Wood County Garden Walk Tour | Beautiful Home Garden and Landscaping in Wisconsin Zone 4

Hello and welcome to Tailored Acres. I'm Taylor and I am a home gardener in Wisconsin zone 4b and this is my friend Pam. Hello. And she is going to be in the garden walk this year for Wood County. So we are going to give you a tour today of her beautiful gardens. All right here we go. So we have a variety of different areas in our yard and this is the only shade garden so we've kind of filled this with really great shade plants for zone 4b. We got Rajersia, of course hostas and ferns, astilbe. Those are Dwight or Dwight dwarf goat's beard which is one of my favorite new little plants. It'll only get you know a little bit bigger than this and so very excited and dedicated this one to my friend Richard who is a shade gardener who has taught me just so many things about shade gardening and this is the brand new garden probably only about a month old right now and this is just beautiful like everything is filling in really well and I'm hoping to do a little area like this also call it Richard's garden because his is so inspiring in the area that we lost a bunch of our trees in the front in our secret garden. So this is just our edge of our yard and woods so I just threw some plants in there that do really well here like bee balm and daylilies and got some wild geranium that's some what is this called turtle head yes turtle head the blooms will be really pretty in probably a month I don't know when they come exactly but they look like a little turtle head so I really love those they are purple okay and this is a wildflower I just discovered and transplanted in here it's a native of Wisconsin I couldn't tell you right now what it is but it attracts the pollinators I planted it just about five days ago and immediately had pollinators on it cool so we just meander and actually this first or next garden is kind of a transition from our woods into our backyard my husband put a garden garage up a couple years ago and cut down a lot of trees so we can walk right in and this is mostly shade but it gets partial sun and as you mentioned Taylor the storm a few weeks ago we lost a tree right over here that provided additional shade once the afternoon sun started coming so the dynamics will change a little bit but so far I don't I haven't seen anything weeping too badly you know in the back we've got some of the japonica and I can't remember the what are we talking about ligularia oh yeah I'm like I know that it looks weepy right now every time it gets a little bit of sun it does that but it's like it's resting and I didn't realize that I thought it was a sign of like huge distress but the plant rests while it's it needs to conserve its energy and once the sun kind of turns away it'll perk right back up and I don't even have to add additional water okay but they get some really neat blossoms that are just starting what is this one here this is called gooseneck loosestrife now you've heard maybe bad things about loosestrife there is a invasive yeah but this is a gooseneck and I wouldn't it's not invasive but I would say that it is relatively aggressive and I will probably thin this back after the garden walk but it's blossom looks like a little gooseneck so very pretty white blossoms had some trouble with some things not coming back after a tough winter I think a lot of 4b people had the same issues with brunnera so I planted some new brunnera my helleborus I had five and I'm down to one now so yep same thing you know that's just perennial gardening at its best but so yes this is a much more of a woodland garden a lot of white blooms and not a whole lot of color but you'll start to see some changes as we go into the next garden a bleeding heart some hostas that are really taking off finally after you know I realize it does take a few years for things to reach their mature it's hard to wait though it is like this isn't the right one or I have it too close that's usually a problem I think well this looks really little and I threw in some regersia and there's some semicefuga you can see the the white blossom that's coming and I've got that in three areas and I love the spike that comes out of that and that spreads not you know not fast and furiously but it does fill in an area which is what I was hoping for I have a backdrop that just transitions naturally to the woods looks good and then we added some annuals just for the garden walk sure this obelisk and like I knew what I was doing I planted them and didn't know how they would you know when they would be blooming and when they would climb up and yeah sure enough it's you'll have to do that every year it looks so good so now we're on the other side of the garage and this gets part shade part sun so it gives me an opportunity to do some things with plants that like sun this gets a lot of a little morning sun and then a little later it'll get some afternoon sun when the sun passes through some of the shade trees and so I've just kind of started adding a bunch of color here um had a little issue with my these are so cute oh those are pentas that's an annual most of these are perennials but we had a little problem with the tree that went down and I decided to just throw some annuals in there to do a fill um my