*Whimsical* Cottage Garden Tour (Mid August in the Northeast- Zone 5a)

Hello and welcome to our cottage garden. In today's video I'm just going to be kind of meandering through our garden with you. Right now I'm standing in the first part of the garden that we we created several years ago and this is sort of the beginning of our cottage garden here. And this year I just think it looks happy, mature, seasoned. It's just looking really really good. There are some changes that we've made and some other changes I think we're going to slowly make but it's looking really good. So if you are new here my name is Anna Fable. We live on the side of a mountain in a zone 5a in New England and you join me on sort of an overcast kind of cozy very moody day. We've got a nice cloud cover, a little bit of wind happening, and it is the middle of August. So I think that's all you have to know. I'd love to hear what gardening zone you are in or if you garden, if you have maybe a little terrace where you have some plants or you know some houseplants. I just love to hear what your situation is. I love reading the comments about where you are, where you're coming from, what garden zone you are. I just find it fascinating and I love connecting with other lovers of plants. Bert's behind the camera very kindly and we are just going to be kind of meandering through the garden today. So as I said it's the middle of August and the trees are already starting to turn. We have some trees over there that are already starting to turn golden and yeah that's just you know how short our growing season is here. Early August things start to sort of shift into more of that autumnal kind of energy. So if you like those sorts of things I live in sort of like the autumn capital of this country. So if you're interested in those sorts of things I think I'm going to try and do a few sort of really cozy autumnal vlogs here. Let me know if that's something you're interested in. But I want to start just by talking about the plant in the blue salvia. In the recent top perennials or annuals video for the northeast I mentioned this plant and I think you have a pretty good view of it from your vantage point. It is just spectacular. It's enormous, constantly covered in these beautiful purpley blue plumes of flower. The bumblebees are absolutely covered in it. They sleep inside of the little salvia petals or underneath the leaves. It is just such a magical plant and I just want to grow it so much next year. I just want to have so many more of these because it's just been such a staple in our garden. The butterflies, the hummingbirds, the bumblebees, everything just loves these plants and it makes me really really happy. It's such a beautiful plant. The foliage is gorgeous so that is just such a winner. We have a monarch butterfly right in the hyssop behind you and so I'm sure I'll show you that because having monarch butterflies here is wonderful and it's been kind of bouncing back and forth between the hyssop and the play in the blue salvia throughout this border. This time of year things can start to look a little bit sad. We do clean things up as we're kind of moving through but really with a cottage style garden there's not a tremendous amount of work that goes into it. A few of you have asked me how long I spend working in the garden and I'd say at the beginning of the season it's quite a while. We're looking at hours every week and now I might come out and sort of weed here and there, do a little bit of deadheading, but we're talking about maybe 20 minutes to an hour a week, maybe. I mean if that. Some weeks we don't even do anything so it kind of takes care of itself and if you have that kind of gentle approach to gardening where you're not being so kind of things and you have this more, yeah, a little bit more ease with it, I think that really helps. So gardening doesn't have to take up that much time. It's really catered to what you want here. On this side we have the beautiful, this is a Rocca Polco Double Impatient and this is in Wisteria and it is just glorious little rosettes of flower. Absolutely stunning. I love it so, so much. It's just, it's such a performer. It's so beautiful. I love the pinky, lavender, lilac-y color of it and yeah, not afflicted with anything. You know, right now I'm kind of cleaning it up a little bit but really the petals die back really well so you never feel like you have to come out here and do anything to it. Such a nice plant. This is the Autumn Joy Sedums that we've replaced the phlox that we had here and they're looking really, really good. Just about to start opening so they're the first of our sedums that are opening and we have this repeated all throughout the border and I think I actually might add a few more. Oh, we got some thunder there. This is a really beautiful Angelonia and it's not the steel blue. I can't remember what that one is but it's bicolor white and purple. Very, very pretty. We have our sedums here. These beautiful stone crops that are starting to bloom. This is a, these ones don't bloom for terribly long. The bees love them as you can see. We have a little bee on there. So cute with those little orange podges. These are just beautiful little star-shaped clusters of flowers. Soft pink and then just tipped with a deeper blush. Very, very pretty. Kind of similar to my little combination here. Pinafore dress combination. It's very, very pretty and these little mounds of pink I think look really clean and tidy in the border. Our Dusty Miller is looking really, really nice. Some of our Nepeta is looking a little bit sad. So I'll have to kind of investigate what's going on there. But yeah, over here we have some Foxgloves that are starting to bloom and some Salvia. This Coleus here is looking gorgeous. That's the Golden Dreams Coleus