From Secret Garden to the MASSIVE Hugelmound! | December Back Garden Tour

Hi everyone, Janie here. Welcome back to my garden and welcome to my December back garden tour. Jason and I just filmed our December front garden tour and now we're heading to the backyard. It is very cold for us Californians. I feel like my nose is pink because I am freezing but I have my snow jacket on and Jason's all bundled up too so I think we're, I think we'll be okay. So come on back into the secret garden. The secret garden is looking really good this time of year. The coral bark maples are starting to, not starting, they change color and they're starting to lose their leaves and we are starting to see all the coral bark on them which is one of the great things about these maple trees and that is why I just absolutely love them here. I think that they look so pretty and they look so pretty with the shutters and the window boxes in the background. I'm just so happy with this area, aren't you? Oh yeah, this has been a huge upgrade. It looks so good and it feels weird to be like, I don't really have much to do in this area because everything's looking good. The shutters were a big win, you did good on those. I know, I want to put those on the back too. Oh yeah. The windows in the back, don't you think that'll look good? Like our bedroom window and all that kind of stuff. Oh I need to fill this up. It's so funny, our drip irrigation isn't going as often and this, the fountain is hooked up to drip and our drip only goes twice a week now at this time of year so it's not getting filled up so I gotta do that. I gotta remember to do that. Monty still drinks out of it. That's Monty's watering hole, that's why it runs out so quickly. I know, like he has plenty of water inside but he prefers this so. And he drinks out of it every single time I press record, he starts drinking out of it. Have you noticed that? Yeah, he's funny. I'm like dude, come on. So anyway, everything is looking really, really good. It's so funny, I'm starting to see a lot of growth right now and I think that it's just gotten through the sleep portion and we're like, we're really starting to get into the sleep portion which has been really exciting. Like even this bower vine is starting to flush out and fill out and it's just looking, everything is looking so good for this time of year. Really, really pretty. So come on back into the backyard. I said a lot, I talked a little bit about this in the front garden tour but Jason and I have decided that we are going to be focusing on the backyard for 2026. So Michael Glassman taught us a very important lesson for redoing your entire garden is you need to focus on one area at a time. When we first moved in here probably, what would you say, the first six months we were all over the place? Yeah, that's pretty true. Yeah, I mean I was back here, I was up there, I was over here and it felt, it made it feel like I wasn't getting any progress. I wasn't, I wasn't getting anywhere because I was so spread out and he told me that I needed to focus on one area of my garden at a time. So our first year I focused on the orchard garden bed, the second year I focused on the center island, that was this year 2025. Made all the difference in the world having that center island done and now I think we've decided that we want to focus on the backyard, right? The backyard, we just don't use it as much and I think it's because we haven't really focused on it too much. We haven't really done much to it and I think that there's a lot of things that we can do to it to make, make it really, really usable for us. The first thing that we're going to do is over here along the fence and wrapped around behind the greenhouse, we're going to be adding evergreen trees as kind of like a living fence and I haven't a hundred percent decided how much tree I want to do. I'm, I think I know, I think I've decided but I need to do a little bit more research but hopefully that can get done pretty soon coming up here. I don't know if you knew that Jason, that's on my list of... Yeah, I, you talked about a little bit. Okay, yeah, all right. I feel like sometimes I say things and I'm like, oh did you know I'm gonna buy 25, 30 trees or something like that? But yeah, so that's the plan and then we'll plant those and get those started growing and I think that that will soften things up quite a bit back here and that will be really nice. The raised beds back here, they're looking good. I have my sweet peas growing. They're starting to look good. Oh, I have to show you. Come see what I'm really good at growing. I am really amazing at growing broccoli flowers. I'm like the best at growing. You're always so hard on yourself. I am. Look at how good I am at growing these. And then they bolted. They started blooming and I was like, well, they're beautiful and the pollinators love them and they're gorgeous and I would rather, I don't know, I would rather have that than have the broccoli. That's terrible. I just