black-eyed susans are starting to blossom oh yeah despite you can see over here the buffet that the bunnies have had and no matter what I do with them most recently I've been spraying um deer deer off or deer out it's peppermint peppermint smelling because I had people coming and I thought it might be better to smell like peppermint than deer repellent and the feature in this garden this year is I call it the geranium tree so I overwinter my geraniums every year and a lot of most all of these plants are several years old and I had so many I potted them up and I was like I don't know what I'm going to do with them I didn't want to have just all these geraniums and we decided to just put it on a pole and so we're calling it the geranium tree and during the garden walk I'm giving some instructions on one of the signs on people ask all the time like how do you overwinter geraniums okay it's quite easy I mean at the end of the season before it freezes I take all the blooms off any dead or dying leaves and gently pull the plant out of the soil brush off the soil and then I just put it in a paper grocery bag okay staple it shut yeah and put it in the basement and forget about it and they look terrible when you get them out in the spring yeah and then you put them in the pot and put them in a sunny area and I'm in and out of the house on nice days I'll put them outside to harden them and they've never failed me so far I mean I've had a couple that haven't done well but these are really reliable and now they're just bursting with blossom so yeah they are excited about their huge tree they're huge yeah and what kind of a tree is this one here this is a river birch okay when I first bought it it had been overwintered outside in Wisconsin in a pot at a greenhouse so I bought it on super clearance and it looked terrible yeah but it has really come into its own and it actually adds a really nice height feature and yeah just a different texture to this garden and my hope is that people will walk into the gardens because I do have little signs as you already showed one in each area it's either a story or some information on why the garden is what it is okay yeah so it kind of helps this is you know the what I just explained about geranium trees and what to do if you have a lot of geraniums that's a way to feature them yeah obviously the ones in the back aren't are getting more shade so they're not blooming as much rotating them I bring them out in the sun and and then they come come to life but for tomorrow I just filled them back in and and you can see I've kind of interspersed some color with pots of annuals to bring in some color as well so that's just a couple years ago did not look good at all this garden was actually only like in its third year and as any gardener knows it takes time and mistakes and failures to figure out what you really like and I think it's starting to come into its own a little bit yeah it looks great this year nothing like a deadline of having several hundred people come to your yard to kind of get you thinking about what you need so did yours bloom nicely this year your boom tricoladas uh they actually did not because I moved them they were on the other side and they just didn't look very happy over there so I moved I have mine in full sun yeah I don't know if I'm supposed to do that well but it was like crazy huge this year I think full sun is actually is good I don't think this partial shade is a problem but I yeah I think just the fact it might part transplant it you know it's starting to fill back in you can see lots of shoots down there which I love that when I first transplanted it it looked just like leggy and weird yeah oh and and this is where I put one of my um Canadian hemlocks this is a one yes tree that you and I are both fascinated by this they're so cool huge if you let it grow it can also be kept as more of a shrub form so this is just a baby yeah and my main concern this year was keeping the deer off of it and so far so good I think once it gets to a certain height they can't do quite as much damage so and then this just kind of transitions back into where we store compost and yeah bark and hide things back behind the garage doesn't everybody yes definitely and as we come out of here this go back to this tree yeah the oddest thing is all the branches coming right out of the trunk but when we get into a different perspective you'll see that this tree bends it looks just like an entrance to an enchanted garden yeah it's like a big archway but what it leads to in our yard is just the compost pile in the end of the dream which is magical it's magical compost is magical so maybe I'll put a secret garden in there someday but my granddaughter actually pointed that out and I hadn't realized it but when you get out here you can see it's kind of cool how it just arches over and with the leaves kind of creates like an entrance oh yeah that is cool so now we're entering our official backyard and this is my favorite place to spend time a few years back I guess in 2019 we had a major patio reconstruction and added the covered porch and it gave us an opportunity to convert this was all lawn right here with a little bit of of stuff along the fence but the landscape service that did all the hardscaping had a beautiful