August Garden Tour || my Late Summer Blooms

Hello I'm Rachel from Dwensa Garden in Ireland and you are very welcome to the August garden tour. Now I have a lot to share with you, so many flowers just beginning to get into their stride at this time of year. August I always think is a very kind of calm time, the jobs that needed to be done during the year are largely finished in terms of pruning and other kinds of things, although there's still plenty to do in terms of cutting back and deadheading. The deadheading goes on and on but that's always a joy anyway, how wonderful to remove spent flowers each day and find them replenished by loads and masses of new ones within a few days. And wonderful we have a bit of sunshine so let's get on with the garden tour. For those of you who are new to my channel then you're very welcome as are those who are veterans and I just want to let you know that I garden in southern Ireland in what roughly equates to as hardiness zone nine. Now this isn't a system we use in Ireland so just take it as a rough guide of what I might get through the winter and what I might not. The garden it's an acre in size that's half a hectare and it was a greenfield site when we moved in approximately 24 years ago so all of this has sprung up since then, sprung up I say, sprung up! Nothing springs up in gardening except weeds, it's very much down to the hard graft of the gardener as you all know I'm quite sure. Now we're starting this garden tour over here in the part of the garden in what I call Jotty's garden and we're standing among my cosmos which have done magnificently this year and there was a video I made a little while ago just giving you an update on how the cosmos went because I trialed six different varieties the best of which is this glorious white one which is really really loved by the bees they're just all over it and yeah what's not to love? One daily job that is very important at this time of year is to come out and deadhead the cosmos but it's just so rewarding because it just brings about so many flowers and so much beauty in the garden. This section of the garden has been revamped quite recently and that meant taking out a lot of plants and replanting and that's why you may find some gaps over here. One plant that has done really well one that I grew from seed is this beautiful blue Lobelia syphilitica which has a very kind of pale blue tall spirish flower and I have ones that were planted out last autumn and ones that were planted out really just a few weeks ago it's supposedly a hardy plant and I look forward to it going on and doing great things in the garden it looks magnificent against this purplish cosmos the cosmos of course being gazebo red one I highly recommend. Cosmos rubenza of course can't be beaten for its fantastic red color the persicaria bank at the back of this garden is now in full flower with all of its pink spires looking absolutely magnificent but it has been quite dry and I've had to cut back some plants notably my Lobelia brugersii here just behind the pond you can tell by the level of the pond how little water we've been having it's either been too dry or too wet what can I say well that's enough for over here let's go and explore the bigger part of the garden let's go into the garden through this arch there are two twin paths one of which leads down to the wheel there at the end and there have been some changes down there let's have a look down here you'll notice a very big empty patch in the border and that's because just two days ago I dug out the mother of all hostas and this was a large plant that was giving no value to this full sun border well this is considered full sun in Ireland those of you in hotter climes might consider it to be so much so but it is a good spot to grow something that has beautiful flowers and you can see that I have some of my tiger lilies in here which obviously like full sun and it was just time for that hosta to go so out it came and now I have a patch to play around with to the right of a patch is a large sanguisauber pink brushes which desperately needs dividing now I'm not going to divide it now because it's about to come into flower and besides plants that flower at this end of the year the latter end of the year should be divided in spring rather than autumn so I will maybe put a piece of it back here but the majority is going somewhere else just freeing up a lot of space I have a little silvery thing going on over here which I may repeat or may move I'm not quite sure so on the left we have an artemisia which is really very much a ground cover plant quite nice as such just beside it we have the onion smelling tulbagia which has actually flowered this year this one's a little bit tricky I think it's kind of borderline tender and I've lost it before but hey it seems to be doing okay here but all in all it's great to have a new space to play around with and to put plants in and I'll have fun rejigging this one so now we're going to head on over here to the long border and we have some late color really from ligularia and likeness but I have some terrible news the agastache that I planted last autumn has proved not hardy and it's dead I bought two of them planted them both in the garden and both of them are gone so beautiful though it was it's not one I'll be repeating again some agastaches are perfectly hardy and some are not you just have to find the right ones it is a shame because the colors looked very nice in this spot here but I'll just have to find something else to fit in maybe something orange to echo the theme further down in the border ligularia are joyous with their big flowers now at this time of year but I've taken to deadheading them which is to remove the brown heads as they go over and just leave the ones that are yellow and I think it well it helps the flowering season last longer and just moving a little bit to the left you can see that the lilies have mostly finished although we do have a few of the laven tree lilies still in bloom and I of course deadhead them as I go cut off the flower heads once they have finished so that the plant doesn't put energy into making seed and I have a couple of really tall plants to show you here at the back of this border so now if we look up kind of running up the spire of the verbascum there which has finished flowering but still adds structure and interest to the garden and we see some tall things like the giant pink eupatorium there on the right brilliant for just standing up by itself not my favorite plant it's one I've gotten rid of in the border in front of the glass house but it's still it's still here and it's okay it's doing fine behind it we have tetraponix rex with those giant