June Garden Tour Of My 4 Year Old TN Garden! We Started With Nothing! Amazing Garden Transformation!

Hey you guys, welcome back to my garden. Today is all about the garden tour. It's June here in East Tennessee, zone 7b. My gardens are only four years old, but a lot of it has only been done in the past year or two or maybe even three. Very little was done that first year. The formal garden that you see behind me, this was finished early this spring. We started it last fall, tilling everything up, deciding how we want the paths to be. The greenhouse we built probably two or three years ago now. Just finished it up on the outside. Still have work to do on the inside, but I've got so much I want to show you guys just since last May. If you saw my May garden tour, so much has changed since then. So let's go ahead and get started. All right you guys, I'm going to start here at the front porch just because it's easiest to do that I think. So I have some really beautiful macrophylla hydrangeas by Endless Summer right here. I'll put the variety on the screen because I cannot remember what they're called, but I have one here next to a globe arborvitae and then another one on this side. I've got the walkway lined with baptisia and then down low sweet alyssum is starting to grow in on the gravel. I've got some petunias that self-seeded that are looking so cute popping out. My baptisia are huge. So if you didn't know, baptisia is a perennial. They look like these giant shrubs now that they're done blooming, but they come up brand new every spring and have these gorgeous purple spikes of flowers and you can get them in other varieties too, but I love the purple as you can tell. I've got my driveway lined with Helen von Stein lambs here. They have filled in so well. I just planted these out last June so it's been a year now and they're giant. So easy to divide. I have a video actually where I show you me digging one up and dividing it into, oh I think it was like 13 pieces or something. I've got lots of vinca planted throughout here on the front of the border along with some gumfrina. This whole space got a makeover last fall so I had the knockout roses to the back of the border already but I dug up everything else, expanded the bed, and now I have these bobo hydrangeas running along the front here and then I have perfecto mundo azaleas that'll grow up and stay smaller than the bobos but give me a really pretty pink bloom. I'm just trying to fill it in this year with the vinca because everything needs time to grow in. I've got these tater tot globe arborvitaes lining the walkway and my husband and I installed the stone walkway last fall. That was a funny project. We were out here doing the mortar in the dark with nothing but a shop light and it was quite the adventure. You can go back and see videos of that. We lined our walkway here to match our porch and did the fountain here in the center which I absolutely love. We've got these four topiaries that match each other. I've got some garden furniture out here that I picked up on Facebook Marketplace. My climbing roses are done blooming for the season but they do get a few reblooms. You can see the rhynthop lilac has a little bit of a rebloom. My john davis has a couple blooms. So from the driveway side you can see how the sidewalk and the globe arborvitaes work together. I've got this weeping cherry tree right here. I've got compact holly framing the beds to give some structure. They'll grow into a hedge eventually. I've got more liatris coming in right here. Look at this foxglove. It's that peach foxglove. It's so pretty. This hydrangea right here I planted last year. This is the little lime hydrangea and I love it here. I had put a butterfly bush. Wasn't loving it but this is such a great hydrangea and I'm excited to see it bloom again this year. You can see the greenhouse in the background and I also put another little lime back on this corner this spring because I want them to match each other and to kind of frame in the courtyard. So my husband and I built this greenhouse ourselves two or three years ago. We just added the gingerbread trim along the roof line. I think that was a couple videos ago so you can go back and see how we did that. We also just started building this stone wall last year and I added all of the incredible hydrangeas behind the greenhouse earlier this spring. So this is their first year in the ground and I'm super impressed with how well they've been blooming. I added the paver patio in front of the greenhouse and trimmed out the courtyard with those pavers this year. I'm going to take you over here. I just planted out these compact hollies to match the ones in the formal garden. I've got a white wedding hydrangea here and then matching on the other side. This is a panicle hydrangea that is starting to bloom and it's going to be gorgeous especially with the other hydrangeas in the background. I want to keep all of the color palette very classic and white and very simple because I do have so many other flowers in the cottage garden style elsewhere. I want this to just