plan to pull the house the vegetable garden and our fire pit which you'll see in a minute and the patio all together and it's just a really serene area to hang out and we have our coffee out here every morning so this was actually in 2019 as I said a really small garden and I came home when they had it done and I just sat down and said I'm I'm gonna sit here and never leave because it's so they did such a nice job they incorporated some big rocks which I wanted but I never asked for okay they just did it yeah but just needed it but they listened to my wishes and I didn't have the design experience but as you can see then they kind of they pulled together we'll go to the vegetable garden in a minute and then our fire pit so everything's tied together and then I guess we'll spend our time up here on the patio for a minute while we're up here yeah I have a really good friend actually my daughter-in-law's mom is displaying her work at the garden walk which is we're calling her Nana because we share grandchildren my grandchildren call me Ja and the same grandchildren call her Nana so it's Nana's enchanted woodland fairy garden she does this every year on her deck this is the extent of her gardening but it's fantastic like all the little fairies and all the little plant features that you can see everything is real except for she pointed out one thing that was fake and I probably yeah I was gonna say those succulents earlier like not quite the right color she incorporated a boxwood and some you pointed out so all the yes the little spruce there spruce and I told her to transplant those into her yard when she's done yeah I never thought about that she always just thinks about her fairy garden so we're gonna do a little quiz for the kids that come to the walk and I've got some questions on a board can you find two fairies fishing a fairy hugging a bear a dog fairy a fairy riding a rabbit a fairy playing a guitar which is actually a mandolin and a fairy reading a book and then I've challenged them to count all the fairies yeah and guess how many there are and then we'll have the answer right over here under a flap and this is what it looks like at night isn't that cool so she has all of the lights on a timer and about nine o'clock last night after we had moved this and set it in place I didn't even think about it and my husband said oh my gosh you've got to come and look at this the lights were all on and it was just so cool so I wish the garden was at night yeah yeah so cute so we're under the covered porch now and this is where we love to spend our mornings uh get up and drink coffee and then we go about our day usually he goes golfing I go to the garden but this is our peaceful place and in the fall we love to be able to sit and turn the fire on and have a little bit of warmth lots and lots of shade under here actually sometimes a little challenging because it's so shady so yeah these these plants I will actually pull them out once in a while just to get them a little bit a little bit of something because they they tend to get too much shade and actually I've had a issue with things kind of rotting out almost okay early sure you know when the and you got to be careful in zone 4b with coleus as you know they do not like to be out in even below 50 degree weather they get finicky so yep they are fussy but the arrangement turned out so you have four pots here yeah we have four different pots that's cool that wasn't even the intention I just planted them and then I shoved them together one day and I'm like hey that looks actually looks nice together so I left them there I had some of them sitting up on the stairs over there and decided that no we're we don't need to put them there here they'll they'll look better as a group yeah yeah we were like I really want an area like similar to this in our yard and it's like our yard is just so hilly it's hard to like yeah figure out where there's the beauty of the hills because you can do some neat things with yeah heights and textures and things you know a lot of people have to put berms in to get right yeah in fact we've got a couple mini berms but ours is relatively flat otherwise but it does add a new challenge I'm sure also for erosion for you yeah we don't have to deal with with all the sand now we can wander into the vegetable garden this is actually ironically where it all started and I have a little sign about that so when yeah our our oldest granddaughter Sidney is now 14 and when she was four she was my little gardening buddy she loved to help dig and plant and she liked to eat tomatoes right off the vine and I'm like this is the perfect little partner for me so you yes there's a little picture so the first year my husband built a four by eight little raised bed and we did a square foot garden in that bed and that's still Sidney's bed but now it has strawberries in it and then we added a vegetable garden around it this looks good which is is going really good yeah far this year I've got um all the all the things cucumbers beans peas potatoes blueberries um peppers lettuce the strawberries all of mine died last year I don't think I protected them right going into winter but onions and some of the shallots and what did you give me shallots and shallots and onions yeah oh and leeks leeks