need to give up on vegetables. I say this every year but anyway, the broccoli flowers look really, really good. They look gorgeous and then behind them, we have these two beds right here that I planted all of my fancy ranunculus in and that was, I was really happy to get those in because these, I actually pulled from last year and saved them from last year and I spent quite a bit of money on these ranunculus. They were not cheap. They were really nice, big corms and the ranunculus showed. It really showed when they were really pretty. Weren't they gorgeous? Yeah, they were really beautiful. So I planted them here and then Jason hooked them up to drip. So they're all hooked up to drip and ready to go and I'm really excited for them to start blooming because they're one of the earliest blooms that we have during the spring. So I think that will be really, really fun. And then coming back here, we still have our moon garden a little bit, kind of a little bit. Did you hear the Pantone color of the year? Yeah. It's white. Yeah, I know. It was like a cloud or something. It's cloud white or something like that. That's white. Well, I'm on trend. My Dahlias back there. But you know, it's so funny. I get why they did it. I get why they did it. It's really, really funny though. But that, like as soon as they said that, I was like, okay, well then I guess I'm leaving my moon garden in for another year for sure, right? Because a lot of times people will plant, you know, a garden that's the color of the year and all that. Oh, is that a thing? Oh yeah. People will like go all out and they'll plant like a whole area and post it on social media. The whole color of the year thing is funny. I don't really understand it. I just saw a headline about it and I was like, okay. I think it's just fun. It's just like what's the trend and all that kind of stuff. So yeah, like I'm on trend. Can't help myself. So cool. But I do need to cut a lot of this stuff back. It's kind of, you know, coming to the end and all that kind of stuff. Hold on. I have to say, you're a good boy. You're not barking at them. Good boy. That's a good boy. So our back neighbor's dogs are, they're territorial. I would say they like to bark at Monty and Monty likes to bark back. And we always want to say good boy to him when he doesn't engage. And it's so funny because one time one of the dogs somehow got in our yard. I don't even know. And like no barking tail between its legs. And Monty like ran away from it. I'm like, you guys are like, you're all bark. So coming into the, um, the greenhouse, the greenhouse is looking good. I've been so focused on garden cleanup though this month. I haven't done a lot of stuff in the greenhouse, but I'm really excited for January because January I'm going to start really focusing on the greenhouse and we have a lot of rain in our forecast. I'm hoping, I hope we get it. We need some rain. Yeah. We've had hardly any rain. It's been cold and gray and cloudy, but no rain, no rain, but everything stayed like with a layer of drizzle on it, but not at like, we still had to run the drip irrigation. It's been weird. Um, but I think that once it starts raining, I'll be hanging out in the greenhouse a lot more and be doing a lot more stuff in my greenhouse. So, but, but lately I've just been like all garden cleanup, doing a ton, a ton, a ton of garden cleanup. Uh, so, and as you can see the evidence of that over here, this is getting big. This is huge. What? And this isn't even all of it. So this is my hoogle mound. Uh, my compost pile, I guess I should say. I decided that I wanted to do a berm right here that I'm going to plant in to block out our well, what do you call this thing? Water tank. Water tank, our well water tank. Right. And, um, and I thought, okay, well I'll do the hoogle mound method because I need a place to put all of our extra green waste. Um, cause we have so much of it and here you can see how much of it we actually have. And this isn't even all of it. Right. We still have so much more and we've been putting stuff in the other compost pile and we've been putting stuff in our, our organics waste bin. So we have tons of green waste. And so the best, I think the best thing to do is throw it in a pile back here. And then we have all of those wood chips in the front yard and we're going to put wood chips over this and then let it gradually break down and eventually just plant in it. And of course it's going to sink down as you know, as, as it all breaks down, but we'll just be able to keep adding more and more. So it just seems like a really great solution. Maybe unsightly right now. It's not the prettiest thing. Not the prettiest thing, but I think it's really interesting to see how much green waste we're going through. I really need to bug the neighbors cause our neighbors have goats. I want to ask them, I don't know how much, you know, cause cause I'm not going to separate out the things that aren't good for goats and are good for goats. You know what