Years of Gardening Are Paying Off | July Garden Tour

The more you cut on them, the more blooms you get. Typically see them in hot colors. It is peak summer and the garden is changing every day. It's been hot, it's been dry, and it's mid-July. So let's go through and do a garden tour. Hi, it's Steph. Welcome back to our garden. I am standing right beside our Engelmanni's Bush's Lace Spruce that we planted last season, and it put on some really good growth this spring. Here on my left side, you can see that we have this beautiful Japanese maple. This is a fire glow, which is also the anchor of the corner of this bed. So we have the Japanese maple, then we have this conifer, and of course, all of our perennials, which are just starting to peak now. So we have a beautiful June in our garden. By July, things peak, and then things will slow down. But I have planted so many perennials to keep the bloom show going until the fall. So there's never a shortage of something pretty to look at. Now my coneflowers are looking so pretty. This is the traditional or native variety of Echinacea purpurea. It has self-seeded prolifically in this bed, so I have it weaved throughout. It's even made its way onto our other border that we'll get to in a little bit. But I have some oriental lilies kind of mixed in here, as you can see, that some of them are getting covered by the coneflower, so I'll have to rearrange them. But those buds are nice and swollen. They're going to crack bud in the next couple of weeks and bloom beautifully. The oriental lilies are different shades of pink. I have some stargazers. They're so fragrant and really beautiful. But the deer do like them, so I have to make sure to keep them sprayed so that I can enjoy those blooms. The daisies are just going over now. You can see that some of the petals on the blooms are starting to brown. This is the stage where you can go through and deadhead them to clean up the plant, or you can leave some on to drop seed as they dry, and you'll get more daisies next year. But these beauties right here I talked about recently as a beautiful July bloomer. They are globe thistle, also known as echinops. And the variety that I have is the blue glow, and you can see why. They actually look like little blue balls that are glowing. They're really interesting bloom. They coordinate so nicely with garden flocks as well as the coneflowers, so they would look gorgeous paired together in a border. And they are about, I would say, four, four and a half feet in height. They're pretty spiky because they are a type of thistle, but really interesting. And I've collected my own seed for the last couple of seasons. I've winter sown them, and I've gotten more plants. So now I have this grouping, and I have another grouping on the other side, as well as some in my well bed that we'll get to in the backyard. But this beautiful evergreen I often get questions about, and it is a weeping blue atlas cedar, yep, a weeping blue atlas cedar. And it is a serpentine shape, so it was trained by the nursery into an S shape. And it has kind of a weeping habit, which means it has stayed pretty compact over the years. And it is gorgeous. It gets really pretty blue spring color, and it still has that blue coloration, but it's really vibrant in spring. Now this was the first conifer we bought for our garden that was a little bit pricey. I think we paid around $200 at the time, and I was so worried about this plant. Remember that, George? I was coming out here often to make sure that the soil was okay, that it wasn't getting too much water, too little water, but it has done beautifully. And it's been here for 14 years now because it was one of the first things that we planted in our landscape. Here in the front of the bed, I have had this Sahara rudbeckia that's been blooming for a couple of weeks now. It's a gorgeous variety that I started from seed. It has since self-seeded, and it has come back for me for a couple of years now, which is really exciting because initially I grew it thinking it would only be an annual. So if you haven't grown this variety before, I highly recommend it. Very easy from seed, and you get these beautiful variation of sunset colors. And right behind it, I have the traditional golden rudbeckia that is just starting to bloom. They're also known as black-eyed Susans, even though they have a brown eye. But they provide a lot of color in the mid to late summer. They start blooming for me mid to end of July, and the color will persist almost until fall. So they're a really good perennial. I have some phlox that will bloom later, as well as some grasses. My yarrow has been going for a little while now, but in the front of the border, I recently planted some balloon flowers, and I also have some vinca that I started from seed. So these pink blooms here are actually vinca, and they were super easy to start from seed, although they did take a long time to get going. So I started them in February, and this is what they look like now. They're a really pretty shade of pink. I do have something, I believe it's the earwigs, that are going through and eating all of my petals. So they look like this. They've been cut. This is happening with my cone flowers, with this vinca, with a few different blooms. So I might have to put down some of the sluggo bait, because it also helps with earwigs. I hadn't done that, but I've used them with my dahlias in the past, and it's effective. So I'm going to have to go through and do that now that I'm noticing this. My penstemon, I actually left up the seed pods, and they look really pretty actually. They provide a little bit of this dark coloration, but the reason for that is because I noticed that this year my penstemon was a little more sparse than it has been in prior years. And when I looked it up, it seems that penstemon can be a short-lived perennial. It will be really vigorous for about three to five years, and then it will kind of start getting smaller, and that's what I noticed. So I'm hoping that they'll drop some seeds. I have seen some penstemon seedlings in my bed before, so I know that they easily start from seed. So that's