to move over to Shady Corner, go over there and show you that and hopefully the clouds will come along and hide the sun enough time for me to show you all this section. So this is the Shady Corner, starts from this pathway here and it's basically where you can see where the shade is. I had three Adjugas here which I planted, they have died, they have died but we have some Pullman area, we have a Heuchera, lovely Crocosmia and I like my cat there as well. Shady Corner of course now has the fountain and my Vanilla Fraise Hydrangea has turned all pink, that's very pretty although the blooms aren't very big but as you can see it's quite spindly so I suppose it's done well because I complained about it recently I think in last month's video and now it's performed. Here are some more of the glass little ornaments that I painted and just some more Pelargoniums. I'm really really pleased with the little hedge which goes all the way up to the Garden Illusion gate over there and that is just different little Euonymus plants, they were small plugs when I put them in which would have been spring last year and so 18 months or so later they have done so well because I had to take my boxes out, my boxwoods and unfortunately I've had quite a lot of people have been starting to watch my box tree moth disaster videos because obviously people are now experiencing it, they're looking up that video and they're messaging me saying they're experiencing the same thing. A lot of the UK but now I've heard they are over in parts of the USA and they are in Canada and devastating everyone's boxwoods, disastrous. The ferns are very happy they are Dryopteris affinis and they love it here, permanent shade for them here as well as the Bronnera and actually I find shade gardens easier to plant and to look after than I do full sun. There you can see my Euonymus hedge and I only lost one little plug which was very the very end one right at the end on the right, fortunately I had a couple of spares so I was able to replace it that very end one and here's my Garden Illusion gate which lots of people comment on, it's the way the wood is cut you can see from the right to the left it angles down the slats of wood are smaller which gives the illusion that the gate is ajar and that there's something very interesting further on I think particularly which is why I put the stepping stones because it looks like there's stepping stones through this secret garden on the other side I think it helps with the illusion. Here's my Rhododendron and it's setting buds for next year so that will be good and this Rhododendron is in a bottomless pot and it's funny because I wait all year for this to bloom it blooms for like one week but it's worth it and what's not worth it is the hostas in these two bottomless pots one of you said try hostas I knew that the slugs would climb up because and the snails rather that I've seen them do it I knew they would do it and they did this is a apple Jonagol never had any apples but it just gives a little bit of height to this area and this is my Aralia which well this is called the stick in this household because for most of the year it's literally that stick we have a Pyrrhus down here more beautiful Bronneras, Pullman area and shade loving things this is my gorgeous Fatsia another Fatsia japonica I love Fatsias. Right the sun has gone in again here is my beautiful Cercis canadensis forest pansy red bud which I've been loving and it's growing so well it looks as if it needs a little bit of water at the moment my Picea pungens oopsy eye which I just love and it's next to a they're all in these bottomless pots and this little grass extremely spiky grass I can't remember what it's called but it's very lovely as I back up a bit this is the last of the glass I painted some more Heucheras and my Camysiporus cloud pruned topiary again topiary month Linda Varta's topiary month but it's a little brown in places unfortunately here we have some these were in my window box these are dahlias which I put here we have one flower I put them there and the slugs and snows went oh my goodness thank you and they proceeded to decimate I can't have dahlias in my garden but the Acer little princess which I moved very recently is doing extremely well the Lamium is just going wild very pretty climbing up my Calla lilies and Petunia red robin has still has colourful leaves because I did prune it all maybe a month ago and while they're not bright red as they are in spring they still have a beautiful beautiful colourful foliage we have some phlox in the background there this rose here is my David Austin James L Austin next to my pear tree and then the rose here is the Olivia Austin and that three ball topiary which I created earlier this year from a Tuscan Van Gogh totem pole cypress and basically it was a column and I cut three balls it's actually done very well over in the back we have Dusty Miller which Dusty Miller for me do last throughout the they do over winter so that's going to be a beautiful colour and I've pinched the tips out as well so hopefully we'll get bushy this is the smoke bush the Quintinus young lady which Edie gave me green new leaves so that must be happy and a little bit of crocosmia next to a another topiary erissimum which I cut in half basically still have some flowers left so that's pretty