and yeah, you know, we do have, we don't spray in the garden so we have things that munch, you know, but that's kind of part of the joy of it is just sharing the garden and even though we don't do anything to kind of deter other animals from coming into our garden, you can still have a really beautiful, really full garden even though you're sharing it with nature. So here we have my favorite geranium. This is the Spessart and it just looks gorgeous. Beautiful scent on those leaves. The Burgundy Glow Ajuga there is looking great. The Bugleweed. This Brewalia, oh my gosh. I mean, look how huge these are. They're just so cute little clusters and we paired it with this Brewalia. This is the Endless Illumination Brewalia. I think it's a really sweet combination but I do kind of feel like the stark purple and pink. I think we'll do something a little bit different next year but I'm just so impressed with the performance of those two. I definitely want to grow both of these varieties again. I think I want to have this be kind of our main annual next year aside from the Play in the Blues. I almost want to just take this all the way down. Slugs don't bother it. Snails don't bother it. We have grasshoppers and things like that. We have earwigs and it's just, it's performing so, so beautifully and we haven't had to do anything to it. So that's the kind of plant I want more of. Love that. This is a beautiful, I think this is the Wicked Witch Coleus and another Golden Dreams. But yeah, a few little munches here and there but overall, I mean, you can't even see the ones on here because they're just being kind of covered with that new growth. Yeah, everything's looking really happy. I love that Cotinus in the back, this Smokebush back here. It just looks gorgeous and you can see that in the autumn it's starting to kind of turn. I don't know if you can see from there but it kind of has a little bit more of that. It's going, skewing a little bit more red instead of that deep burgundy that it usually is. Here we have a really beautiful, we just chucked this in here. This is a Sweet Potato Vine. Actually, I don't know the name of this one offhand just because we got it with a bunch of other annuals that we got at a discounted and we have a really nice little begonia, a couple little pink begonias. We had these for a container project earlier in the year and they were just like teeny, teeny, teeny and we just thought, oh, we'll just throw them in some empty spaces and I think they look really nice. Here's a little Snapdragon that we planted. We had a ton of these Snapdragons the first year that we moved in and this has come back every year. So this is our perennial Snapdragon and even though she's not where we want her and she's not super happy, we just keep her here because we're like, look at you go. You get it. We'll support you. So we have a little plant support here for her. But oh my gosh, look how gorgeous. This is another one of these. So this is our Pinky Winky Hydrangea Standard. One on either side of our front door and the bumblebees just sleep inside of the little petals. So you'll just come and look underneath and they'll just almost be using the petals as a little tent. It's just so precious. They absolutely love them. They're covered all over them and it's just so, so nice. I love the bumblebees. They're little fairies in our garden. But yeah, beautiful, beautiful. All the bees, the wasps, everything you can see like wasp, yellow jacket, honeybee, bumblebee, hover flies, all kinds of little friends. I don't want to disturb them, but it's just beautiful. And I just love the structure that it provides. I love this soft kiss of pink on the petals and that it's this beautiful ombre effect on those panicles. Gorgeous. So Pinky Winky Hydrangea Standard, highly recommend. In season, the stems are reddish colored. They die back in the wintertime, but they're red in season and they're just really glorious. On either side of the door, I decided to do a Dichondra Silver Falls and Bert was just commenting how much he loves that combination. So the Dichondra just sort of flows out. I just put one plant in there in either of the hanging baskets and I think he's right. That color combination of the soft blue, he was like, I wasn't sure about that at first, which he didn't tell me that he wasn't sure about it. So I like that he only told me once he knew he liked it. But yeah, I do think that color combination is really beautiful. That pink and the soft, soft blue. Such a pretty, I mean, Silver Falls is such a beautiful way to describe that as well. It's sort of perfect. And then we have this one over here. I also just sort of love this whole situ. Like this is so nice to me. I love all of these really gorgeous Sunpatians. This is the Sunpatian Compact Lilac, I think. Such a stunner, such a happy plant, really gorgeous. I think this is like red candy or it's got a name, some sort of something like that, but that's a different color. We weren't sure of the color when we planted it, but I just love how that's just like a little skirt around those. And then our beautiful Astilbe, they're going over. I wanted to get a tour in when they were in their full glory, you know, when they were purple, kind of all throughout, but it still has that beautiful impact and it mirrors the panicles on the hydrangea. I just, I think that's kind of a winning combination. This is one of those little garden moments that I'm proud of with the birdbath, all the shade lovers, little fern and these back here. I just think it looks, I think it looks really peaceful and nice. So yeah, we have some other stuff over here that's looking good. You know what? Our hostas have been totally fine. They haven't been touched at all by the slugs. So I think all of your, your like happy wishes for