okay yeah and I've got more onions over here and those are carrots and beets so there's a lot of picking coming up my peas were a little bit late but they're really starting to pods finally I thought well we're gonna get vines but no and ours were like so early this year did you my first round did not do well so I replanted and that's why I was late and then the cucumbers are going crazy I'm gonna have a hard time finding them in there yeah they look really good I probably should have pulled some but you know how hard it is to pull out a living I know yes okay there's three of you and I'm picking you as the one that has to go yep so it is tough yeah but and then you just got pine shavings it looks like I did and it was mostly just for weed yeah action but I did read you have to be careful when you put the wood shavings down okay around onions because it can deplete the nitrogen out of the soil so it suggested putting down some like fish emulsion which is what I did okay well um some of your nitrogen blood meal yeah that I sprinkle and and then you have to keep I've got to be careful away from the right right so they kind of want to creep in and I've got to just keep watching that otherwise you can have things brought out I've used a bit of pine shavings too especially around the garlic and I really like it because it's like so light and fluffy it does a good job of yeah blocking out the only thing is when I'm watering them yeah it leaves yeah where I don't want it but you know I don't think a vegetable garden is intended to be neat and tidy I just hate the weeding so yes we put down the fabric finally this year was the first time I did that and we put we had some straw and that's worked really well by the lettuce okay some weeds get through but they're manageable you can see them and yeah I'm not doing near as much weeding in this area because I want to spend my time with the flowers exactly yes just pick yeah the tomato plant is finally exceeded my height yeah it is already exceeded my height and we have a little bit of fruit but I'm glad it didn't happen until really now and I'll start harvesting after the garden walk so I don't have that to deal with a lot of lettuce yeah it is it looks beautiful though it's yummy and I've been able to give away a lot of it oh good so I always hate like mine gets like sand in it and that's like you just gotta rinse and rinse and rinse forever that's another reason this the straw was really nice yeah it kind of helps from that splashing but I have found if I kind of reach underneath and pull the bottom leaves off they're usually kind of rotty and yeah they're the worst ones yep and then I work my way in so I take off the leaves that are on the outside first and then most the rest are standing up and they don't seem to you know you have to clean off the ones that are leaning yeah more than you have to clean off the upright ones and I love the romaine because it's it is more upright yeah that's a good idea but I do like the mix too yes to just be able to cut it rinse it and you've got a salad so good so this is a relatively shady area as well and um over the years I've done different things but I decided to turn it the last few years into a memory garden we planted this nishiki willow tree I think it it's natural is to be a shrub but it's been changed or over time as a hybrid so it's a nishiki willow we bought this in memory of my mother-in-law when she passed away and then we bought this maple tree in memory of my father-in-law and I just think it's kind of neat that they meet yeah they're coming together they're always reaching for each other and then both my parents passed away in the last several years and so the the little girl is in honor of my mom and then unfortunately the tree we planted in honor of my dad was the one that went down in the storm a few weeks ago we're gonna we'll find another alex tree we called that the alex tree so here I just did a whole bunch of coral bells I really wanted it to fill in and it will over time even more yeah coral bells and and then just a few hostas over there and japanese ferns in the back I'm hoping those will really fill up the area some jacob's ladder and yeah columbine in the back you have the variegated I had one that for some reason wasn't happy after the end of its cycle so I cut it back but you know those things happen so and again I didn't know what I was doing with hostas so this is lucky that it turned out this way because I didn't design it for the biggest one to be right there but yeah it looks out it looks you know maybe in a few years these will be too big I don't know because I didn't read the instructions. I am not a hosta person so don't ask me either. I finally planted right now the fourth one probably in my garden last or a couple weeks ago one of the big ones the like shadowlands woolala oh in a spot where it should be able to get big so yeah maybe in a couple years I'll let you know one thing that Richard taught me about hostas that I you know everybody thinks they're just a shade thing and they there are so many that can withstand sunlight too and so not to be quite so fussy but what I decided to do when I was redesigning things was kind of like don't put hostas in that garden I'm going to put hostas here and I'm going to put