be very muted but beautiful. That's a hydrangea standard right there that you see and then I've got this hydrangea in the container. I'm probably going to need to plant it out really soon because it's getting huge. This is the blushing bride hydrangea. Look at that soft gorgeous pink and look at that spider. Yay! Hello! Good morning! But it is so gorgeous. I love this hydrangea. It is no longer available. They have discontinued it so if you find one somewhere and you love it, snatch it up because you're not going to be able to get it very long. But it's so so pretty. I want to find a really good spot for this. So we've got to continue our stone backdrop behind the hydrangeas and we're going to continue the stone wall on the other side of the greenhouse as well. But those are our window boxes that you see right here. I've got pink wave petunias and then a Supertunia Bordeaux is the purple petunias and some sweet potato vine and they are filling in so beautifully. And then same thing happening in the container in the center with the magnolia tree as the centerpiece. Look at this little combination right here. That is the endless summer bloomables. It is solid pink and the rest of mine in the ground are turning purple because of our acidity. They do change color based on your soil. So I love that this one is pink and I love the globe surrounding it and then this urn to the right. I picked this up while we were on vacation in Florida but I got this. It's so pretty. This is a Swedish ivy I believe is what they told me. I haven't done a lot of research on it but I just love it. I think it's gorgeous especially paired with this. While we are over here and then we'll head over to the cottage garden, I was just going to show you this side of the greenhouse where we have the incredible hydrangeas and the stone wall. We finished the stairs leading up to the top of the hill just a few weeks ago and we're going to continue the stone wall all the way down and back behind the gas tank. We've got the emerald green arborvitaes that's supposed to be hiding that gas tank. Eventually I planted some more incredibles towards the house out here in the distance. You can see that. So all of this is going to be completely redone. If you've been with me for any time, you've heard me talk about this. We're going to completely tear up all the grass, add a walkway, add some flower beds on each side and this is going to be fully, fully redone. But let's take a walk out to the cottage garden now. Having this fountain as the focal point has been the best decision ever. If you don't have a fountain in your garden anywhere, highly recommend because it creates such an ambiance. I just love it. Our shade garden is back here. We'll go over there in just a little bit but we're gonna go through this front entrance of the cottage garden and talk about everything that's blooming. So again, I've got my Helen Bonstein's Lamb's Ear. The trees that you see on each side of my driveway, these are limelight hydrangea standards. So they're a tree form. So I've got one here, there and then two behind me. So that's gorgeous when they're all flushed out driving up the drive. Here I've got vinca that I planted out earlier this year. I thought I was giving them a really good head start by putting them in the ground early in the spring but I think I probably stunted them. They've been struggling. They've got some yellow leaves but they're actually starting to fill in a little bit but this whole space will be covered in the pink blooms before too long. And then I've got some purple ones back behind the globe arborvitae. I tried to continue the globe arborvitaes over onto this side as well because I have them in the formal garden and I have them along the pathway to the house. So this plant right here is cleome. It all has grown from seed. You can see I've got a little bit of pink but mainly white. I do have it scattered throughout the garden. I think it's such a pretty pretty flower. I'm loving that my gladiolas are starting to bloom and the chase tree behind it is blooming. I love this combination especially when more of the pinks start blooming. I mean look at that color against the purple of the chase tree. Oh it's so so stunning. So back here I have some shasta daisies, some cosmos, some bachelor's buttons. I have my barberry. It's a sunjoy gold pillar barberry back there in that lime green. I have a bobo hydrangea right here that hasn't really started budding up too much but it'll catch up with the others. I've got another barberry right here and then you can see one more down this way. I love my little lollipop spruces in my containers adding some structure. So I am at the back side of the cottage garden right here. You can see the gladiolas starting to bloom out and here's the chase tree. So beautiful. We'll walk up that pathway here in a second but I'm going to take you over here. This is a butterfly bush that I have allowed to stay really tall and I think that makes a really pretty entrance into that path having the chase tree and then butterfly bush. Those two shrubs right here