us really panned out because they're being totally left alone, which makes me really happy because this is just ginormous and stunning and yeah, really beautiful. Let me get this spilt. It's got some crusties, just like an old blossom stuck to it. All of our phlox, we've talked about this. This is like a wild phlox, but see how it's got powdery mildew all over it. I should have cut that back, but yeah, in this area, this is sort of our shade garden and yeah, just very, very peaceful, very peaceful space. The coleus here is looking beautiful. The Shanghai that we transplanted, this is probably one of my favorites. I really hope that this makes it through the winter. Sometimes we struggle with heucheras here in the, in this area. People at the garden center and the garden clubs here call it euchara, but it's, they don't come back terribly well for us. So I'm really hoping that that shifts and we're able to get this one because we've had a few that have come back, but yeah, that's a, that's a really beautiful one. I love the deep purple underneath the leaves and then that silvery foliage with that deep purple veining, just so pretty. And it has been repeat flowering, which is really nice, you know, throwing up these beautiful plumes of, of white flowers, really nice sort of pink buds and then white flowers. Over here, we have another, a little arrangement of that's looking, looking happy with some more impatience and things like that. Our, our little arbor here with the morning glories are looking great. Still haven't gotten any flowers on this one in particular, but that's okay. I just love the little arbor of green. I think it's beautiful. So if you want to just follow me into this area, we are really, we've, we've mapped it all out now. This is going to be our dining garden. And so we've mapped it all out and we're looking at everything, deciding, you know, the design of the table that we're going to have and things like that. But eventually hope and dream is to have just as many hydrangeas as will fit into this garden in here. So the goal is at this, you know, at starting around mid season, probably like early July is when the hydrangeas really start to kick into gear and they just look gorgeous. They just perform really, really well for us. The only issue, issue we've had with hydrangeas, I suppose two, but one of them is mitigated now because of our deer friends. But the first one is deer. And we had some beautiful mama and baby deer yesterday in the backyard. I can show you that now. They were just so, so, so sweet. I love, I love them. I love little ponds. They're so sweet, but they do like to eat our garden. But now that we have our little deer friends just around the front kind of part of our garden, they don't eat the hydrangeas, but they do eat them when we don't have that. The other one was like these little caterpillar, like little bug, wormy bugs that made almost like little tents inside of our hydrangea, our invincible lace cap, just creating these pockets of two leaves, sewn them together. I mean, it was quite impressive actually that this little thing could do that. But yeah, so other than that, they just don't get afflicted by anything. And that's the only time we've had that happen. And it still looks beautiful. It bloomed beautifully and it was amazing. Huge pollinator attractor. So I want more hydrangeas all throughout the garden. They are incredible. They're just so pretty and I want more of them. And I just thought that would be so lovely just to have, you're sitting here having, you know, breakfast or lunch or dinner with like surrounded by beautiful blooms. And if you're having a dinner out here, a friend of mine got a really beautiful lantern for us. And so having that gorgeous lantern and, you know, then being surrounded by all of those blooms, white is the last color that you see at night. So it's sort of the last color that your eyes are able to detect. So being surrounded by all those beautiful white blooms, I think would be top notch here. So I am really excited to get that going, but it's, we're just, it's a process. Here we have our containers that we did earlier in the year and I think they're looking beautiful. This particular impatient is just gorgeous. It's a very soft purple that I love. This area is probably getting a little bit more than some of the others, but that's okay. And yeah, I just am excited to kind of make this a really intentional space. And I know you're probably tired of me saying that about this space, but I think it's coming together. So there we go. That's all we'll say about that. And now I want to just show you the front garden. Hopefully we can see the monarch and maybe the hummingbirds. Let's go, let's go take a look. Cut back the daisies and we added a few things. This is a really pretty pink geranium with a smaller leaf. I thought that might be sort of fun to see what that looks like. Cause it's a similar color to those, um, some patients, the lilac some patients. So just having that on that side might be really nice. I thought, yeah, things are looking, Oh, there's the hummingbird. Hi. So we have three of them now that are here all the time. And there's a baby hummingbird and she comes straight up to me every morning, just right up to me. When I come out onto the porch every morning, she just comes straight up and like super curious, very, very sweet little cutie pie. So I don't know if you can see, but the monarch butterfly just landed on the hyssop. And I think this combination here of the hyssop and that, that's a lime, a limelight prime hydrangea is just such a gorgeous combination. The hyssops here, especially this purple one, this warm purple, the hummingbirds really, really love that. They must just be really drawn to the purple because in particular they love this one