jungle leaves looking great and just underneath it and to the left of the eupatorium we have a rudbeckia called herbstone and this really is a tall rudbeckia the challenge with it is to stake it so that it doesn't end up just flopping itself over your other plants and I think I have it this year put in a tree stake and I've tied it twice around and it seems to be holding there are a number of flowers out already and because of course when the flowers open up they add weight to the plant and it suddenly becomes a lot heavier and can break stakes or string that's holding it or trip over the string where still and break its own spike but it seems to be holding so that's good news it's nice to have things that have late interest in this island bed just in front of the long border we have a crocosmia which is in flower at the moment um I think it would be in better flower if I moved it to a position of more sun it is not giving its best and this is one I'm going to have to divide in spring again with the flowering at this end of the season means that we don't divide it until spring and speaking of tall plants that need staking let's just take a look over here and I think you probably can't see the lilies very well because they are dark against the hedge behind them and these are lillium black beauty which always need staking and always try to defy the staking but even though I managed to put them up they still bend a little bit but that's okay and yes I do like my grasses I love the wavy steeper tenuissima and I think I really appreciate them more at this end of the year they're there always and they do a good job always but at this end of the year just something about the quality of life catching them it's magical the geranium at the front is Anne Thompson and she is doing a great job this is her second flush I do have another one called dragon heart down the end but you know what I've changed my mind I think Anne Thompson is the best and in here with Anne and some tagetes some marigolds and the grasses we have a sedum which is variegated so adds interest for all of the year really but at this time of year it begins to color up and it will look amazing when the flowers come in so you can see that the umbels are completely white at the moment but they will take on deep pink hues which are very autumnal and very attractive and certainly match in with the color theme here in this border so we have the one of the sedums up here we've got the second of them in here in the middle and the third one is right down here so this is by far my favorite sedum and one that I've divided and put over on the other side of the garden in joshie's garden we have it too I've put a white phlox through this border it had always been here but last autumn I divided it and dotted it throughout although I see it only in flower here at the moment I think the other clumps are which are the smaller clumps the the divisions they haven't flowered yet and I think it looks really nice and just adds that bit of interest in the border at this time of year and this is what I like to do in this particular border anyway to echo things so to carry the color or the plant through the whole border and do you see that pink daisy just there beside the phlox so this is a Japanese anemone great for shade a tall plant and what's not to love except for the fact that it wants to take over the world now this is one that was given to me by a friend oh about 13 years ago and I thought I'd gotten rid of it but now with the removal of the yuccas here last autumn suddenly I see it again I think it must it's not that it was dormant and just popped up it must have always been there at the back and I just didn't notice but you know what it looks kind of cheerful and happy back there and maybe I'll leave it and give it a chance it would be hard to get rid of it anyway I imagine the alstroemeria dotted in here is of course alstroemeria aureana which has been dead-headed but has only graced me with a smattering of new flowers we can see the tall lily the black beauty a bit better when the sun goes in there at the back beside the hydrangea unfortunately there's a definite autumn feel to the garden at the moment something well on the positive side something about the quality of light is really good but the temperatures the temperatures feel chilly behind the white phlox is a cotinus this one is called grace and if you leave it it will get massive every spring I coppice or pollard really I pollard it I leave a little bit of a stump and I cut it down to the base and I just find it behaves so much better if I do that I think the enormous beautifully colored leaves you would get anyway the large leaves because generally speaking pollarding can lead to large leaves in plants that are prone to do so like paulownia but um so I think but I think grace generally has large leaves but certainly she's so much more manageable with this treatment and I'll continue to do so of course I don't get flowers but you can't have everything so leaving behind us the long border which is that patch over there on the right just a little note about the big conifer tree which has big planting of virginia underneath it such a great plant for dry shade it's incredible absolutely recommend it 100 percent and this is a difficult area dry shade lots of pine needles falling so very acidic and I think I found a good solution much better than epimediums which is the one that the plant that's usually recommended for dry shade and to the left of that we have hydrangea annabelle which is a classic and I'm sure all of you grow hydrangea annabelle in your garden she's magnificent and does so well in dappled shade besides liking dappled shade the dappled shade does the super job of just showing off her colors her creamy whites and her greens and well there she is and she's magnificent and before we move on up the garden just a little note to say that the crocosmia which is inside of this box ring around the cherry blossom tree has been cut back so that it doesn't lie on top of the boxes of course has suffered from box blight on a couple of occasions so we want to give it the best chance we can and now we will take a little jaunt up the garden ah there's something down here I forgot to show you when we walked down a bit earlier it's the geranium well we were down here just a minute ago but I forgot to mention this fantastic geranium called dreamland just at the foot of the gargoyle now this was planted just last year but look how magnificently it's done it has just spread and spread and that's exactly what I wanted in this position of semi shade because there's an ugly stump in there of euphorbia I took out and I wanted to completely I couldn't