are spireas and then I've got some iris. I have a small little um not a crabapple. I have a small crepe myrtle shrub right here. A silver king euonymus I believe is that. My peony that bloomed out gorgeous. I think it's a star juniper but look at the grapevine arches that my husband and I installed just a few weeks ago maybe a month or two ago now. I love having those as entrances into the vegetable garden. I've got some gora surrounding the birdbath. I transplanted a couple of them and they didn't take very well so hopefully they didn't die but I think once those all grow in and surround that birdbath it's going to be gorgeous. I've got a acusa dogwood tree that we planted behind the bench here. We took out a poplar and added the acusa instead. I've got some barberries there along the pathway. I've got a vanilla strawberry hydrangea by first edition but then I've got some sky pencil hollies towards the background that'll grow up and add some evergreen interest. I have this canyon creek abelia right here that I love and I have a little golden arborvitae. I think this is called like goldie forever or something like that but it's gonna get really tall and fill in the space. Here's the eclipse hydrangea. I picked it up on clearance this year. Implanted it out maybe a month ago now. It's actually doing really well. Now we're gonna walk through this pathway. Got my coral knockout rose. So pretty. I love the shasta daisies back here along the fence line. I've got a bobo hydrangea that will be blooming out soon. If you all were with me this is one of my lambs ear that I planted out just a week or two ago. It is starting to put on new growth and doing really well. This is a mymonae weigella. It stays this color with the variegated leaves. It does look like it's burning. I think they might need more shade than they're getting. I think they're getting too much sun over here so I might have to move these somewhere else and I have four of them which is a real bummer so I might need to figure out something to replace them. So if you all have any suggestions let me know. I love this variegation. I love that they stay really small so suggestions please. But here's more of the lambs ear that's gonna fill in. I've got a encore carnation azalea. Look at this right here though. This is so pretty. It's got all the different textures, all the different colors. It's a globe thistle. It's the thistles that you see with the shasta daisies and then the red of the new growth on the coral knockout rose. I think it's so pretty. This is a loropetalum that I put here. It's a small growing loropetalum just to add some red. This is a pufferfish hydrangea right here beside the chase tree. I can't wait for it to bloom. I've got some sting arborvitaes that are going to grow up really tall right here and that's going to look gorgeous. We have beans growing on our vegetable garden trellises back there. So I want to show you what this looks like over here. We have wisteria growing on the arbor. I have some yarrow mixed with some bachelor's buttons and some shasta daisies that are blooming over there. More of the dauphinium, our chase tree, the cleome, and all the shasta daisies on this side I think look so so pretty. I've got a little lime punch hydrangea right here in front of this red container. Just planted last fall so that's going to grow up and be a really nice size and be really pretty. I also have the same thing over here with the little lime punch. I've been having to cut back the shasta daisy so it doesn't get swallowed. I want it to be able to grow and I probably need to cut a few more things back too but it's so hard when everything looks so pretty. We're going to walk back up this direction but I want to show you the bridge that we just installed. We built this maybe a month or two ago and installed it as well. We've had the arbor for a little while now. So glad to have the bridge that goes over our dry creek bed. All of our water runoff comes through here which is such a blessing because it was destroying my flower beds back when we first started creating the flower beds and now it is so so much better. It definitely does the job. So here is a pretty view of the bridge that we just built. Makes a huge difference. The white arbor but then look at our little house shaped arbor with the grapevine back there. We just cut that off of our own property, installed that a couple months ago when we built our other grapevine arches. So I love having that. It just adds some really sweet whimsy to the garden. Oh and again I gotta pan over to that chase tree and those gladiolas. I love it. Now we're gonna head on the outside of the border all the way over to the shade garden. So I've got some nepeta right there under the limelight hydrangea standard. I've got a butterfly bush back behind that. Some salvia and then another one of my lollipop spruces in the container. Then this is a verbena that's growing all along here. You can see all of these purple blooms. I just think that's so pretty. Very very drought tolerant. Look at it with all the white and pinks. Gorgeous. Another