and they love this deep rock and deep purple salvia. This is their favorite thing on our property the last two years running. So, but yeah, the monarch, it's so nice to have it there. I have been sort of secretly planting up my place for the butterflies that I've told you I wanted to plant up. So I planted up an echinacea and a milkweed and a few other things up there by the lilacs, which the butterflies love as well. But it just doesn't, it's, it's a baby garden, so it doesn't look super exciting. So that's why I haven't shown you an update on that area yet, but I'm really hoping that that comes together because having them here is fantastic. And they, you know, she just went over to the buddleia right now, the butterfly bush. So hoping that that area can really become a place for the butterflies because how magical, how magical are butterflies like and moths and all of it. It's just so exciting. But yeah, I think this area is looking a lot tidier. You know, we came through and did some tidying up, which is much needed in this space because of the fox gloves had gone over and things like that. But we have some really nice, nice things. We have a perennial mum there and that's a really beautiful purple. So that'll take over that color of the hyssop and that'll go well into the autumn, which is really nice. The geums were looking really scraggly. And then I came in and kind of cut off the top layers and there were just this little knuckles underneath the, those that, that bigger layer. And now they've fully come out and they look gorgeous. We have a few annuals in here. The rose here is looking really good. At first I was just thinking, oh no, you know, it's been totally eaten by the budworms and things like that. But we do have a few flowers. I can see it better on this side. So maybe you can come over here and take a look at that later. Our spruce is looking great. Look at this. Look at this little beauty, big beauty. She is really going to town. I love it. I think that's so magical. The Bordeaux, Supertunia Bordeaux is looking okay. She's looking okay. I think it looks nice just to have some nice blooms up here. This clematis that we transplanted doesn't look great. And we cut back some of the hollyhocks and foxgloves and things like that. But they started to look a little, a little rocky, get like bubbled with something. I'm like, it's not looking cute. Let's see. Oh, maybe we can switch places so I can show you this really beautiful little alley of coleus. And yeah, I don't know if I've shown you the morning glories because it's not really morning anymore, are kind of going over, but this is the beautiful colors on them. So we have this beautiful pink. Oh, there's so many ladybugs. Nice. But that beautiful pink in there. And in the morning, they're just really kind of covered in these. And then this beautiful purple. Let's see if I can find one of the purples there. They see they're still starting to go over, but it's like a purple with a really beautiful, almost a red veining. Let me see. I'm actually going to pick this one just so I can show you. Isn't that pretty? So it's a little trumpet of purple with this gleaming red in the center. So, so vibrant. It just looks, yeah, just gleaming from within. So pretty. You have a spider. Let me just help him. Oh, he doesn't want to leave. He built a whole web. Oh, hold on. Let me get him. Been watching him. Oh, goodness. There we go. But yeah, those are really, really sweet. I love that. And then here's a hyssop that we transplanted from our little mailbox bed, we call it, just the bed up that we created around the mailbox. Soft purple. It's a really pretty color and it pairs nicely with the Nepeta, very similar blooms. More white snapdragons, but look at this coleus. I love this and I want to do this all throughout the borders next year because I think that's so beautiful. I love the broad heart shaped leaves. I love the structure of it, how they kind of alternate. It just looks so clean and beautiful and really, really a striking look in the garden and paired against all of that green. I think it's just, it's really beautiful. Everything over here is looking pretty good. The impatiens aren't, aren't flowering as much as the wisteria impatiens are. And I think that could just, they're not, they don't get hardly any sun, like the little sun that they would get is being shaded out by the coleus and things. But we have a gorgeous Wizard of Oz Dahlia in here and it is small and you can see some slug trails on it, but you know, it's okay. It's okay. Lots of buds, so that's good. There's another Dahlia here, but that one is looking rough with a capital R. Look at that. It just, I mean, are you alive? He just looks like he's having a tough day. Here's a pink dinner plate, really beautiful. And this is open, so the pollinators love that and the bees, the bumblebees, all of them sleep inside of here. Really sweet. Planted another hyssop there. As you can see, we're planting a lot for the hummingbirds. We really want them to feel comfortable and safe here. And next year, I think I really want to plant a bunch of those. There, he's back on the rock and deep purple salvia. I want to plant a bunch of those rock and deep purple salvia, just so that we can have as many hummingbirds as possible and just give them an opportunity to eat their favorite things. Because they just love those, that deep purple salvia. So they cannot get enough of it. They like the verbenas as well. They're really nice. Let's see, maybe we can come around and I can show you the front of the garden. We have things like, you know, this big interrupted fern that we transplanted from the property. Our prairie fire crab apples looking pretty good. We have some tiny, tiny little crab apples on there. I don't even think you could call