why they're up, but they also provide some visual interest. I also have some white vinca that grew and is looking really pretty, and I kind of alternated it. But I recently added some more balloon flower. I did a video of my July blooms, and I listed balloon flower as one of those that is really great for the garden. And you can see that they make these little puffs or balloons that will then pop open and look like this. Now this variety is called Sentimental Blue, and it's a nice short variety. It stays compact and bushy, which makes it great for the front of the border. So I planted four of them, one right here, here, here, and here, in a drift where the bed kind of pops out to add a little bit of color in July to the front of the border. I also have one in the back there that is a little bit taller that is a variety I'd planted several years ago. I had moved to another area, and that one just popped up because they have really deep tap roots. So if you leave a little bit of root in there, they'll grow a new plant. My garden phlox is just starting now. The one on this side is a little behind because the deer chomped on it. Now what's interesting is that I have several varieties of phlox in my garden, and some of them, this one, they will chomp on, but some of the others they leave alone. So I'm not sure why that is. If you have any ideas, let me know down in the comments. I have another grouping of rudbeckia here that is starting to bloom, and some more of the Sahara rudbeckia here as well. But let's take a look at the front porch pots. So a few weeks ago, I had posted a maintenance video for summer containers, and these were just starting to put on a little bit of growth. But I gave them a fertilizer application, and you can see that they exploded in size. So now you can barely see that there are even pots here, and it just looks like a stair-step kind of garden, which I think looks really beautiful. So I repeated the same plants in this area. I have some sunpatians. I have two varieties of sunpatians. I have this rose glow variety that looks really pretty with this color blaze torchlight coleus. This is some dicondra emerald falls that a friend grew from seed and shared with me, and I think it looks really beautiful because it matches the green on the outer margin of the coleus. I have some purple fountain grass in the back that's actually having a hard time growing because of the vigor of this coleus. So I will go through and sort of trim the coleus a little in the back to give them a little bit more room. This verbena is excellent. If you like growing verbena and you haven't tried the violet ice variety, it is a really vigorous grower. It has tons of blooms on it, really fills out a planter quickly. It would also be excellent in the landscape. And I used some gara because it provides this really kind of whimsical, airy feel to the planters. The bees and pollinators love it, and I just love the way that it moves gracefully in the wind. But all in all, I'm really happy with the combination in these planters this year. This is another plant that this is my second year using it. It's the angelonia or summer snapdragon. It's the blue variety, which is a really pretty deep purple. And an annual that I'm trying for the first time this year, I actually picked them up on clearance at Walmart on a whim. They were like two dollars each, is bacopa. I wanted another white accent for the front of these planters. I came across this one and I thought I would try it. Now what I read about growing bacopa is that you can't let the soil dry out. If you do, they'll drop all of their bloom buds and then you have to wait for the plant to reload, which can take several weeks. And so far I've been pretty good about watering these planters daily because this is a west facing area and it gets super hot every afternoon. So I come out here in the morning, give them some water so they'll be good for the day, and the bacopa seems to like that because it's doing really well. But let me know if you've grown it before and what you think of growing bacopa. In my main walkway border you can see I have this group of cone flowers that actually self-seeded and grew itself here and I think it looks really pretty. I did give it some support with one of these half moon plant stakes just to make sure that they wouldn't topple over with the wind because we do get a lot of wind in this area. I went through and gave all of my roses a good cut back after their large flush in June. They bloomed beautifully this year. Cleaned them all up. Now they have some new growth being pushed out. They're reloading and they will start blooming again probably by August and they'll continue until my first hard frost. Now one thing that's a real disappointment for me this year in this bed is the gomphrena that I'm growing. So I have grown gomphrena in the front of this bed for the last several years. My favorite variety so far has been the atomic purple gomphrena. It's just the most vibrant, the most full and prolific. This year I grew this variety that I picked up seeds from at Johnny's. It's called the sequin gomphrena. It's a new variety but it just doesn't have as many blooms on it. I feel like it has a lot of foliage, not as many blooms and the color is really muted which could probably look pretty in some gardens but I was really looking for something vibrant in the front of this bed. I thought the pink would be a little bit closer to this shade of pink and it actually is more kind of like a salmon, very light pink. We'll see as the season goes on. It could surprise me and really bulk up but for now I'm not too thrilled with it but we'll have to wait and see as time goes on. Now some of this dwarf bachelor's buttons that I started over the winter for spring blooms is still blooming. Look at that. I did go through and shear it back a couple of weeks ago and it put out a bunch of new buds so I've been really happy with this variety. I am hoping that it self-seeds a little bit but if not I do plan on growing it again next year. I have some phlox that is also starting to bloom. Now this is the variety that just kind of popped up