hostas over there but I'm not going to just throw they don't have to be everywhere everywhere right this was more it just seems more suited for flowers and more you know height and different colors yeah hostas are beautiful but the thing you know hosta flowers are great for the pollinators but they're not great for keeping they get messy yeah they you know as they start dropping off so I don't think it's the prettiest flower in the garden for sure no I usually end up cutting mine yeah but I was really trying to be gracious this year yeah that's well it looks good it looks good they need as much and I look because it's got that blue tint to it it looks good with the but every day then I'm pulling off I take a bucket and I shake it yeah being so meticulous this yes like I don't want any of that ruining the look now we're meandering into this is les's domain yeah this is his area the fire pit is his thing and we both love it I mean don't get me wrong but he loves to cut trees he loves to cut wood he loves to burn big fires and we normally have the the circle all the way around the pit we actually um this is a stamp concrete we built it under the guidance of a friend we didn't know what we were doing okay and then in 2020 we added the wood sheds yeah and tomorrow when we have the garden walk we're going to have an acoustic trio right here that will be providing music so people that's gonna be cool and then we'll just keep wandering yeah you'll be excited to see this this is my oh yeah my wanda and taylor garden it's the dahlia garden so these are all dahlias that you've taught me I didn't know a thing about dahlias I had just accidentally had some a few years ago and I thought oh these are interesting I didn't realize what a cool thing they are that you can just you know overwinter them replant them and you get these beautiful blossoms some of my favorites you remember the name of that one because I think this one is Mary Jo maybe okay I think it's number five I know there's 11 varieties in here so it's just on the cusp of blooming yeah this one over here I really love um wanda your mom gave me this and that's okay cha-ching yes cha-ching isn't that pretty yeah it's got like the striped leaves I've got a couple of them this one's almost spent but I've got so many buds that I think if you came back in two weeks it would be yes this is gonna be well this will be just for you to enjoy that's right your reward the one in the back left oh I believe that's beautiful yep and I actually moved that there recently because it was back behind this tree and it wasn't I couldn't enjoy it and there was a spare spot so yeah I think it looks much better over there it does yeah those look good with the the pine in the back too I've been working on that too like having like a backdrop for things well wanda helped me kind of set these up but some of them actually grew I don't know for whatever reason taller than the chart said and but these are are fabulous oh yeah he gave me some of these and that's one of my favorite ones there's we had a bunch of buds I got a daddy long legs right there oh yeah and it gets enough sun here but it's not a immense amount of sun I've noticed and I don't know if you have that same problem when you get too hot of a day your dolly is rest yeah they do a little bit I've got some up front along the sidewalk and they're they're very robust they're very healthy but yeah the sun's beating on them they just some yeah and then I panic like oh yeah what's going on right again I've been told they're just resting I mean if you let it go too long they would be right they would be yes and then oh yep cute this is fun because it's kind of like fine find the blooms yep I like it I don't remember the name of that but we have some down here and so that one's sayonara I think which that one I didn't keep yeah so you're the only one that has yeah and I love it I love it in here though so yeah what I did not realize until this year about dahlias was like this cha-ching yeah to me does not look like a dahlia bloom at all like the standard dahlia I think of as this okay or this sure like oh there's so many varieties so many forms it's so cool and and all the different colors and things only have one that's like the open bloom like the open center because like all of these I mean these have a little bit open center because it's been so hot that they'll do that like the style but like these ones don't really yeah the balls don't really do that I'm waiting they'll just have like a single like almost they look like a daisy uh-huh it's like I have one of those like it's just not what I yeah yeah I'm looking forward to my penhill is a penhill watermelon yes yep the big that's my favorite yep dinner plate size yes I was shocked last year how big they are blooms they are like they are just crazy it's hard to take a picture of them because you can't capture really how cool they are yes in a picture but I I enjoy those this area looks cool I would have never like thought to plant them this way but I love it well I had a bare spot and a bunch of balls yeah so why not taught me how to pre-sprout them yeah because if timing wise if I would it would have never worked and they wouldn't be anywhere near this so yep and pre-sprouting was actually easy it's