Heidi's Garden Tour & Long Awaited Summer Projects | August 2025

It's a gorgeous evening to go out and do a garden tour and today we're going to take a tour through my backyard. Hi, I'm Heidi from Garden Crossings and in today's video we are going to be taking a look at a couple garden projects that we were able to check off the list this summer. These projects have been years in the waiting and I'm so glad that the boys were able to come down and get them taken care of. So we'll go ahead and show you those. Also the hardy hydrangeas are looking fantastic right now. They are starting to turn into their bright fiery reddish pink colors. So we'll take a look at those. There's also quite a few of our tall phlox that are just really gorgeous right now. So let's go ahead and take a walk through the garden. Before we head out back and check out those various things I was talking about, I want to just give you a quick update here on the front of the house. Things have filled out and are just looking like a jungle here and I guess that's a good thing because that means that things are still looking good. Here is the shadow storm sweet potato vine. Look at that. That is just really done fantastic this year. This is a new variety for 2026, something I would definitely keep in mind if you're looking for a unique and different looking sweet potato vine. It's giving you both that dark color and the bright green all in one plant so that's been really fun. The vista or the mini vista. This is the pink cloud. This has really performed nicely not only here in my planters at home but in the greenhouse as well. So this has been a great plant for both planters and ground plantings. Pink grapefruit is getting a little fizzled out at this point in the season but I mean there's so much competition in this pot that it's understandable to see why that plant has really been pushed aside. It was doing great all summer long but now that we're here later in the season it's just it's not able to compete with some of those monsters that are in the container. New for 2026 also is a supertunia vista cool jazz and cool jazz is a lighter variation a lighter color of jaspery and look at these plants they are at least three foot wide. This is five plants that were planted so there is a 10 inch pot that we buried in the ground. In that 10 inch pot we planted one four and a half inch annual and that would be the size that we would ship to you or you'd pick up in our garden center. So one plant per pot so with five of these supertunia cool jazz this is how much coverage we've gotten and this is just gorgeous. I want to try to see if we can put up a picture of what they looked like when they planted just so you can compare the growth throughout the summer. I am absolutely impressed with the habit of this plant. I would say it's very comparable obviously to jaspery which is the plant it originated from but if you wanted to plant this with bubble gum I think this could hang out with bubble gum and compete very well with each other. Our hanging baskets oh they did so good this year. I'm so glad that Rod let us do geraniums here. Typically we would do a petunia or something like that but these geraniums have done really fantastic. This is a new series of geraniums we carried this year it's the solera series and they've just really performed nicely and I'm loving this watermelon color. We have it planted with the super bells great punch and then we put some of that big leaf wire vine in as well which is just trailing over and filling out that basket so gorgeous. The planter I did for the shade this year I'm not I don't know I don't love it and obviously it's a little hard to tell because of the way the sun's hitting right now but we have begonia pegasus which is a really nice foliage plant. We put some of the prism pink grapefruit in there there's some fuchsia I don't know that it just it doesn't have enough color for me this year. The plants they're all in there the ones we originally planted but things are just not they didn't disperse or I don't know they just didn't play well meaning like I'm not seeing the colors I was hoping to see and it's just it's a whole lot of that pegasus begonia even though that's only one plant I don't know I'm not really pleased with how it turned out this year. The super kales so we had trimmed these back just before the 4th of July because they were cracked open and didn't look good within four weeks they were gorgeous ball of beauty then that ball of beauty kind of cracked open and didn't look so great we didn't do anything about it we just kind of left it go. It's put on more growth and it's just refilled out again so Rod was saying that he thinks had we not have trimmed them around the 4th of July they probably would have rebounded and filled out and created you know this nice big gorgeous clump of color again so I don't know I this is the first year with these plants so we really didn't know what they do or how to treat them but I don't know all in all I think they did they did okay um even though we had to trim them that one point in time I mean that was fine they rebounded quickly and and filled out nicely so I don't know would I plant the super kales again in a container that's yet to be determined but I think I think they're nice although the super tunias kind of really have a place in my heart here we've got the bobo hydrangeas there's three of them there in front of the window they're just slightly taller than that window standing about four foot tall and they are not transitioning as nice this year so they're kind of they've gone white and they're going a little bit brown so part of that is because it has been warmer than normal at night here in Michigan and you need those cool nights to get your hardy hydrangeas to transition to those gorgeous pink tones we do have one that is gorgeous though with