in this bed. I did have a coral variety several years ago. I think there was some crossing that happened in the garden and it turned out to be this really pretty pink which surprisingly is the same shade of pink as my knockout roses. So while the roses are in a bit of a lull, this phlox will come in and add some really pretty color. I did divide it last fall so I have another grouping down further in the bed. I also have some white phlox that I planted last season and some yarrow that I actually started from seed. Now this bloomed beautifully over the last month or so but recently I did go through and den head it because I could see that it was pushing out a bunch of new growth and some new buds so I cleaned it up so that it will hopefully give us a second flush. But I really like the soft pink shades of this variety. I grew it from seed. It's called Summer Pastels Yarrow. It is a little bit tall so it can have a tendency to flop. So far they've been pretty good though. And moving on to this bed, something else that I started from seed that's looking really pretty at the moment is the Dalmatian Peach Phlox Gloves. Look at these beauties. Now I have been growing these for about three seasons now, maybe four. I absolutely love them. They are not a super tall phlox glove. They stay relatively short at about 24 inches maybe up to 30 inches in height and they have the most beautiful light apricot peach coloration. And I did plant some of this Blue Horizon Adgeratum in with it but I kept cutting it back and in hopes that it would bush out. So it's a little bit behind but they should start blooming a little bit better now and we'll go until our first hard frost. Again I have some more of that Dwarf Bachelors Buttons. You can see I have one there, this one here. I weaved in some more of that Blue Horizon Adgeratum and I also have some of this Alyssum that I started from seed in the spring still blooming. And look at all of these pollinators on this plant. And it has such a lovely fragrance. I find that they have a bit of a honey smell to them and it's looking really pretty. I did again give them a little bit of a haircut a few weeks back and it has reflushed out as well as the white which is right here. Now the purple variety is the Oriental Nights and this one is the Carpet of Snow variety. I did plant some Lantana in between to give a little pop of that pink again to tie in with the Knockout Roses in my main border. And those are also putting on some size. Now in the back here my drift of the Bobo Hydrangeas is starting to bloom and these are a beautiful hydrangea. In some years they tend to brown a little bit on me. So far they look really good. If they get ample water because they are in full sun they usually stay looking pretty nice. But if it's a really dry summer, a lot of heat, and I don't supplement with water, they can sometimes brown. But they're a pretty compact hydrangea. The Bobo is a panicle that stays about three to four feet in height and in width. George actually pruned these for us this year. He did a great job and they're looking really nice. And let me give you an update on an annual that I grow every year, the Zahara Double Raspberry Ripple Zinnias. We've been having a really hot and dry summer. We actually had a stretch in June where we didn't get any rain for three and a half weeks which has left our lawn really dry and spotty. We haven't used our irrigation a whole lot because we are on a well and we are worried about taxing our well and not having water in the house so the lawn has been on its own. But I usually like to plant some annuals in the front of our driveway walls every year and I have to keep those watered. And in years past I had to lug up several cans, watering cans of water to keep everything watered. But now I have a long enough hose that makes the job so much easier. I have a Vigo retractable hose where if you don't have a retractable hose in your garden I highly recommend making that investment when you're able to because it really does help with watering. It makes it so much easier and I have a 130 foot length which a lot of the retractable hoses only come in a 100 foot length so that extra 30 feet of the 130 length really helped me be able to water all of these Zahara Raspberry Ripple Zinnias that I planted in front of our walls and I've kept them happy and growing despite our lawn being patchy. So I always have a link for Vigo products down below as well as a promo code so if that's something you're in the market for check there. But let me show you my Zinnias. They're looking so pretty. Sometimes you find the perfect plant for the perfect spot and that was the case with these Zahara Double Raspberry Ripple Zinnias. I've been growing them here in our front driveway walls for the last three seasons and I love them because they're a short compact variety that stays nice and bushy making them perfect for the front of a border or even in a container. Now when you first plant out seedlings it's really important to keep them watered so that they establish a good healthy root system and I planted these out here probably in June but I started them from seed back in February and I actually made a video called Your New Favorite Flower where I showed you my whole process for starting these from seed and I even talked about how I collected my own seed from my plants last fall and I was going to experiment with growing some from my seed because sometimes when you purchase seeds and you grow them there's some cross-pollination that happens in the garden so the seed that you collect might not look exactly like the plant that you collected the from but in this case I'm happy to report that the ones I started from seed do in fact look like the Raspberry Ripple Zinnias and I even had one that grew itself in the crack between the driveway and this bed that looks exactly like it. They usually start off this really pretty fuchsia color before getting a little bit of a striping effect and then fading to a light pink and shades of white. So some of you have told me that you've actually grown this variety after you've seen me share it with you and that you've really