I took a little break from my blog to get a few things done around the house and to stay focused with work AND my sister came to visit us for a week, so we enjoyed a lot of down-time around the house, but I am now back on track and plan to ramp up my blog posts over the summer when I’m not on vacation. I can’t believe it’s already July! Where is the time going? Not that long ago, I was excited to see my tulips emerging out of the ground and here we are already past tulip season and well into the summer garden season.
This blog post is my July Garden Tour! I apologize for the length of this blog, but there is just so much to share. I hope you’ll enjoy seeing my garden photos and if you have any questions, please feel free to leave a comment below.
Front Garden.
I have not had to add too much to my already perennial-heavy front garden, but I did start some annuals from seed this year, so I’m excited to watch them bloom. Among the seeds I planted this year were two varieties of zinnias, asters, Shasta daisies and sunflowers, which I gave the sunflowers to a neighbour a couple of weeks ago.
Right now, in the second week of July, my Proven Winners Invinciball hydrangeas across the front porch are all in bloom, some on the west side are doing better than the full south-facing Invinciball hydrangeas since I have two trees on my front property and those hydrangeas are being blocked by mid-day to early afternoon sun. Regardless, they are getting enough sun to put on blooms. This is their first full season in my garden and I’m really happy with their performance. I am really enjoying the white blooms against the orange brick house which is filtered by the grey and white accent paint that we had done last summer. To see more about the paint colours on our house, click here to read the full write up about the front exterior of our house.
Last year was an exciting year in my garden for me. I spent a lot of time trying to set the stage for both an English garden as well as a formal garden. I like repetition, but I also enjoy the mishmash of a variety of colours and heights and texture in my garden. I separated and relocated my mature phlox bush to the west side of the front garden to make room for the Invinciball hydrangeas. The phlox bushes add some colour to the west side garden that it was previously missing.
I was also a recipient of a white trillium award in the City of Hamilton. 2020 was my first-ever submission and I was tickled pink that my garden was pretty enough to win an award. My grandmother used to win white trillium awards for her garden every year as well. My grandparents were meticulous about their garden. I remember my grandfather used to sit down on the sidewalk trimming up his grass edges with trimming shears. Their grass was like the golf course turf. It was perfect.
I lost an ornamental zebra grass early this year in the season. I mistakenly cut it back after the first season only to find out that I wasn’t supposed to do that. It dried up and so I pulled it this spring which made room for a couple of dahlia tubers I tucked in its place. Here’s hoping the dahlias put on a spectacular show for me. They are behind a tall”ish” ornamental grass, so I am not sure they will get enough sun. I had them in pots for longer than they needed to be just so that they could put on some growth. They are now well established in the ground on the east side of my house. I was happy to see that when I lose one plant, I am able to put two in its place.
Last year was my first year growing gladiolus corms. I loved seeing them bloom in my garden. I chose not to dig the corms out of the ground. My mother has a gladiolus plant in her garden and she has never dug it up in the Fall, so I decided that I would take my chances to see if mine would bloom this year. They have all come up out of the ground now. Most of the spikes are over a foot tall now, so hopefully, I will have a good display of gladiolus later this season.
As I mentioned earlier, I decided to plant some annuals from seed this year. I love zinnias and dahlias in a bouquet, so I planted a couple of different Zinnas seeds. Some of them are about one foot tall right now. I don’t have much room to put them in my garden, they are tucked in with my lavender and a hosta. Four of the zinnias bloomed, but I cut them back to force new stems, so I have yet to see the full beauty of a bloom. I’m really hoping for a beautifully colourful display.
We had a heat wave last week which resulted in some rain. It’s raining again today and we have thunderstorms everyday next week in the forecast with temperatures in the high 20’s (Celcius). It should be a good day to get some work done from home.
Back Garden.
My backyard has three levels: the porch level, the patio level and the grass level. Most of my gardening happens on the lower two levels. The back gardens are going thru a major change this season. My neighbour’s landlord had a large mature maple tree removed the third week of June. In doing this, my previous shade-loving garden has now become more of a sun-loving garden. I’m trying to address a privacy issue now as well as a garden issue.