lollipop spruce in the container. Got a little walkway leading down that direction. So that walkway connects to the one on the other side. You can see it meandering all the way down towards the chicken coop. I've got some veronica and then my geraniums with another lollipop spruce here. I planted out a bunch of vinca along the edge of this border as well to fill in the space. I had white vinca along the border last year and loved it. These are starting to fill in really nicely so this will be super full and lush really soon. I've got this perfume breeze climbing rose and it is such a great rebloomer throughout the whole season. Look at these blooms right now. They're really small and dainty. Absolutely gorgeous. This reblooms better than any rose I have and just does so well, so healthy, does fantastic. Look at the echinacea that self-seeded back behind this rose. I think that is so sweet. They're popping up back behind these shasta daisies and then I've got my wigella back here with the red. That's gorgeous. Another sting arborvitae that's going to grow super tall right here. Can't wait till my evergreens get mature. The vinca and then you can see I have a spirea that's a really pretty lime color right there in front of my roses. But look at the little house. It's so cute. Think of it as like a little fairy house and I just love it right there. This whole bed is brand new this year. I expanded. It stopped right in front of the roses and so I pulled it out probably five or six feet and added all of this in. So the small little butterfly bushes that are around the abelia, or sorry not abelia, the butterfly bushes that are around the spirea, I pulled from somewhere else in the garden where they weren't doing as well, moved them over here and planted out these little quickfire hydrangeas. They are blooming. They're so pretty. I got these three hydrangeas because they're one of the earliest blooming panicle hydrangeas and I wanted to have blooms here as early as I could. But I've got one, two, three, and then I planted out some little dahlias right here. Dotted the entire bed with gumfrina. You can see my little gumfrina plants are starting to fill in. This bed is going to be really full soon but I love the little quickfire hydrangeas. Isn't that so sweet? I like the openness of the bloom and they're already starting to turn that pink color. Look at this one. These are going to be amazing as they grow. This is their first year and so they look so good for just being their first year. I've got a slender hinoki cypress I just planted out right here and then my rose of Sharon, it's the pink chiffon rose of Sharon, is starting to bloom. It is a showstopper. Gorgeous, gorgeous plant when it's fully bloomed. But man, this little spot is going to be spectacular as it matures. Again, I just planted all of that this spring so it's beautiful. But look at the pink chiffon rose of Sharon. I forgot to mention my four evergreens right here. They're the lime color that you see. These are going to stay this color. These are a type of holly. These are by Southern Living. I can't remember the exact variety name. I'll have to put them on the screen but they stay compact and they keep this color which I love. I always want to remember to bring in the lime and the reds and the icy blues because it makes a garden look so much better when you have all the different color foliage especially being surrounded by woods like we are. Look at this right here with my pink chiffon rose of Sharon and then my echinacea has started blooming. I planted these echinacea last year with you guys and was so excited about this little corner. I've got this tangerine agastache back here that has gotten so tall. I've got three plants that I put in the ground last year and they were really small and they have gotten so tall. These aren't as full as the one I'm about to show you but look at the blooms on this. Aren't those beautiful? And I love how they pair with the echinacea. I just think it's such a phenomenal combination and I think these are called like little powwow echinacea right here and then I have a different variety echinacea right there with the agastache. Something else I have in this bed is this encore azalea right here that is going to grow and kind of cover where this hose leads out to my drip irrigation but I also have this jazz hands variegated or petalum that's going to get really tall and big right here so that'll be really pretty. So we've done another arch with grapevines off of our property right there to lead into the vegetable garden and I'm going to show you the other agastache that is really full and beautiful right here. This one is probably the size of my other three combined. So pretty right here. I got this mannequin off of Facebook Marketplace and my plan is to grow a really sweet vine up it and I just haven't gotten there yet but I just think it's so cute for the cottage garden. I love it. Look at my kitties. They just follow me everywhere. This is a weigella right here. I don't remember the variety exactly but I planted it last year. It