enjoyed it so if you want to go ahead and collect your own seed this season to have some stock and grow them again next year go ahead and collect them I'm pretty sure they're going to look the same because these here that I grew from seed that I collected look very similar. In fact I kept them here until they bloomed so that I could make sure that the color was right and now I'm going to plant them in that spot that I left blank waiting for these. We're supposed to get some rain tomorrow so fingers crossed so that these will get watered after I set them in the ground. And here on my driveway there's a bed that doesn't often make its way into videos and it's currently full of weeds and needs some mulch but I want to show you a couple of things. So originally we had two Japanese maples these are blood goods planted here and I thought that it would be a great idea to extend or to create a bed between them and I think it looks really lovely. I like the way it looks when I come down the driveway it's been a little bit of a challenge to find plants that will do well here because it's an area that stays pretty moist. We did plant the Japanese maples pretty high so they've done okay. I did plant some Carl Forester grasses this is a really excellent ornamental grass because they stay nice and compact. I had originally seen these at the drive-thru at Starbucks really liked them figured out that they were called the Carl Foresters and planted a cluster of three of them by my shed and have since divided them and now I have six. I planted three on either side of this new bed so they stay about four to five feet in height and only about two to three feet in width at most so a nice good size grass and I have some firelight tidbits. I have two of them in the front of this bed and in the center I have this shrub that I picked up on clearance at Lowe's several years ago. It's a sage leaf willow so it's called iceberg alley sage leaf willow and you can see that it has this really beautiful kind of silvery blue coloration that looks just like the herb sage but it's a shrub and in the spring it gets these little catkins that look like pussy willow catkins and that is its bloom and then it will fill out with this beautiful foliage which I think provides a really pretty color contrast and because willows like water it has been really happy in this bed. And another thing that likes a consistently moist but well draining soil is hydrangeas so I said I had the firelight tidbits in the front and last season we transplanted this quickfire hydrangea to this area when we were working on our hillside garden. Now this was getting a little bit shaded by our eastern redbud so I put it here and it's blooming beautifully and the pollinators absolutely love this hydrangea. I actually have to be careful because there are wasps all over it right now but I'm happy to report that it made the transplant it's really happy and it's blooming beautifully this season. And I mentioned that I have to find plants that are happy in this area because of the moisture and this is one that I found this spring I ordered it online it's called the burnet or sanguasorbia and the variety is called lilac squirrel and it gets these bottle brush type blooms that are kind of drapey that look really pretty in this purple pink coloration and even the foliage is really nice it's kind of unique if you look at that. So I only have one of them I purchased one to test it out we'll see how it does I'm hoping that it thrives in this space and if it does in a season or two I can divide it and match it on the other side. And right across the way on the other side of the driveway is the back of that bed that we looked at earlier where I have the You can see that I also have some liatris now this goes by a few names it's called gayfeather or even a blazing star I'm trying to think of all the names they sometimes come in white and light pink as well. Now there are some varieties that are really tall these here are pretty compact and I really like the tidy shape of them. I purchased them in a bag of bulbs as bare root from the box store nursery several years ago. If I had to guess based on the size it's probably the cabold variety I did have some questions on that recently but they're a really great pollinator attracting plant and I planted up the back of this bed so that as you're coming down the driveway I have some iris in the spring I have some peonies in the corner and then this time of year I have this liatris and of course this beautiful Japanese maple that looks this way from spring through fall when it eventually drops its leaves and I love the way it cascades over this retaining wall and a little update on our driveway planters they are filling in beautifully so I used the same coleus that I used in the front porch this is the color blaze torch light and I planted a little bit different sun patient on this one it has more of a coral coloration now these are self-cleaning but when I see a spent bloom like this it's kind of just like an impulse to pull them off in the front I planted a new variety of a helichrysum this year now I had been using the licorice that came in that silvery color which was gorgeous and such a vigorous grower by the end of the season it filled out this whole container now this one is called lemon I believe it's either lime or lemon but I believe it's lemon and it looks really beautiful also picks up I know how you can tell don't you leave all the tags and you oh yes I do let's take a look so this one is called lemon licorice so great great point George that was good reminder I keep all of my tags in a stack in the back of the container for this very reason so it's called lemon licorice it's another variety of helichrysum it says that it gets 8 to 12 inches in height now this one I did cut back because one of the branches had gotten snapped off when I was watering and so it does trail you can see that right here it's starting to trail down the container so it could be that it gets just as vigorous as the silver by the end of the season but I have really enjoyed this one this season as well I think it coordinates really