them that. The stillbees are doing okay over here. The bumblebees love those, which is really nice. Our rose arbor is doing really well. I mean, the roses aren't doing great, but the morning glories are just looking beautiful. And I just think it looks really, really nice to have this here. I think it's a very, yeah, very cottagey way to kind of enter the garden. And it makes kind of a moment of it, I think. It's really peaceful. These roses have defoliated. I think they just, they're tired. They've had a lot of problems this year. They've been afflicted with all kinds of things. Like I've said this before, but roses really struggle in our area. I just love them so much that I was like, I'm going to persevere. But yeah, yeah, we don't see too many people with roses around here. So there's a reason for that. But that being said, the roses actually look spectacular and they have repeat bloomed. So particularly the Olivia rose, Austin. Oh my gosh, this bloomed once and again and again. It's a very soft pink. Our other, so our hollyhock here is like 10 feet tall. And that was what the hummingbird was eating in a previous garden tour. But then we have another one here that's looking really beautiful and a softer pink. So that's really nice. But the hollyhocks are getting afflicted with something. So that's kind of, kind of too bad. But I think I have them tucked away enough to where it's not, it's not a problem. Here's a really beautiful dinner plate, Dahlia. Gorgeous. Very, very, it's a real statement one. That's beautiful. And all throughout we have the repetition of things. So we have the play in the blue salvias. We have the autumn joy sedums. This one is huge. And it's starting to turn pink, which is just really nice. The alnick rose there is gorgeous. That's a little bit more of a warmer pink, really pretty. And then the phlox, look how gorgeous our phlox looks. These are panicle phlox. They're looking really beautiful. And I do love having sort of changing it up and having kind of taller things closer to the front of the border. And then, you know, in other places having that graduation up. But I think having, you know, throwing off the order a little bit with some taller things toward the front is kind of nice. Here's our other tripod with our morning glories on it. And these ones are a little bit more blue, but very, very pretty. Lots of, you know, the dahlias are looking super healthy. If you look how that chunky girl, she's looking healthy and good, but something's eating all the blooms before they get a chance to really bloom. I'm seeing a bunch of buds. So hopefully the earwigs, I think it's probably earwigs or slugs or something, leave them alone so that we get a few of those. Because, yeah, this is really like prime dahlia time. And I love dahlias. I really want that. I really want that season. The annuals, you know, they've been, they're tired. They've been really, really stretched this year in terms of the slugs, because we just have had so, so much rain. But they are looking really pretty. They're still doing what I want it to do, which is sort of creating this nice little freckles down the border. I think it's really, really pretty. I love the Russian sage. We have Russian sage here and repeated again over there. The scent of the leaves is gorgeous. And I think they have a really nice soft purple look that's really nice in the border. And I think the combination of that with the blue, plant the blue salvia, and this dahlia is really nice. That dahlia is a funny one. The main bloom there, it's broken off and has like five dahlia pups kind of coming off of it. I don't know if you can see that. There's the main flower that has died back. And now there are how many? One back there, two, three, four. Can you see that? Yeah, it's a strange one. In the back of the border, we're going to still plant some shrubs back there. The cosmos that we planted is looking really healthy and really strong and not blooming at all. So that's a thing. Our Thomas Edison dahlias are blooming and they look beautiful. Really, the main ones that have been blooming for us have been the Wizard of Oz, the Thomas Edison, and the Dinner Plates. The Edinburgh's were blooming a lot at the beginning of the season, and now they've kind of petered out a little bit, which is too bad. Yeah, the purple kale is looking so good. I love that color. It's just doing exactly what I wanted it to do, which is just sort of creating that purple structure in there. And yeah, it adds nice depth to our cottage borders. The lambs ear, oh my gosh, look at how ginormous that is. Look how huge and beautiful we have. One of you were telling me that's like a katydid, and then this huge guy here has been eating our iris. That's the first time that's happened. All right, well, I think that's pretty much it for this tour. I just wanted to walk around and show you how it's looking. Everything looks full and if a little bit tired, but just happy. Things look pretty happy right now, which is really, really nice. And yeah, if this is an encouragement of anything, maybe to hold off on the sprays, I guess, and just see what happens. Sort of a gentle approach to things can be really, really nice, and you can still have a beautiful garden, I think. So yeah, let me know how your gardening year is turning out. Let me know if you've been struggling with things or what those things might be, and I hope to see you again very, very soon. I will. We've been trying to upload twice a week, so I'll see you again very soon. And like if you like, subscribe if you're not already. That really helps us out, and yeah, we're a new channel. We're hoping to continue making these videos. So I think the sun has come out, and I think we're going to go enjoy this, maybe go to the lake or something. Okay, take care. Bye.