didn't do much for me this year so we'll see how it does next year. I've got a big spruce right here. I believe it's like angel wings or something like that. I can't remember. Then another one of my gold arborvitaes that's going to grow up tall right here. I've got a nine bark with this red foliage back here but then I put some of my shasta daisies along this back corner and I love how they pop up and add that white. I've got a little hottie hydrangea like I have in the formal garden. I have some nepeta, some phlox, a drift rose. I have some blue arrow junipers back here that I had in containers by the garage but they were getting too big. Weren't doing well so I moved them out here to the landscape and hopefully they'll do well out here. I have an incredible hydrangea. Three of them actually dotted through this space. You can see this is only their second year. They were tiny, tiny, tiny when I put them in the ground last summer so I'm very happy with how they're doing. They're looking really good but look at these balloon flowers. I think these are so sweet. I planted these out last year and I wasn't expecting them to come back as tall as they are but look at those blooms. I mean they're not like super tall. They're like 12 inches maybe. What's so fun about these are how they look before they bloom. They're like little marshmallows and they bloom into this. I think it's so pretty but then I have a drift of alliums back behind them that will look really pretty when they bloom out. I'm looking forward to that. I've got lots of things I planted from seed along this bed as well so we'll see how they turn out. This is a dappled willow I believe is what it's called. A dappled willow tree. It was turned into a tree standard variety. It's normally a shrub but I love it in the tree form especially against this green backdrop. It keeps that color foliage all through the summer so far. I mean I'm loving that it's got that color still. Very happy with that and then Claudia has made her appearance once again. She follows me and gets in the frame wanting to be filmed. I'm serious but there is another little hottie hydrangea. I've got a emerald green arborvitae growing up beside our gate and another one on this side. What happened here that one I pulled out of a container on the porch and I went to go get another one to replace the one that died in the other container because I wanted to flank this gate. Well when I went to the store I got this one not realizing that this one was so small so I'm hoping they will eventually catch up with each other but that's okay. So I have a common snowball viburnum right here. I've got a hosta in the background. My husband and I just did a lot of work on this goat house slash garden house. We did not have the gates on this just a couple weeks ago. We built these lattice gates to hide all of our junk. Then we built this porch and haven't finished the stonework. As you can tell it's just kind of sitting there at the moment but we're going to stain the porch and then paint the risers white, add more containers and lighting and all sorts of things so it's going to be super gorgeous. So happy to have that looking nicer now. This is my shade flower bed and I love love this bed. I was always kind of intimidated by a shade flower bed because I didn't want it to get lost in the shade. So I went for a lot of lime color and variegated foliage and I love the hydrangeas and how they look in the shade garden. Look at the hosta the variegated hosta leaf under this hydrangea right here. So pretty. It is packed in more than it should be once things start maturing but I'm going to be removing some things anyways and rearranging just a little bit. You can see our fencing back here is looking really rough. Well, a goat busted through so we are about to redo this fencing and it'll look nicer but I have some hydrangeas that bloom on old wood like this one right here and two others so I'm going to pull those out and probably move my Let's Dance Skyview hydrangea to this position so as my oak leaf hydrangea grows it'll have more space to fill in. I've got the astilbe. I have one right here in the center. I divided it and added another one here and another one back here so that looks much nicer. The hydrangeas you don't see blooms on that's because those are the ones that bloom on old wood so those will be coming out and making room for me to spread things out a little bit better but look at the lime green hydrangeas. Look at the lime green hostas bordering the front. I love seeing that. It just brightens the bed up. It brings continuity along the entire bed. Just so pretty. I've got some impatience. I've got some brunnera. The seeding is nice because you can be in the shade. I've got more hydrangeas over here starting to bloom. This is pop star I believe by in the summer. I love this one. I have more of those on the other side of my house. I can't remember what that one's called. It only has a couple blooms so I think it might be getting too much shade maybe. Same thing with that one over there. I don't know but this hydrangea right