get the stump out couldn't plant anywhere around it and I just wanted something to cover it and that is exactly what dreamland has done and it flowers for a very long time I mean you can't even see that stump can you but I assure you it's there and you'll notice some monarda cambridge scarlet here just beside the gargoyle and this is from a division from the main plant which was in the long border now you may have noticed that this plump in the long border has diminished so much since last year and I think maybe I was just a little bit too greedy in dividing it too small just a little bit further over we have the second path that I talked about and it's flanked by kinnikloa rubra the New Zealand tussock grass which really looks fantastic at this time of year producing lots of seed and I gave lots of seed out to people who visited my garden recently and hopefully they'll have the same success that I did in growing it into mature plants like these and over here we have my ligularia bed where they do so well despite the fact that my garden is super dry got super stony soil and this is a plant that likes water I cannot explain it but there you go the slugs do like it but um yeah it's looking great at the moment and it's looking all the more lovely because of the fact that I deadheaded it and you know you need to make a decision on what you're going to dead head in your garden and what you're not going to deadhead because you probably can't get to everything I always left these in place because I kind of like the seed heads once they had all completely become seed heads however there was always an in-between time where you had a smattering of flowers and very ugly brown clumps beside them and anyway I have enough ligularia I don't need the plant to seed so I've taken now to deadheading them just removing the spent flowers and that will of course obviate the need to be weeding out baby ligularia from this bed until my hands are raw and now we move into the next part of the garden where the peony border this is the border where I keep the Ito hybrid peonies that flower in May and now it's just it looks fantastic in May but now it looks a bit a bit sorry for itself with just two or three things in flower one of which is sanguisorba lilac squirrel which has done so so well despite it being in semi-shade and I need an injection of color here in this border so seeing that the sanguisorba has done well and the salvia that's done well and the lily has done well I think I can probably get away with some more things that will bring color just opposite we have another border that gets a bit more light and here you'll see some more of the tagetes that was in the last border so these are fantastic marigolds and this little cutie is amazing I saw it somewhere and I had to take some seed and I have managed to grow it from seed now I don't have just orange ones there are yellow ones as well but it makes a kind of little bush and I just think it's the cutest little thing and if you saw my last garden tour you'll recall how I was complaining about slugs eating the marigolds that I placed in the long border they ate all of this marigold when I put it down there I put lots of them down and they were all stripped stripped bare leaving just the other one that is still there so the remaining ones that I still had in trays I placed here and the slugs haven't found them yet so I'm very happy about that and now it's time to head up to the stone table and that upper part of the garden but before we pass by just have a quick look at Lobelia tupa there she is just going over now and she's flanked by some tiger lilies these were the original tiger lilies I had in the garden the ones that I took the bulbs from to do the propagation so I now have three species Lobelias in my garden I've mentioned the other two so far I wonder do you remember them but the third is Lobelia tupa this one a little bit to our left beside the statue we have anapolis which is that silvery plant there on the ground and this area is I yeah it's a little bit shady but the anapolis seems to do okay and it's flanked on the right there by persicaria red dragon the alstroemeria there on the right haven't yet come back into flower despite good dead heading our next stop is at what I call the green border and there are some interesting things of note in here some things in good flower and I suppose the grass at the very front really looks lovely at this time of year with its long wispy fine bits earlier on in the year I was thinking oh why do I have that grass in there it's not very good is it but when kind of mid-summer comes around it really earns its keep my euchemus is in good flower this year and I think I have a well yeah I can see I've got four spikes and they're holding themselves upright and it's just fantastic to the right of it we have the red delphinium which I'm leaving to see if it will produce seed because I would like to propagate that one back here we have diacea personata which I talked about in length in my recent video on the new plants I bought because oh yes I bought some more diacea personata and I'm putting a second plant in here in the border to echo this one which as you can see is really really tall so where's the second one it's over here it's not as tall as the first and that's because well it hasn't had a chance to establish and yeah things in pots don't get terribly tall do they they don't grow terribly tall so in time it will lift up and just do its stuff and you can see flashes of yellow in there from the rudbeckia and the helianthus which I bought last year this time last year you may recall the video you will if you're a long-term subscriber and this is hellenium satin's early flower and it is past its first flush but I've just recently deadheaded it and you can see all the flowers that are coming so this is going to have a very long flowering season the best hellenium really and right down here at the very front of the border we have a little marigold called red knight a tagetes as well as the others you've seen so far and of course there are plenty of amaranthus mixed into many of my beds and this one is a love lies bleeding which I will continue to grow for many years from now I think and there we go that brings me to the end of this garden tour video which I hope you very much enjoyed if you didn't manage to make it to one of my public open days then there's always next year and to all of the groups that came to visit this year thank you very much I hope to welcome you back here another time and if you are in a gardening group then do consider duensa garden as part of your summer garden tours thanks as always for watching and I'll see you on the next video bye