scary because you think right because you're like gonna come on it's too early yeah nothing's gonna come up and all of a sudden boop boop and I would say 95 percent of them made it yeah it was amazing and you can lay them on their side so you really don't have to have a pot for each no you don't do the tray and that was and then just split them apart when you're ready to plant and tomorrow also we'll have at a different time we're gonna have a piano player are these for my mom's they are okay I'm like I recognize those yep she loaned me some plants for the stage here yeah I like it we'll have a harpist and a piano player at different times oh cool that's normally we just grill in here so it turned into a stage for yeah I don't know what kind of geranium this is but it was some kind of a double and I think she started them from seed last year really yeah it's I was gonna take a cutting because it's my favorite green yeah pink and white in it I've never seen one like that it's beautiful and then she's got it with like the variegated and then the silver why do you think I've borrowed them I know they're beautiful I love those two oh yeah Barry had to carry them yes like can you put those two in the in the car for Pam yep I was lucky to have some friends that I probably have one two about six pots that are from friends who are just so supportive and so excited about this yeah and it's such a cool opportunity and all your help with the dahlias and I'm messaging you all the time about this or that and like is this normal what should I do about yeah it's so fun I thought it was creeping Charlie and you said no it's creeping Jenny get rid of it yeah and I did meticulously it was winding through a major part of my garden ruin your day for sure so one of the things I did in the last year knowing I was going to be doing this is this garden was it had a lot of beautiful textures and it again the backdrop is the woods yeah and my neighbor is washing his house so you're hearing that motor that's right you might not hear that at all not very peaceful yeah yeah but um and I did put a little berm in here but the garden was so big that you couldn't really see everything yeah so we cut a path through it and I really focused on trying to get the back area to be as we walk through you'll see more shrubs and and taller things that'll just fill in yeah and then it'll be close to the path will be the flowers and then up front we have our septic tank cover oh yeah right under this rock and about a month from now we have to get it open it up so I said not till after the garden walk right we can do it then so as we walk through I um I guess I'll point out a couple cool things Solomon's seal which is one of my favorite I've got the variegated ones this year and you gave me some of these too and I love them I added this um weed this miniature Solomon's seal and I bought this from Richard too okay and I didn't know there was just a yeah I don't know what the scientific name of it is but it's a Solomon's seal and as we walk through you can see my bee balm on steroids with lots of buzzing going yes there are a lot of bees in there and it's at about a perfect time um this year so far I haven't had any powdery mildew yet okay it could probably happen because they're a little bit crowded but I didn't want to divide them yet I wanted to wait until next year I'll divide them because they're just so pretty when they're in mass yeah in mass and then like right around this was a service berry is that right the tree yes and it almost looks like a little weed coming out of that it's beautiful bee balm patch yeah they're just like what what is that a little bit scraggly it's not the most uh full tree that's for sure I like this purple right in here too back over here that's chocoholic simicefuga oh and that was really little a few years ago it's so pretty against the green yes uh start aurelia sun king yeah aurelia yep and then of course the Solomon's seal yes got a bleeding heart kind of hidden in there and then more regersia and you know it seems like I really had a good plan and I did just draw it out but sometimes you knew what you were doing no idea and it's like hey it worked out so good I actually look like I know what I'm doing and the spacing is perfect um crab tree right there and then right sneaking under there is one of the lemony lace elderberry oh yeah um and I had more of those one of them didn't make it one year and but those other two have really filled in and and you can see a dahlia peeking up yes I do left over and I threw them in yeah and that's I don't remember which one that's going to be it's surprise so all right that's they're all numbered taylor does a good job of numbering and I've got a system I'm not as good at writing down where I planted them so it'll be a surprise for me I did have I do have one surprise this year as well I didn't I couldn't figure out what it was one that I like dug last minute and popped in a pot and just put in the basement and it survived and so it's out there I don't know what it is we'll find out in a few more weeks probably but and then this year I went to an Amish it was really fun you'll have to come with me sometime an Amish farm in Cashton and it wasn't a greenhouse it's a farm where they have rows and rows of