nice with this coleus and with the color of the sun patient and with the dark containers it really pops so I did all three containers in the driveway the very same color I also planted some of this agastache this is the miestro maestro coral that I had trialed last year now it's starting to go into a little bit of a lull I do have to deadhead it but the pollinators love it and it has a nice minty fragrance and in the back I also have some of the purple fountain grass as you can see the vigor of this coleus is again kind of shading it out so I will go through now and just give these a good trim because I can see they grow really well so even by cutting it a little bit to give the grass a little breathing room they'll bounce back in no time so I think it's just about that time now to go through and cut these now we're in the backyard and here we have my patio bed and you can see that this hedge of hydrangeas are just starting to bloom these are the firelight tidbits and this is I want to say the fourth year they were planted in 2022 and they're looking gorgeous now they are supposed to be a more compact pinnacle hydrangea at two to three feet tall and wide I would say that they're most definitely already at that three by three size this one is a bit larger and then they get a little bit smaller as we go down and that kind of depends on again the light conditions in the bed and starting here actually let me back up a little bit this is the dusty miller that I started from seed I want to give you a little update on these now this is the new look dusty miller again super easy to start from seed I've been growing them from seed for about three seasons now this one survived the winter and came back so it has a really great size on it and the other ones that I dotted here are a little bit smaller because I started them from seed this year to replace the ones that didn't make it but they are also putting on some good size now and by the end of the season they should all be the same size and look pretty even I'm hoping that a couple of them will survive this winter but we just never know they are rated as an annual so it's always a bonus when some come back I also have a couple of alliums here that are going to start blooming pretty soon these usually bloom closer to August this is the millennium variety of allium these are perennial clumping alliums which are different than the bulbs that you plant in fall and bloom in spring these are an excellent perennial because they're part of the onion family the deer and rabbits stay away from them and the pollinators absolutely love them plus they have a really unique bloom they're a little sphere or ball shape which are really pretty and to round out this corner I just want to show you this wigella that I have planted here I showed it in my spring garden tour and it had these little purple pink bell-shaped blooms but it has really beautiful variegated foliage it's called the maimonae purple effect wigella and it's a really pretty shrub also a dwarf variety it's supposed to stay about two by two in height and in width I would say that mine is closer to three by three at this point so if things are happy they will grow beyond the size that you see on the tag and that happens to be the case with that wigella back to these hydrangeas I do have to spray these with a deer and rabbit repellent because at this stage these blooms are really attractive to deer so if you have panicle hydrangeas or any hydrangeas that is something to take note of you do have to protect them because they can get eaten but they look beautiful and I also have lots of coneflowers in this bed that again have self-seeded at this point the echinacea purpurea or the native variety has sort of taken over I did have some powwow wild berries that are getting fewer and fewer by the year I do have one pretty variety here that has come back happily for several years it is this really pretty raspberry colored one it's actually called double scoop raspberry and it has this puff ball on top with the petals that sweep downward below and it's also a really pretty variety in the front I did incorporate some annuals in the bed which I think is a great way to add continual color throughout the season I have some of the white bidens this is the campfire marshmallow bidens that I put between all of these ogon sweet flag grasses that I have in the front of the bed they look like mini cosmos and they pump out blooms all season long behind that I have alternating some of the truffula pink gumfrina as well as some rockin play in the blue salvia and in front of that is as the lower layer in the front I put a drift of the compact orchid sun patient which looks lovely at the moment I absolutely love this really soft kind of lavender pink coloration now going around the back of the bed I'm going to show you a couple more things oh right here actually I have a plant that I started from winter sowing it is a malva zebrina now I started a whole pack of seeds two seasons in a row and I only got one seedling from it now this is a plant that also likes a consistently moist but well draining soil some of you have told me in the comments that it can self-seed and get a little excited and carried away so I am going to keep an eye on it and see how it does but it does have a really sweet bloom I'm hoping that it stays well behaved now in the back you can see I have more cone flowers but something that just started blooming since we made our last video which highlighted some really good July bloomers is nephophia or red hot poker now I absolutely love this variety because it's unique you typically see them in hot colors of orange and coral and even some yellow but this one has this limey chartreuse color and it fades to an ivory it's called lady luck I actually purchased it from Etsy believe it or not several years ago from a plant salesperson and I've been really happy with it it's gotten to be a pretty good size there are tons of buds on it still so it's going to bloom really well this year and even when it's not in bloom it has this really pretty kind of grassy texture that makes it look like an ornamental grass