I mean? So I wonder how much is actually not good for goats. I feel like they eat everything. I don't know. You have to ask them. Yeah. We'll ask them. Cause wouldn't that be great? That would be awesome. And if we could get rid of it and make the goats happy, that would be a win-win. Save them money so they don't have to buy as much, you know, hay, especially this time of year. Huh. I should leave a note. No, no, actually officially met them. No, you met them. I met them briefly when the goats got out. What are we doing? So do you want to talk about the office? What about the no power? Oh, I don't know what there is to talk about. We just have to call an electrician cause I can't figure it out. So I was working in my office, my beautiful office that I just, um, like renovated. It's so nice. You guys, I love sitting out there and working out there, but it's been cold. So, and I don't have a heater in there. So I bring a space heater in there and Jason put light all around the office. So we had the lights going and I had the space heater and I had two computers and I had my grow lights and I think I over, I think I, it was like flickering and I thought it was just a fuse, right? Like I blew a fuse or something like that, but no, I did something else. I don't know what else, I don't know what's going on. You thought it was, I did the GFCI. Yeah, I thought it was that, but it wasn't that because I replaced it and then it's, it's still not, but there's, I don't understand cause there's like, there's power to it, but nothing. We just need an electrician. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah. So I haven't had my office for a couple of days cause Jason thought he was going to be able to fix it. And yeah, I tried today and it was like, oh no. Okay. And I was like, you sure, you sure, you sure you don't want to just call an electrician, but I appreciate you trying. All right, coming over here, I want to show off the hanging baskets that have my Mangave over here. So we ended up pulling all the annuals that were in this, in this, pulling the annuals that were around this Mangave. I love Mangave without anything around it. I don't think I want to plant anything other than the creeping Dichondrosilver Falls this next year because I just love the structure of it. I feel like these Mangave are kind of getting a little long in the tooth, right? And I might need to replace them, but I just think they look so good and so interesting all cleaned up like that before we had Supertunia Vista Jasberry hanging in them and it was, it was a lot. It was pretty, but then it does get kind of overwhelming, I think. I just think they look so good. I don't know. Maybe, maybe it's just that time of year I want everything to be cleaned up. You know what I mean? So let me bring you guys over here and you can see the Vigo beds. The Vigo beds are looking really, really good. They need to be filled out. I ended up taking out the lettuce. I had Romaine growing here. I ended up just taking it out. I was just kind of, I'm just not in the mood for veggies right now. I am in the mood for flowers and you can see the Victorian Lady Flowering Maple is just looking so good on these Vigo arches. They just look so good. I just, you know when you plant something and you're like, that's the spot, like that's the spot. That thing is giant. It's giant. It's massive. I got to come in here and I got to prune it and all that kind of stuff, but I'm just so happy with it. It just looks so good and I don't know what I'm doing at planting shrubs and perennials in my Vigo beds that are supposed to be for veggies. But that's okay. These two, these two I can keep switching out and all that kind of stuff. So one of the things that I'm dealing with here in this Vigo bed area is the drainage is definitely an issue. I put mulch down to cover this concrete paver thing that we have. We do have a drainage right here and it's not blocked, but the mulch is holding on to all the water that's coming out of the Vigo beds when we water them. So it's kind of like I'm walking. Yeah, it's very moist. Very moist here, yeah. So I think I'm going to pull all of this mulch and replace it with rock or gravel, which is originally what I wanted to do in the first place is have gravel in this area. So that's something that's on my list that I definitely want to take care of soon in this season for sure. Definitely for sure. And then let me bring you all over here. You all can see I'm not a huge, I don't love my fall plantings here. They're pretty, like the kushia is blooming and it's looking beautiful, but I just really want some more color. So I'm really looking forward to pulling these and putting like primrose in or cyclamen or some cool season annual or something, right? Don't you think? Yeah. I'm biased. I like that plant. It's one of my favorite ones, but I get what you're saying. Yeah. I'm surprised the coleus is still looking good. Yeah. Don't you think? Yeah. I guess it's been cold, but it hasn't