here is another one of my Let's Dance Skyview and I just think the blooms on it are so pretty. It stays smaller and love it surrounded by all these impatience. So, so, so pretty. This flowerbed is new as well. We had put out some of this creeping phlox last year. Only had this hillside landscaped a little bit when I added these drift roses along the edge just because I dug them out of another spot and needed somewhere to put them so we stuck them up here. But I decided to expand back behind them and we planted out these three rose of Sharon's. They are a white pillar rose of Sharon that are going to grow up and be really gorgeous. I've got a limelight hydrangea right here that's going to grow between these two dwarf Alberta spruces and again you see the three white pillar rose of Sharon's right there but then I have three more or two more on this side. So the idea behind doing the bed this way is that the rose of Sharon's will get really tall and thin on each side of my husband's office. So he works out of that shed up there. We have turned it into a little kind of cabin area for him but these are going to get 12 to 15 feet tall I think and so they'll be really pretty framing in his office. So I really like that we decided to do that and then if you go up that way that leads to the rest of our property on the back side. We have 32 acres here and lots of things that we want to do in the future. So these are my containers that I just planted out recently. I had a bunch of pansies in the containers that looked absolutely beautiful in the spring but they lost their charm when it got hot out. They're a cool flower plant or cool weather flower. So I went in and added some of my Supertunia Bordeaux petunias. I've got my sweet potato vine, a Lobelia. I don't remember Dichondra I think maybe it's what this icy blue vine is and then I've got some pink wave petunias and another plant right here I can't remember the name of I'll have to see if I can find it but it's filling in really well. If you saw me planting out these containers look how well they filled in. So pretty and they're only going to get better. So stick with me we're going to go around to the shaded side of our house where I've got some more hydrangeas and different things planted out. I know we kind of made it full circle back to this area but I'm going to take you outside our kitchen window. So this is the area that we're going to be completely redoing at some point hopefully soon but I've got again the Emerald Green Arborvitaes that are going to grow and cover our tank and then this bed I've got my four incredible hydrangeas that are going to grow and make a hedge and look gorgeous but in the meantime I've got some Blanket Flower, some Gaura, some Shasta Daisies back behind those and this is the spot where I have my Generous Gardener climbing rose. I don't have it climbing at the moment there's no blooms on it but it is stunning when it's in bloom. Look at this area and how it's coming together. Once we remove the grass and add our pathway and more flower beds along the area it's going to be absolutely breathtaking. I can't wait to see how this turns out it's going to be amazing. This is a little seating area that we like to sit and watch the kids play on the trampoline and on their playground. Look at these Brunnera and just how gorgeous these are. These are a great plant to have in a shade garden because they stand out so much. So my goal is to expand this flower bed all the way out here and down this way to like maybe here and fill all of that in with more plants so I have something to look at when I'm looking at my kitchen window which you see right there. I think that would be so pretty. I love my pop star hydrangeas I think they're so so stunning. I love how the sun comes in on these in the morning it's so pretty. These are my endless summer bloomables hydrangeas on each side of this walkway and then I've got them curving around the garden right there. I think that's so pretty you see that coming up the driveway and I love that. I don't remember if I mentioned this or not but that is a hedge of limelight hydrangeas that'll bloom out here before too long. They are stunning and I cut so many of those blooms for winter projects and even decorating my Christmas tree they were phenomenal for that but we are coming to an end this is it guys our garden. So that does it for our June garden tour of 2026. Thank you guys so much for joining me as we walked through the garden together. I cannot believe how much things have matured and developed and changed in these past four years. If you haven't seen the process we've gone through in creating this home for our family make sure that you go check out look how far we've come because I know a lot of you are new to the channel and just have no idea how things looked prior to joining us and it has come a long long way and we have so much more that we still want to do so please like and subscribe to the channel and click that notification bell so you can get notified when we do new videos and I will see you guys next time. Happy gardening!