beautiful perennials and then you point to what you want and they dig it right there on the spot okay and send it with you so heliopsis was one of the things that intrigued me and I didn't know I had a huge one like so pretty the first year we moved to our house and it was gorgeous and then I moved it and it was doing good and then the deer the deers the deer ate it right to the ground and it died oh so you haven't had that happen yeah it's probably in a good spot I have been spraying it and I have been I pepperminted it as well so those are so pretty though because it's got like all I gotta do is get through tomorrow and then if they damage things I'm not going to be quite as then it's theirs yep my hollyhocks that are hidden in the back there okay I was hoping they'd be huge but the rabbits have kept owning trimmed up yeah I've got a pretty one right behind you that well it's kind of um oh yeah oh that one is really cool yeah it's it's tall it's I noticed some rabbit damage on the bottom yesterday though I can oh yeah I see one right yep darn things and I sprayed it last night but yeah that's what they will do just kind of eat it and then decide they don't really want it yeah oh that didn't taste good yeah yuck but I'll try again tomorrow maybe it'll taste different tomorrow so you can see back here we're we're working on trying to get the more of the shrubs I've got another Canadian hemlock over here oh yeah and then some ninebark that are different colors a different species of ninebark a little spruce tree back there so and some grasses that I planted somewhere else and I didn't like them there so then I just threw them back there but they'll get it's a perennial grass that's good for zone 4b I can't remember the name of it but it's supposed to get four feet tall is it like Carl Forster or it doesn't have a not very good with grasses name me either all right so when I when I find out I'll let you know yeah yesterday I'll send oh is it like a blue stream maybe it's from blue stone perennials okay maybe I have to look it up maybe I have the tag but yesterday on these coneflowers I captured a picture of a monarch sitting right there oh wow perfect like a professional photo and I haven't seen as many monarchs as we used to in the past so it was really kind of a thrill yeah it is hopefully we've seen a couple of them but get more of them coming are these the um ones that we bought yes cosmos yeah that I was going to plant in front of the dahlia garden and I didn't have room so I just grew them here and these are cool so cool I like the more of a miniature format yeah there's I don't think they're going to get tremendously taller than this so I thought it was a good spot to have them along the edge and their foliage is really pretty got a couple new hydrangeas and one of them wasn't doing very well yeah it's got little buds though so I cut it back and I think it's going to make it this hydrangea is a few years old oh yeah and you got a couple blooms on there yeah I think it's going to end up being really pretty I mean it already is those are tough ones to grow here too yeah I have noticed like the ones labeled as macrophilia I'm starting to avoid those because they seem too sensitive they are yeah they like need perfect sun they're like four inches tall at this time of the year so I'm not gonna I'm gonna get the kind that are really intended to have the woody stalks and I've got a couple really pretty panicle ones up in the front that are doing great so I'll continue to do that got more of the nishiki oh yeah willow in the shrub form here early spring the deer seem to like these so I've had a little bit of challenge with that but these can grow really big and yeah I love the white that contrast well and they like get that pink and spring oh my gosh yeah I have one that I'm hoping to keep shrub form smaller but we'll we'll see my sister has one that's like 15 feet tall really oh good and it's like a tree trunk I'm sure hoping that they're crazy get to that point where the deer don't even bother them because they're not interested they can't reach it yeah yeah and then really the rest of the this area I've just let the woods yeah thrown a few things I like just the like a little bit clearing and then like a border and we shared this area is actually mostly my neighbors okay yeah he's been very gracious and saying do whatever you want to do because it looks pretty yeah so I probably have pulled out a few more things than if you looked on the other side and that's just my preference yeah and then on the garden walk we're encouraging people that the last stop I guess people can meander as long as they want but there's a shade garden down there which if they want to go down and see it I think every single plant in in that area has been from a division of a different part of the garden so it was kind of a free the extra yeah the bonus garden yeah and so I'm encouraging people to go this way because I did an annual garden this year that I really wanted people to see this area when we bought the house was all wooded okay and gangly you know just crazy scrubby stuff the retaining wall had been put in so that was a really nice thing because I don't know that we would have known to do that yeah but the rest of it was just wild so over the