its pink tones as we head around the corner here and this is the quick fire so quick fire is really transitioned nicely quick fire is one of the first hydrangeas to turn pink and it's just it's really beautiful I'm typically not a lace cap hydrangea person but man this one here is just it's a beauty with so much intense dusty hot pink coloration heading down we've got more bobo hydrangeas and these are all doing well again they're not coloring up quite as I had hoped so we'll see if they continue to color up better as the summer goes along but they just they feel to me like they're getting a little bit more dried out looking than actual pink tones that we normally see got some hardy hibiscus in there this is the incredible blush this was blooming in late July and even though these blooms are they're dead they're done they still kind of are pretty with that lime green coloration so they were pink when they were blooming and this is what the spent blooms look like so they still add a lot of interest texture and character to this part of the garden blue chip junior butterfly bush looking really nice I love butterfly bush because once they start blooming they bloom for a long time throughout the summer at the limelight hydrangea there right in the middle so we had gotten some storms finally and it was really windy and so a few of those branches off to the edge there are a little bit floppy but all in all for as much wind in the storm that we had gotten it's still it's holding its own really nicely so limelight is going to be one of those hardy hydrangeas that's going to color up later than many of the others so limelight has been improved so there's limelight prime now and limelight prime has a more compact habit and it does color up nicer than the original limelight so it's more refined in its size and in its habit and you'll see that coloration you know for those of us here in the north sooner than what limelight usually shows got the maimo nays sun patient red here is a bloomering lilac it's got a couple little blooms on it really didn't see a very good rebloom on this this year part of the reason i think is is because the landscapers pruned it which i'm fine with i you know i i want these plants to be maintained but i think that has also kind of created a little bit of a lack of blooms here on this re-blooming lilac we're going to head out to the butterfly garden next but before we do we're going to sweep to the left and for those of you who have watched my videos over the years you may notice that something is different maybe something is missing you seeing what i'm talking about here so for those of you who've watched for many years and many of you have asked me heidi what is that big black square pad that's in the middle of your yard and what that was was it was an old pool pad so every year we would take up a pool and put it down and that was our pad where the pool went and since we bought the northern michigan garden we haven't had a need for the pool because we're enjoying the lake instead so finally this summer the boys my boys were able to get out here logan specifically and tear out that pool pad so he ripped out all the the blocks that were in there he had to dig down a few inches to get rid of all the sand that we had in place here and then just lay some sod in so right now we're seeing a little change of color because that's the difference between our you know regular grass and the sod he put in but once that takes hold that's just going to blend in nicely and open up the yard again to a big green space originally rod wanted to rip this out and put in another flower garden but we're just we're so busy that to add in another flower garden just really didn't make sense at this point in time because we just wouldn't have the time that was needed to put into that space we also had a fire pit out back and as long as we were taking the tractor down here and removing the pool pad i had the fire pit removed as well because again that was something that we don't use that often if ever and it was kind of starting to the metal was falling apart and stuff so we pulled that out as well and just replaced that with sod so now too that will just create another big wide open green space i love green spaces in the garden especially like when the kids were younger it was nice because they could play baseball back here because there was enough room and then obviously once we got the pool that kind of broke the yard up a little bit which i was more excited about the pool than about you know playing baseball but to have this all filled in again this is really really nice and i'm i'm just glad to see the yard not having that big eyesore in the center we also talked about the firelight hydrangea and look at that beauty oh my goodness i would like to know how many of you who are watching today have purchased the firelight hydrangea because of my videos i hear more often than not that i have a firelight hydrangea in my garden because heidi i saw it on your on your videos so if you're one of those that purchased firelight i would just love to just love to note it a firelight is one of my favorite of the bigger hardy hydrangeas and it's because of the coloration this gorgeous bright pink and it's only going to continue to get brighter as we continue to go on um into the fall here but just look at that that is just the perfect color of the hydrangea blooms this plant is about i'm gonna say seven to eight foot tall it blooms off of the new growth so very reliable but i will also say if you are in a warmer climate you may not experience these bright pink blooms like we do here in michigan so i will kind of put that little disclaimer in there uh for those of you in the south that this might not be what you would expect if you planted the firelight hydrangea white sun patients and they are just holding on fantastic