my containers on the back patio are also looking really pretty as they fill out and I'm really happy with the hot colors that I chose this year now this medusa sweet potato vine is a real pretty one but it is very vigorous I've had to cut it a couple of times to give some room to this peachy keen verbena so if you grow it just know that you have to give it some space and kufia this is the first season that I've grown it in containers I absolutely love it and you know who else loves it the hummingbirds I find hummingbirds on here all the time and I have really enjoyed that this season this is the albredo albredo coleus I also have some compact orange sun patients in here and this cascade red begonia with these large waxy leaves and all together I think these colors look really pretty I have a matching set on both sides of the bench and yeah I just I'm really happy with them right here behind our outdoor couch I also have a grouping of three of these planters also looking really pretty you can see this orange sun patient is really filling in it goes so well with the kufia and with this Sedona sunset coleus and then the cascade red begonia is just doing what it's supposed to cascading over the edge of the container and I just I absolutely love these this year every time I come out here I am so happy with them and I also used a new variety of sweet potato vine that has been improved this is the bewitched after midnight has this really deep dark coloration with some burgundy on the back of the leaves really pretty one and coordinates really well with these hot colors in my tall planters I also have a matching set I put the medusa sweet potato vine some of the kufia the albredo coleus in the corner here I have some of the compact orange sun patient and trailing down the front the peachy keen verbena which is looking gorgeous at the moment such a pretty variety of verbena I have this other patio bed that is more shady that we created a couple of seasons ago and there's something I want to share with you in here you might recall that back in April we had a video where we planted some lily bulbs that I had purchased over the winter at the box store and specifically these varieties so this is the lily black charm I planted on 4-11 and the lily landini that I planted as well now this was supposed to be a really deep dark maroon kind of black looking lily well they are done now but I took some footage of them a couple of weeks ago and they were actually red like really red and if you've been around for a little while I don't have any red plants in my garden it's not something that I favor in the landscape and so I was quite disappointed that they were not this deep dark shade so for any of you who saw us plant these and who maybe picked some up as well let me know what your experience was what color did yours turn out I am not sure if there's anything to do with the soil that would have affected the color of the blooms when it comes to lilies but I would be curious to know if you have any idea but I did want to give you an update because I had a couple of people ask about them and so that's what happened they definitely were not black they were red and just to highlight a couple of things in this bed I also planted some of the new look dusty miller that I grew from seed under this aureum Japanese maple I have some heucheras that I planted in here and something that's doing really well this year is some brunnera that I planted last season this is the jack of diamonds brunnera it bloomed beautifully in the spring with these sprays of very beautiful light blue flowers that look very much like forget-me-nots and once it's done blooming it starts putting on these really large kind of heart-shaped leaves it's just a beautiful plant for a shady spot and this blood good Japanese maple is doing a really good job about keeping some things that I planted beneath it shaded so I have some caramel heuchera they're actually called southern comfort heuchera which looks very much like the caramel I also have some of the Japanese painted ferns this is the crested surf variety which has a little bit of a flipped edge on them and coming around the corner I have a shade plant that's a really pretty one that if you don't have maybe you can look for it is Solomon's seal and the variety that I have is variegated I love that it has this dark red stem and in the spring it gets these little dangle blooms underneath the leaves that look like little white earrings I think it's just a really pretty shade perennial the deer do like it so I have to keep this clump here closer to the house so that it's a little more protected from the deer and here underneath our Dr. Merrill magnolia I had planted some let's dance sky view macrophylla hydrangeas and I was going to try this variety in my garden because I don't have many or any macrophylla hydrangeas and they're blooming and look really lovely now you can see that they're more purple and pink which means the soil in this area is likely to be more alkaline but we'll see what happens over time but I'm just happy to get some flowers considering it's the first season that I planted them and they were pretty small plants but they're looking really pretty and in between I have some soprano pink impatiens that also really like the shade that the canopy of this magnolia is providing in the corner of this bed I have a hardy hibiscus that usually blooms for us here in my zone 6b 7a in August it is the perfect storm hibiscus it is a real pretty one and it gets these large dinner size blooms and light pink with a little bit of white and red center really tropical looking plant great for a patio or even by a pool or something a really good one and in the back here you can see that I have the other quickfire hydrangea that's in bloom full of pollinators all over it and it's putting on some really good size it's been here for about four seasons now and I really love that hydrangea it has more of an open panicle kind of more eerie in the way that it blooms it's a real pretty one and on this side another panicle hydrangea I have my hedge of little limes now I have three little limes planted