been below 43, I would say, right? I don't think it's been, well, maybe at night a little bit, but barely. Yeah. It hasn't been in the thirties. No, it hasn't. We haven't had anything in the thirties. You want to hear two Californians complain, get to the thirties and we'll all be freaking out. But yeah, so it's funny. I'm sure I don't have much time for these, but I'm going to take them out and put some cool season annuals in there, which I think look really good. I want to show you guys this area over here. Um, I think we, I think we showed this to you guys before, but this is kind of a work in progress. This is, this is eventually going to be my garden center and not really, not really like that. It's just going to be my plant storage area. And I'm really happy with it because it finally is getting the spot that I can put all these extra plants that I have. I get, you know, a lot of really great, amazing plants. And I have a, I have a habit of buying plants and not having a place to put them yet. So I ended up with a lot of plants, right? And I feel like this is going to be a really great spot for it. I want to put, you know, like shelves or racks or something over here and I can put all my pot storage. And eventually I want to put something here to kind of block it. But this is going to be a really, really functional area, which is so, I think is so important. And having been here for three years, we're in our third year, I would say, having been here and lived here for three years, we're really starting to figure out, okay, we need this, or we need, we need a spot for this, or we need a spot for this. And it's been so nice to actually really focus on getting spots like that and getting, you know, getting our house figured out, even like inside our house, getting our house figured out exactly what we want to do and how we want to use the place. And that's kind of how I feel about this area. It's still a work in progress. I'm going to be building some more plant tables and then, you know, really like doing it up and all that kind of stuff and hopefully making it look cute. But this is going to be my garden center. I'm going to call it my garden center. I wanted to show off our October glory maple. It's losing all its leaves now. It put on a beautiful show as did or is the Chinese mustache behind it. That tree is so awesome. It's so pretty. I love it. I love, love, love that tree. We were so lucky to inherit that tree. It's so ironic that that was, for the longest time, the tree you always talked about that you wanted one. And then we bought this place, moved in, never even realized that that was that tree. We didn't even focus on it. Didn't even, yeah. You know why? Because I was focused on the olive trees. Yeah. Because the olive trees are so beautiful. But this massive Chinese mustache is just stunning. I just love it. Well, I wanted to point out the October glory maple right here because this guy's getting a friend in just a couple days, like a week or so. The arborist is coming and bringing a really, really big one of these to match the height. And this thing has grown, I don't know, six, seven, eight feet or something like that since we planted it. You know, you're right. I hadn't realized it. Can you believe how much it grew? Really? Like I could basically touch the top. Yeah. You're right. I did not even think of that. Yeah. So I got worried because I finally decided I wanted to put a partner over here to mimic the symmetry that's going on in this back garden. And I just thought, well, I can't plant the same size I planted here because it's going to consistently be behind. So I hired the arborist to come and plant a big one so that it can hopefully match. I think it'll still be a little behind this one, but at least it'll match. So you guys can see there's nothing here right now. And hopefully in the next week or so after you guys see this, it should, you know, it should be there. I shouldn't say week or so because I should say we are taking next week off for the holidays. We're taking Monday through Friday, and then we'll be back on December 29th for the 2026 season, which is really, really exciting. So yeah. So I just wanted to say a Merry Christmas to all of you. If you celebrate Christmas, happy holidays. This was such a great year for us. You know, we had a lot of changes this year, right? Like you going back to work. It's kind of a big one. That was a big one. It's a good thing, though, because you got to do what makes you happy. So I totally get it. But yeah, it's been a really, really great year. So I'm talking like it's the end of the year. It's just Christmas. I hope you all have a fantastic holiday season with your friends and your family. Thank you so much for being here with us. I really, really appreciate you all watching and your sweet comments and you guys supporting us and, you know, cheering us on. It's just been so wonderful. So I hope you all enjoyed this and I hope you all have a chance to get your garden today.