all the annuals in the backyard here are pretty much sun patients and that's because we can't get fertilizer back here very well so with sun patients they don't require really any fertilizer to keep them looking good all summer long now one thing they do need is plenty of water so if you don't have a way to keep them watered you'll definitely know if they get thirsty because they'll wilt and and you'll be like how my plants look like they just are dying well they're actually wilting because they're not getting enough water we've got more bobo hydrangeas there and those two are also doing really nice a lot of times people freak out when they see these bobo hydrangeas because on a bobo hydrangea most of the time the description is going to tell you it gets about three maybe four foot tall which originally when bobo was introduced that was the height they thought it got but now that it's been several years since bobo has been on the market we're finding with just about every place we've planted bobo that it is now about four sometimes five foot tall so plan for a little bit more space than what the tag says on bobo because in our experience they do get larger than that three to four foot gorgeous plant but just make sure you have plenty of room for it we also talked about some tall phlox that are starting to bloom and actually these are a re-bloom and that's what i love about so many of those proven winner and the girl the party girl the glamour girl series of tall phlox is that they bloom and then they do a gorgeous re-bloom about three or so weeks later i love tall phlox because they just they add that punch of color that i think late summer gardens need in my opinion cherry cordial this is a surefire begonia and that is just doing really fantastic as well with literally no fertilizer so we just planted it in the container and this plant actually it's only getting watered from the underground sprinkling so it doesn't have a dripper in it so it's not getting direct water into its pot it's getting water just when the underground kind of sprinkles overhead and drops down in there so i would say this is a fairly nice drought tolerant plant and once it's established because this plant is pretty pretty neglected compared to some of the other plants in this garden check this out this is the sonic bloom pink wajilla it is re-blooming and check that out to have a wajilla that's re-blooming and this will re-bloom up to three times throughout the season and it's a legit re-bloom it's not just a few flowers here and there this is full coverage re-bloom on the sonic bloom wajilla so this plant comes in pink white and red so if you like wajilla but you know maybe aren't in the pink color tones it does come in other colors as well and all of them we've seen have this excellent re-bloom on them so i love it when a shrub does more than one season of color so anytime you can get a plant even just a plant in general that will re-bloom and specifically with this much flower that is awesome this garden has a lot of asclepias or milkweed in it and you'll notice right here is a milkweed kind of haphazardly placed really not where it was planted but in this garden because it is our butterfly garden we do let the milkweed kind of seed itself and wherever it lands so be it because that's the plant that the monarchs need as their host plant we're going to also check here between the wajilla and the firelight wow so there used to be a glamour girl flax and you can see she's still trying to put on a little bit of a show there but because this has really created a dense shade canopy with the two shrubs the glamour girl is fighting to find enough sun to grow and to bloom so i'm actually surprised that we're seeing that little bit of bloom there that is one thing when you're planting is your garden is going to look different at different times of the year and at different times year to year so meaning as your garden grows things within your garden are going to change so when your garden's young you're going to perhaps have more plants that show up and as that garden ages and things get bigger you may find that you start to lose things just because they're losing the sunlight or other plants are covering them up or or whatever it might be got our shady little corner here with our patchwork of color from the hostas so the other day someone was at the garden center and they're like i just want something different for my shade garden what can i put in it that's just it's different i don't want hostas and i says well give the aurelia sun king a try and the reason is is aurelia sun king gets most of the time larger than most hostas now some of those really big guys could get this big but aurelia sun king gets bigger than most hostas so it kind of stands uh stands taller and stands above them it also has that nice bright chartreuse green color so you can see especially in this area of the garden here how it really breaks up some of those greens and blues of the hostas it also adds a little bit of texture and motion into the garden so if you're looking for something different to put into a shady spot give aurelia sun king a look ferns also are another great addition to shade gardens where you can break up some of the hosta look and i just i love that one there it's just so pretty looking especially with these pink hot pink sun patients and the hot pink sun patients back here too are doing fantastic because they do get watered every day with our underground sprinkling fertilized never but watered daily a few more tall flocks around here that will show and this garden here you can see is kind of transitioning from a shady area to a more sunny area there's a lot of hostas in here there's a still bees in here even some hydrangeas but i wanted to add a few things in that would just break it up with bright color and so we planted a few tall flocks