much this border and we have pelargoniums as we've seen oh and my Rose of Sharon has finally flowered and it's got a lot of beautiful buds I think we have chlorosis though because you can see the yellowing leaves and you can tell chlorosis because you can see the veins the leaves turn yellow but you can see the darkness which is the veins so it probably needs a little bit of iron because I recently did do a soil test which proved that I have alkaline soil and here's a complete look at the west facing border which we've just had a look at and goes all the way down to my new area and I'll come around the other side to show you this border here the Islet Crenata cloud pruned is very nice I did actually trim the top ball because one side of it had some browning and I cut it out and then it looked odd because there was a gap so I actually kind of made the top ball a bit smaller okay that's a pretty hydrangea which is just about finished flowering really and my Alberta Spruce looks better from the opposite side because I did make that into a spiral a couple of Christmases ago but now I've left it leaving it to grow out and we have some sort of a carex there the Seed of Autumn Joy my big purple head fell over and chopped it in half one day so that's why those front bits are smaller than the back bits because it decapitated them this rose is very pretty it's called Fab at 60 so I got that bought for me last year and this always does well this is my topiary and of course as I mentioned it is topiary month Linda Barter has declared topiary month the cherry tree this is a Stella cherry and I mentioned last month that it was huge it had grown like this and I basically trimmed it all limbed it all and it's doing okay we have some osteospermum some more sweet potato vine the salvias I did chop back but they haven't really really recovered or given me any more new fantastic spectacular displays this is another Seed of Autumn Joy and this is my Eremethida my emu bush which I saved it was five pounds in this as I said before in the save me section and it's beautiful I absolutely love it such a gorgeous color I just hope because it is from Australia so I just hope that it survives our winter these are begonias as well you can see here oh the story of the camper van if you watched last week's video I ordered this camper van for mum and planted it as a surprise well I took my old red one down to her and I said mum you can have this red one or you can have the new blue one and she chose the red one so now I have the blue one so that's very cute because we both have a love for some unknown reason we have a love for camper vans beautiful pelargonium that has not stopped blooming that is seven small pelargoniums that have joined together into a big mound and I think they just look lovely now I must show you the plum tree and I need to explain something as well I found on this plum you can oh look evidence of what I'm about to say can you see that ladybird or ladybug as they're called over in the US well I have not had ladybirds as we until now can you see I have plums look at that and I have a few plums dotted around I think the wasps will probably get my plums before I do can you see look at that but what I was going to say on the back of this plum I noticed earlier in the year these little tiny I don't know if they're coming out little tiny little insects oh there we go you can see those and I hosed it down I haven't sprayed anything in my garden all year I don't like to so I hosed it down with water a few times but I haven't sprayed it with anything and then I just left the bugs because it seemed like a host plant it didn't seem like these little bugs were on anything else so I thought oh I'm just going to leave it there's another ladybird and I think because I left it the bugs came and I think the bugs are dealing with the problem and I have ladybirds as I said for the very first time now I just wanted to explain the carexes do you remember I dug them up from the area over there by the fountain I dug them up and divided them and I put some here and they're doing so well I mean that one's hidden and I'm really happy that's a beautiful lucre really happy there's some more there with how they've done I have all these beautiful free carex plants this yellow plant we don't know what that is mom gave it to me she can't remember agapanthus has begun to bloom and to the right of it is my picea pungens super blue seedling and next to that is another nandina which is I've had for a little while the alstroemeria has faded really bees have enjoyed this alstroemeria it's done very very well this year very well and my bay tree I gave that a trim I think I was a little too overzealous with the trim but it's picking up you can see the bright green leaves are the new leaves and I do actually take little bits of this when I'm cooking I'm not going to show you carnival corner this carnival corner is very dull nothing exciting but do you have an idea the carnival corner so all is not lost so there you go everyone I hope you are all having a wonderful wonderful August and I wish you well final look at my new area thank you so much for watching everyone I'm Jeanette I'm the Enthusiastic Gardener and I hope you're having fun in your gardens and I will see you again next week take care and thank you for watching bye