here in a row the first two are getting the most light and the third one is now hiding under the canopy of the katsura Japanese maple so that maple does need a little bit of a prune which we will have to get to at some point later in the season probably in late fall or winter when it drops its leaves but I absolutely love these hydrangeas they will start blooming right now towards the tail end of July they start off a bit of a limey green color then they go cream before going different shades of pink as we get later in the summer and we get cooler evenings and then by fall they have different shades of mauve on them they're just stunning these are my absolute favorite and I love that I can see this hedge from my kitchen window my window boxes are looking really pretty I had ordered some mandevilla from qvc if you recall a few months back in a really interesting color that I had never seen before it was called blue but it's actually this really pretty shade of purple and I just wanted to show that to you because I have typically grown the white mandevilla or diplodenia so the diplodenia is more bushy where the mandevilla is more vining this one was listed as a type of mandevilla but I had never seen this color before and a new to me color this year was also this buttery yellow I just picked these up at Lowe's but I think they're really sweet and look really pretty in combination with this purple color here on our patio that leads you down to our Japanese maple garden these planters you can see that the Japanese forest grass looks really pretty now this is an excellent grass for a shady spot I absolutely love this part of the garden I feel like it's such a cozy and intimate space the shade provides a nice refuge from the hot summer weather and I like to sit here and have my coffee sometimes in the morning it's just been a really great space in our garden now in this area the Japanese maples are kind of in a lull they have a really beautiful spring where they have very vibrant colors they get a little more muted in the summertime before having a little bit of fall color to end out the season but there are some shade plants in here that are looking really pretty so our caramel hooker is actually blooming there is some weeding that needs to get done in here but also our painted ferns so these Japanese painted ferns have put on quite a bit of growth this season you can see how beautiful this silvery color is with some of this red veining it adds a pop of brightness to a shady corner of the garden so if you haven't grown this variety before give it a shot it's really pretty and you can see how well it contrasts with things like hookerow now I did have a few hostas planted underneath this Ariadne Japanese maple that we actually removed a couple of seasons ago and I have planted some of this Ascot Rainbow Euphorbia now I had three planted around this tree one of them didn't come back after winter but the others are putting on some good size and it has a really pretty foliage color you can see it's variegated has kind of a limey yellow green around the outer margin and then green in the center it also blooms in May in our garden and these didn't bloom this year one of the older ones that I had did bloom it's really pretty kind of lime green little disc shaped blooms but at the end of the path I also have some more of the Japanese forest grass I have two varieties in my garden the one we looked at earlier is called all gold and this one is called areola which is a variegated green and yellow one but they put on some good size and I love the way they kind of will drape over the path eventually and what I noticed through the corner of my eye when we were in the Japanese maple garden is that this magnolia it's a magnolia and it blooms in the spring but I have noticed that in mid-summer it will have some sporadic re-blooming you can actually see at the top of the shrub here well it's you know you can it can be a large shrub or you can trim it into a small tree there's quite a few blooms look at that see all those buds I saw one of our neighbors had put on some blooms and I thought that was cool and then I noticed just now that ours is doing it as well I'm pretty sure last summer there was one or two but there's definitely more this year as it puts on more size now this bed is a woodland bed don't look at it it's pretty messy right now I do have to go through and weed it but it's been a very busy season so far so it's something I'll have to get to at some point and this newer bed that we created last season it has really filled out you would never know that this is only one season old and you can see that some of the echinops or the blue glow globe thistle that I started from seed last season is also blooming so these were started with winter sowing so these are their second season and they have quite a bit of blooms on them looking really lovely the other thing that I started with winter sowing last season that are blooming for the first time are these white swan cone flowers I'm if I'm not mistaken they're actually the powwow white cone flowers but they started from seed with winter sowing also looking really pretty I dotted them all around this bird bath that we have here you can see there are a few more weaved through here and a plant that a lot of you really liked from the last video and that I'm also really enjoying this season is the culver's root it is this really beautiful tall native plant the pollinators love it adds a lot of height to the center of this bed and you can see that it kind of just moves with the breeze and is really lovely so I have been really enjoying it this season right through here you can see that I have a grouping of some allium that is actually blooming already this is called the bobblehead and it is a taller and a little bit bigger variety of allium and it has a lighter shade of pink than some of my other varieties that are more purple I also have some phlox that is starting to bloom here on this side I have a drift of three of them so I have one there here and here this one is a little bit shorter but it will catch up in no time and from the last tour you