July Mini Garden Tour 🌿 Butterflies, Blooms & Pops of Color ｜ The Preppy Gardener (2025))

Hello and welcome back to my garden here in northeast Oklahoma. I'm Chip Jones and I've been spending the day out in the garden. I went inside and got cleaned up just a little bit but I wanted to finish up some of these last minute jobs and take you along for a little tour. We're moving into the middle of July. It has started to warm up finally here in Oklahoma. We've been doing pretty good since we've had so much rain but it is starting to get a little warm. It's been in the mid 90s. Of course the humidity is reaching pretty much 100 percent because of all the rain but the garden, I can't complain, is absolutely loving it. As you'll just look around there's so many things in bloom and what I was having to do was actually trim up my hyacinth bean vine. This is a vine that's so popular for us out at the garden center and mine actually all came back from little seeds that we just left in the ground over the winter. Of course it likes a lot of warm soil before it really starts to take off but if you just look right here all of the vine coming up and it's taking off here at the arbor. It grows so fast and before you know it it's already intertwined within the roses so I actually had to spend some time here tying it up but before long this arbor will be completely covered in a beautiful climbing vine with beautiful purple flowers. But until then we get to enjoy more beautiful purple flowers by just looking at this buddleia, this butterfly bush. This is one of the more medium-sized growing bushes. I have several different varieties all around the garden. Of course I still get so confused because I can't remember which are which but they have been covered all day with butterflies and just again such a great easy plant to take care of here in the garden. What I want to do now is actually kind of give you a quick tour. We're going to walk through the pollinator garden. I'm going to do just a little bit of maintenance. We're going to end up in the front where I'm going to plant a few more plants. If you'll just come along with me enjoy the tour and I'm going to point out a few special plants along the way. I want you to first of all just look at this beautiful lantana. This is the passion fruit variety and my goal is to kind of have a collar around this boxwood. It's already filling in really well and doing really well this year. One of the plants, let me show you that I planted this just today. This is a pumpkin pie coneflower that we put in today. This grows 18 to 24 inches and I really like that pinkish orange color. Of course it's had a little stress. It's been in the cans for a few too many weeks. I've had it over to the side but I finally got it in and I just love this lighter peachy color right here in this tone. But if you look on in the distance I want to show you another little grouping that I think is looking really good right now. So just on over here this great little grouping of day lilies. We have this beautiful agastache back here and then also this garden phlox. This is blue paradise. It's a phlox that hasn't done that well for me through the years. I usually lose some but I just love this bright intense color. Of course part of going through the garden even after working all day I still find the occasional weed. But I want you to just look at that vibrant purple color in there. I love having garden phlox in the garden and I love the way it pairs with this beautiful orange marmalade agastache here. If you want to see another one looks great look over here at this proven winters variety. This phlox over here is the luminary ultraviolet garden phlox and just look at this beautiful magenta color. I don't know if you noticed there was just a butterfly. Today while I was out here it was just covered with beautiful butterflies. One of the great points about this particular variety just look there's no mold or mildew. That's that's one great thing about so many of these proven winters varieties. They've been bred to be very healthy plants and this one certainly I have no problems with whatsoever. Nice and tall nice strong stems and absolutely no mold or mildew. Again this is the luminary ultraviolet garden phlox from proven winters and it has been a showstopper here in the garden. I did one other little patch of those pumpkin pie cone flowers right through here. I had a little bit of one of my white daisies that just was not doing very well so I brought this little patch in here and also I just recently trimmed our boom chocolata geraniums right back here. Those are starting to put out and probably in another month or so they'll start to put up those beautiful flower buds as well. But again just going through and cleaning up the garden this time of year sometimes things get just a little too rangy. Also cutting things back so that they re-bloom for you is important. Another thing that's important let me show you a tree that actually needs a little trimming as well. So this topiary form of a contorted filbert it's actually putting out some branches from the original trunk where the upper part was grafted onto. So what I'm going to go in is just find out where these are coming out and trim these old original pieces out of this topiary. Of course this topiary should be weeping you can tell easily those did not belong there. I actually have a couple more down here at the lower part as you can see just going in easily trim those out and then you'll see how it goes back to seeing all of the branches from the grafted part of the tree. Again this is a form of contorted filbert and it's great accent plant to have here in the garden. All right let's keep on going on down I want to show you another little grouping that I just love the color combination. Of course these aren't a great color contrast but I just love this combination. Again another beautiful purple butterfly bush here and then we have this mystic spire salvia. I love that blue and purple combination actually has a cool feel here in the pollinator garden. And again two good plants actually you don't have to do a lot of deadheading too. You know I could go in with the buddleia and just cut off some of these dead branches as you can see more buds are coming up there. Hardly ever cut back the mystic spires because it just continues to bloom all the time. I just love the lushness that these plants give here in this time of the year and oh my gosh there comes the butterfly over here now. So again a great plant to have in your pollinator garden. Come on around the corner I have a special plant that I want to show you today that is really putting on a show. I have been waiting to show you these lilies. Just look at how beautiful and majestic they are. These are called tree lilies. It's a form of an oriental crossed with a trumpet lily and a lot of times you'll see them called an OT lily in their description. Growing up almost eight feet tall as you can see they're pretty tall. I'm six feet tall and if I stretch that one up it's getting there it's growing quite quickly. Before you know it these always take off and this has kind of been a little bit of a hidden area. We have our AC units which are just across the fence here and this is around the pollinator garden and it's an area that I forget about a lot because there's not very many plants over here but this time of year these come to life and they're just beautiful. This variety is called beverly dreams kind of looks like a stargazer lily in many ways. There's so many wonderful lilies out there if you want to go in and look for those you'll see yellow and white there's even a beautiful purple color as well. So again an OT lily or a tree lily if you're interested in those. I think if you have a great space back against the fence or the back of the border the only thing I do have a little