in so here we've got one of two that were planted and you can see how those tall flocks even though they're planted with the hostas are happy they're getting plenty of sun from about two o'clock till the end of the day and are really again breaking up the greens of all the hostas that are in this garden bed here's another one here we do find that sometimes when the plants are planted closer to these big trees they're a little bit smaller and that's just for certain varieties but i think it's because they're not getting as much nutrients or water perhaps because the trees are the tree roots are kind of taking away from some of what the actual plants are needing you can see that huge root system there in that maple tree allium are blooming allium serendipity if you are looking for a pollinator magnet you've got to have allium serendipity or millennium in your garden this is probably this time of year one of our number one pollinator plants and i love the whimsy feel of the allium they're just they're fun a lot of people ask you know how many bulbs do i have planted here i don't have any bulbs planted they don't really come from a bulb so that's just something to point out you're not going to find serendipity or millennium bulbs because that's just not the way that those plants come the day lily garden is pretty much petered out at this point in the season when it was blooming it was looking fantastic right now it just looks like a hillside of grass which is fine i love when they're all blooming because it's just an array of gorgeous color but even though they're not blooming now it still looks like something with their long grassy blades we changed the color of the sun patients once we got into the corner here and these are the purple stripe darker foliage they got the really deep near black foliage opposed to the green that we were seeing on the others and i just i love the stripy look of the flowers and head into the back corner here and show you a plant that i just love so this plant here is henry alers it's a rudabachia and it's just starting to open so it's a little hard to tell but it's not your typical rudabachia okay so here's your typical rudabachia big bright you know type of flowers this has more of a pin quill type flower so these petals don't open um actually let's get in here i think i can get in and show you a little bit better here's some better examples so you can see how they're a little pin quill type flowers and i just i love that look for something different now rudabachia are great because they they do give a lot of color to a garden this time of year but i love the texture that this henry alers has in this space now this space in the garden is really messy there's a lot of just everything going on um which is okay it kind of helps keep the weeds at bay but this is more of a i'm gonna say a cottage style messy just a whole bunch of things put together a corner in our gardens incredible hydrangea still looking magnificent with those really huge blooms now these blooms here are pretty much at the end of their cycle so they would be a big white white bloom if they were fresh but they've now turned lime green they're a little bit crunchy so this is kind of their spent bloom look so even in that spent bloom stage with these beautiful lime green flower heads it looks really pretty another bobo hydrangea and you can see with the bobo so this is a nice fresh bloom here but these blooms here this year they just they're kind of going brown so i don't know it's been a it's been a year here the humidity is not something we usually have i mean we have humidity don't get me wrong but it's been extra this year and i think a lot of the plants are like forget it we don't want to deal with this this is the invincible spirit 2 hydrangea and these were pink blooms when they were in their prime and now they're kind of more just that lime green as well and again even though they're spent blooms look at that they still add a lot of cool interest into the garden bed allium millennium almost done blooming there and that's another one even though the flowers are almost done they still add some pretty cool texture hardy hibiscus are still hanging on with their big dinner plate size blooms if you don't have hardy hibiscus this is a fun one to add into the garden and this is hardy in zones oh man this is coming from memory i think a four possibly a five to zone nine so pretty much almost everybody watching today should be able to have hardy hibiscus in their gardens another tall flocks that's reblooming right now and i just i love the columnar tall habit that the tall flocks add like i said it's great color for your later season gardens if you're looking for something just a little bit more subtle i love to plant white because how it glows in the night the white is an option there as well the last hydrangea we're going to look at is another limelight hydrangea and this plant here has been here as long as this garden's been planted which i think we're going on oh 24 25 years or so um since we first started planting this garden bed and that plant has been trimmed down from its eight to ten foot height down to three foot multiple times over the years and you can see it doesn't mind being trimmed it'll just get right back up there to where it is so if you have a hydrangea right now and you're like it is just too big for the space or i don't like its habit or i don't like its shape go ahead and trim it don't be afraid to trim it because like i said this has been to three foot tall multiple times it is right back up there looking gorgeous at its eight to ten foot height thank you for walking through the gardens with me today if you have any questions or comments please feel free to leave them below and if you're new to our channel we would love it if you would thanks for watching i'm heidi from garden crossings