years and we did this as more of a formal landscaping area I would never do rocks again knowing what I know now but right they're hard to weed and they're hard to weed and they're not I mean you can't really grow lots of perennials in them which is fine we can do shrubs this is a brand new one from home depot from this year okay and it's already blooming you know what that one is um it's cool is that is that okay ring a bell it doesn't it's a panicle one okay this one was also one that I was not knowledgeable probably four or five six years ago we planted this and I absolutely love this yeah it is sometimes you just get lucky you do what do they call that dumb luck you don't know what you're doing but it turns out really well people think you're really smart one thing I would never do again which wasn't dumb luck is these ostrich ferns it's a really bad idea in a area where you have a rock wall don't do it because they're coming out of the rocks yeah you know they'll come out and I I can't get them out without deconstructing the wall right so I'm gonna have to figure out how to because they said like long runners you can actually smother them like in the spring I might smother but you can see them coming out in oh yeah all these they'll they probably would take over the whole thing yeah yeah and they I bought one plant that was it one plant a few years ago and I've divided and put them in wooded areas and nobody might you know I don't mind it then but yeah um this is not what I dreamed was gonna happen here I mean it looks good but yeah then once you know you don't want it to really the final stop on the garden walk and I've gotta water these baskets I can see oh a little little thirsty I had my I have four granddaughters 14 11 6 and 4 and decided rather than putting flowers here I would have them each make their own flower to represent my favorite they call me jaw right so this is jaws favorite flowers are my granddaughters and um that's the four of us or the five of us me and the four of them so we have girl power and but in case it rains tomorrow which it could I bought some little mini umbrellas from Amazon they're the cutest thing and I'm gonna tape them to the back of the frame so that their their pictures are and this was an experiment this year that turned out really well too I just decided to do it's mostly annuals but I do have I think you were with me when I bought these three hydrangeas okay yeah they'll stay small and then I bought some dahlia bulbs that are supposed to be white okay don't remember the name of them and then this miss manners obedient oh yeah plant um is something I bought I think through blue stone perennial that's really pretty and then really the rest are annuals filling in and I went with as you can see pinks and whites and it's filling in I really like as though I know what I'm doing yeah and then you were with me when I bought I think there were four maybe you weren't with me but there were four little little pots of these little I think I was yeah and they're they're spreaders yes they are just a carpet you're just a little bit short of filling this whole area but I it looks really good there a few weeks ago you could still see gaps so it's really filling and nice and then I've got the oh I love that and you use some of the same theme that one matches my mom's really well I love these little licorice not little because they're they grow pretty big and they're easy to they get a little bit too yeah too much but I like how they weave themselves through other flowers and pop up so they just add another nice color and texture so well awesome that's pretty much our our garden walk yeah should have lots of people walking through tomorrow if the weather I know and it's supposed to rain in the morning but if it rains really early we're good with that because yeah then everything will be fresh we're not going to sprinkle anymore now that I have everything set up yeah I'll take things down at night but put them up in the morning all right well thank you for your tour thank you everything looks so good it'll be a nice to look at in future years and go yeah remember what it was like that year but I don't know if I'll ever garden at that extent with annuals because it's it's more expensive I mean I like it a lot in this area though it because yeah it's like annuals are the only ones that like you'll get that flower power like all season long you go right so it's worth it in a few areas like this extravagant thing because they only live for a year but yes it's pretty and it's welcoming I love that and I was going to point out that hydrangea that's sitting up there is a fairy trail that I bought because uh I thought it was pretty and I didn't realize it was for zone five to nine so I think I'm gonna I'll pot it in a bigger pot but I'm gonna just bring it in in the winter yeah and see how it goes I'd probably bring it in the garage I'll let it go dormant as though it's living in zone five though and it I think it's intended to trail oh yeah it does kind of look like yeah yeah yeah cool and that one will get a little sad when it gets too much sun but it's again it's a real passing thing and yeah turn around and it's good again mm-hmm all right well I think that's it then thank you so much all right thank you