I have always wanted a Pinky Winky hydrangea standard tree. I was at one of my weekly garden store visits when I saw the Pinky Winky hydrangea standard trees and jumped on it. It wasn’t in the budget, but I simply could not turn it away. You know that feeling when you see something you really want and you hesitate and then say, I’ll get one later, but later doesn’t happen? Well, I didn’t want to miss out on this beauty, so I found one that I absolutely loved and brought it home with me. I had the perfect place to put it which does not address my privacy issue at all, but it does and will add some colour interest here in this spot once it blooms which won’t be long now.
Here is a photo of my main backyard flower bed which, as I mentioned, is going thru some changes. Just yesterday, I dug up a Little Lime hydrangea and relocated to under my lilac tree to see if it’ll get more daylight here. The other one under the lilac has just started pushing out some buds now that the maple tree is gone and the sunlight hits that area a little more now than where I had it previously.
Containers.
I have had so much fun planting containers the past few years. I picked up my four concrete containers at Terra Gardens in Waterdown, Ontario a few years ago. I wanted to plant some Bobo hydrangeas in two of them flanking my steps down to the grassed area. I saw a similar arrangement on a YouTube channel called Garden Answer. Laura is simply amazing and I have learned so much from her. Be sure to check her out! This is the third season the Bobo hydrangeas will be in these containers. I have Lobelia and a potato vine around the base of the hydrangea. This year for some reason, the Lobelia are not doing great. I do have a place to put the Bobo hydrangeas afterwards, but I think I’ll try and keep them one more year in the containers before I transplant them to a newer permanent home.
I’ve also enjoyed having hostas in my containers. I am in a Zone 5 planting zone which has fairly cold winters. It snows here and the temperature can drop down to -15C. Luckily, I have been able to keep my perennials in the containers thru the winter months.
I also have a few annual containers which every year are different. I love using fountain grasses to add height to my containers and I also love using a trailing vine such as a potato vine. This year, I bought a ton of mint and I’ve added some to my containers. They have been growing down and outwards, so they do seem like a bit of a trailing plant in my containers.
The treehouse flower boxes have been a pure joy to plant this year. I have three flower boxes and they are full and they are beautiful. I used pink petunias, a green and pink ivy, a fern and yellow Snapdragons. I’ve been cutting the petunias back so they don’t get too leggy and the result has been amazing. It’s only July and the colours are gorgeous.
The two containers in the driveway flanking the gate are gorgeous right now except for one of the mini arborvitaes that died over the winter. I believe the container became clogged and the arborvitae got root rot. Unfortunately our garden centre will not have the mini arborvitaes back in stock until October. I’m still contemplating replacing the arborvitaes, but need something tall to wrap my fairy lights around. If you have any ideas, please leave a comment down below.
Rear Driveway.
Beyond my backyard fence is our driveway which is accessed via a laneway. I’ve been slowly trying to make this space more visually attractive. I’m a hydrangea lover, so I have planted a few different varieties of hydrangeas in this area. Among the varieties are Invinciball, Fire light and Pinky Winky. The Pinky Winky is still very young, but put on a really pretty display last year. It is north-facing, so it gets mostly morning sun which seems to be plenty. I imagine if it were south-west-facing, it would be much larger by now reaching closer to its six foot capabilities, but I’m still enjoying watching its growth routine.
The firelight was previously in my backyard under the treehouse steps, but that proved to not be a very good place for it. This hydrangea did not bloom at all last year, so late Fall last year, I dug it up and relocated it to the driveway area up near the maple. It is now north-east-facing and has already put on buds and is starting to bloom. I’m so excited to see how it performs this year.
I finally had a new fence put in the driveway area on the east side of my property. This was a project that was supposed to happen last Fall, but for reasons out of my control, it did not. So now, the fence is in. I have a row of English lavender along this fence which is north-west-facing and in a low soil level area. I lost two lavender plants due to the construction of the fence. I’m on the fence (literally speaking) with whether or not to keep the lavender here or replace with blue blooming hydrangeas which can tolerate more wet soil conditions than the lavender can handle. I love blue blooms, but I don’t think my soil pH can produce blue blooms in the current state, so I will have to dig out and amend the soil before making the decision to switch out the lavender. For now, the lavender will stay.
So this concludes the July Garden Tour. I hope you made it all the way through. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask in the comments section below and I will respond.
Thank you as always for stopping by to read my blog. Please, if you like the content, subscribe to receive all my weekly updates so you don’t miss a thing. Thank you.