trouble with is I do have to stake them but certainly worth it. Just another plant that I want to mention while we're back here it's not in full bloom just yet but this is a joe pie wee. This is called little joe can you believe that little joe little joe actually you can get up to about six feet regular joe pie wee can get up to nine to ten feet so this is kind of that mid-range there's actually a baby joe as well. Another great pollinator plant but one that takes up quite a bit of room so you do need a little bit of space to let it spread and do do its thing so to speak but again just starting to put out those flower buds they will be coming out the next probably week or so but once they do again another pollinator favorite as well and I just love the natural feel to this plant but before we go up to the front there's another plant that I want to show you just in the back that's in full bloom another area that we don't see very often so let's head on back by the dog pen. Just look at these beauties this is a phantom hydrangea. Phantom hydrangea has been in here in this garden probably about five years we put them out here because actually on just on the other side are three more of our little babies three more of our dogs this is actually the dog pen that's back here they have a little dog condo that they get to live in it's nice and shady but just out front we get to have these beautiful hydrangeas it kind of creates a little bit of a mini hedge a mini block so to speak one of the things I want to do in the future is I'm actually going to be adding a little bit more garden space here in the front adding a few more plants but look how beautiful these are just standing on their own again it's a phantom hydrangea so easy to take care of here in the garden and that's the one thing when you get further away from the house I like to think about those places is using some of those larger plants some that we really can't use that close to the house and this has been one that out at the garden center that we've had for several years that many customers had talked about so I was glad to add it here in the garden again a plant that's just so easy to take care of so if you're interested in something that can grow quite large flowers it is deciduous so you are going to lose those leaves once we hit wintertime but a wonderful plant to have here kind of on the outskirts of the garden so to speak all right I'm going to go by get my wheelbarrow I'm going to collect a few tools and then we're so I have to say I've been so glad to have had a little help today I had some extra hands that certainly helped in the back but we didn't get a chance to do very much up front but we really didn't need to I want you to just look at how well everything up here is performing the Supertunia Vista Bubblegum have just been doing their thing I've got to fertilize them I haven't been doing as well as I said I would I'm fertilizing but they're starting to really fill in this space which I think they're going to probably in another month take this place completely over of course the planters here in the front are just doing wonderful I guess because of the rain we haven't had a lot of stress and then the villa are all in bloom even the drift roses they haven't been pruned back up here by the front wall they're still doing really well putting out a lot of new blooms but overall it's been one of the best years but one of the things I noticed recently is there wasn't really any pop of color which can be good a lot of times you don't want something just to jump out at you but when we got in this new plant at the nursery I fell in love with it I saw how well it was performing and how bright it looked so I had to get some and brought this home this is the color blaze lime thyme coleus gets about 24 to 40 inches tall when it's fully mature but I just love this bright lime green and when I was looking at the front of the house I thought I would like to have just a little bit more of a punch of a color so I came out and stood and looked and I decided I would actually kind of accent the Supertunia Vista bubblegum I'm going to do a little bit of a lime kind of a semi-circle behind each side I'm going to put these out get them planted but I want you to be sure and look at it before see what it looked like and then see how different it looks once I had this lime green color in there so first of all I'm gonna get them placed then I'll get them planted and then I'll stand back and let you you have to do is be willing to change with it you know as things come and go into bloom if you're fine with just not having any bloom at certain times that's certainly fine but what I like to do is look around as we go throughout the season and see maybe what it's missing and that's certainly why I thought this lime green coleus was just a great addition to add just a little punch of color I think as it grows and fills out and then certainly once the Supertunia grow and probably come up into the coleus I think it's going to make a wonderful colorful display and since I had them here at the front and as we move across this side in front of the house there are a lot more beds on this east side of the house I decided to add one more clump of the coleus over here as well so we put them here again right behind some Vista Bubblegum Petunias and we put them kind of also in front of these daylilies these daylilies are just finishing up so there's not going to be very much color in there and certainly this lime green coleus is going to add that great punch in behind the petunias as we go throughout the season and again this whole section is just one kaleidoscope of changing colors one thing I definitely wanted to show you are the zinnias so come on over and just look at all of these in bloom so this area has been a little bit of an experiment this year last year I had just a few zinnias that had planted here in the background this is actually at the corner as you go into our mud room right in front of the breakfast room window which is a very large window here on the front of the house which looks out onto the pond and I just love having a mass of bright flowers right outside the breakfast room I think this have turned out so well they're getting a little tall so I don't know how much longer I will leave them at this height I may do a lot of deadheading and cutting them back down just to get the height down a little bit but there's so many unique colors in here and of course having these zinnias right up in front of the window we get to see the butterflies jump around all day long and they just look so lush as I've always said many of my videos I just love an English cottage style and certainly these zinnias certainly add to that feel such an easy plant to take care of of course they've loved the rain that we've had but just look at this mass color and so easy I think this is something if you're scared to garden you're scared to go out buy plants one of the easiest thing you can do is buy a packet of zinnia seeds and just throw them out there's no covering them up with any other dirt you just leave them right on top of the ground and just let them seed in themselves again easy easy planting if everything else seems hard to you certainly get you a packet of zinnia seeds and see if you can fall in love with some zinnias well I think this is probably a perfect place to end this video it was just a great little walk through give you a little bit of an update after we've spent a long day out in the garden just weeding and mulching and trimming things back but again there's so many beautiful plants in bloom this time of year I certainly wanted to give you just a little peek of what's going on here at Okarga Farms and remember if you liked this video be sure to subscribe like and follow me the Preppy Gardener and I'll be back with another video very soon