could see that I had some of the amazing daisies banana cream too that looked gorgeous well they were past their prime so I went ahead and deadheaded all of them this is what they were looking like I left these on to show you but look at all of these buds that are getting ready to go for their second flush it is loaded with buds these bloom for a really long time they started blooming at the tail end of June we are now in we're going into the third week of July they were still blooming so I cut them back just a couple of days ago and now they should reflush out and I should have blooms all of the month of August which is really exciting now we're down in our recently renovated hillside garden area now you can see that this is a spot where we added a lot of conifers and evergreens some ground covers you can see that there are some blue rug junipers that will eventually grow and cover the ground in this area like they did on the hillside and we also have some shrubs this is the sugar tip rose of Sharon that will usually bloom in August and along the path I planted some really pretty perennials in fact I have some fox gloves that I started from seed this year that are looking really lovely I grew two varieties of fox gloves this year for this area some of the Dalmatian peach like I had in the front border I added in this bed but I also grew a Camelot lavender variety for the first time that is absolutely stunning now this one you can see is almost done blooming but look at the beautiful coloration on it has a really light lavender some of that deep plum speckling on the inside it's just really pretty so I am planning on growing this one again next year I dotted them or weave them rather throughout this whole bed and I have some of the Dalmatian peach right here also looking really pretty these are a little bit taller than the ones in the front so I do think that they range anywhere from about 24 to 36 inches in height and even these right here look how gorgeous they look I love these so much I'm already looking forward to growing more next year and they work perfectly in this bed because they are toxic to humans and to animals which means that deer and rabbits stay away from them so if you have children or pets that frequent your garden something to be aware of when growing fox gloves but they're a beautiful cottage garden flower now I also mentioned a couple of videos back when I was doing one of my garden center tours that I was taking out a Montauk daisy to plant a Russian sage and that is exactly what I did here I had a Montauk daisy that was taking up a lot of space in this corner I planted this little spires Russian sage it's just starting to bloom and I think this was the perfect swap for this corner it looks really pretty has a nice fragrance and I'm really happy with it so in this raised bed planter I also have a couple of the suncredible sunflowers and some cosmos that I grew from seed I grow cosmos every year in remembrance of my grandmother I used to plant them with her as a child and this is a short variety it's either the Sonoma white or Little Princess and it's perfect for this bed because the height of it stays at about two to three feet so I think it's going to fill out really nicely in this space so this is ironweed that should bloom later in August I also have the daisies that are almost done blooming now you can see that some of the blooms need to be cleaned up and deadheaded so I will go through and do that this week and inside the garden I also have something I want to show you that is looking really beautiful here in my raised bed garden I typically grow a mix of some herbs a couple of vegetables and lots of cut flowers and this year I gave up on dahlias I only have a couple growing but I mostly went all in on zinnias and they look absolutely beautiful right now so I have several varieties growing this light pink is called enchantress I have some of the is also a beautiful variety you can see that the pollinators absolutely love these zinnias and I have been cutting from them non-stop I have made several bouquets to gift to family and friends and what's great about zinnias is that they are a cut and come again flower the more you cut on them the more blooms you get so that is a great way to keep them producing more flowers throughout the season if you have lulls in your borders and garden beds growing an annual like zinnia or a cosmo is a great way to fill space so you can see here I also have some celosia and some amaranth that is looking huge and beautiful look at that amaranth spike up there it's called a red spike variety I don't know if you can get that hi george so pretty with that dark red foliage I have other varieties this is a benary's giant mix that has some oranges and some reds and some yellows I mean such beautiful colors I've been so excited with all of these zinnias this year I can't even tell you they make me so happy and I have to say I don't even miss the dahlias because with these you can just scatter some seeds or start them from seed early if you want to so that you can get some blooms and look how beautiful they look now here's the trick with cutting zinnias for bouquets you want to make sure that the stem has a chance to harden so you do what's called the wiggle test you just wiggle it like this and if it stays nice and sturdy you can cut that stem and put it in a vase to enjoy now this variety down the end I just want to show you because this is the linen variety by johnny's I was torn between growing the ballerina pink and the linen and I essentially went with the linen and it is so beautiful it is a pale color so if you like soft pale colors you might enjoy this one if you like bright summer hot colors then maybe not but this is a really beautiful color I can even see this being used in things like bridal bouquets I really liked it I think it's beautiful as you can see there is no shortage of beautiful blooms in the July garden let me know in the comments what's looking really pretty in your garden at the moment and if you had a favorite in our garden thank you so much for spending your time with us and I'll catch you in the next one