What's Still Blooming in the Late Summer Garden? August 2026 Garden Tour

Well it continued to decline and eventually it just died. So how did it feel? Something ripped my newly planted yellow rhododendron right out of the ground. George had a birthday and did something exciting and we have some really pretty blooms to end out the summer so I'm going to share those with you. Hi it's Steph, welcome back to our garden. It is a beautiful and crisp August morning and it feels so nice to be out here with these temps. It's a nice reprieve for us and for the plants from the hot temperatures of summer. But I also feel for so many of you who have been leaving comments on our videos about how you're having heat waves and days in a row of 100 plus degree temperatures. I know that must be really difficult and stressful especially, you know, for life in general but to keep your plants alive as well. So I hope that you get a reprieve from that soon and maybe even some rain. But I want to share with you some things that are looking really pretty on our back patio starting with these containers that I have been loving this season. And this one I didn't show in a recent video so I want to share it with you today. It is a type of alocasia or elephant ear. I believe it's a coffee cups variety. It has a dark stem with these cupped leaves and I just love it. I'm going to actually try to save the corn because it was an annual that I purchased at the Home Depot and I think I paid around $15 for that container. So I'm going to try to lift it and save it for next season and see how it goes. But I have a cluster of plants there that I did a red, white, and blue theme for America's 250th birthday this year. The blue lubelia is starting to fade but my white lantana and my red and white mandevilla is still looking really pretty and I like that combo there this year. And of course these planters. So these have gotten huge. My two planters on the end are 22 inches in diameter and the one in the center is 18 inches but once they're all filled it just looks like a wall of plants. And with these grasses kind of floating above them I'm just obsessed with this combination and I'm definitely going to repeat this hot color combo next season. I have some orange sun patience. I have the Sedona sunset coleus. Some beyond midnight something midnight sweet potato vine I believe it's called. I can't remember right now but I also have some capia which is the cigar plant I believe it's called. Well anyway the hummingbirds love the capia so I'm really excited with that one and definitely repeating this color combo. But this is a new coleus that I actually am trialing for proven winners in my garden this year. Each season for the last couple of seasons they've been sending me a handful of new annuals to see how they perform and then we report back at the end of the season. And I have to say that this pepper flakes coleus is doing wonderful. It is a smaller foliage coleus and it has this beautiful red color with this sort of chartreuse speckling. I almost feel like the color should be like gold dust or something but it's actually called pepper flakes and I really like it. I have one plant in this small maybe 10 to 12 inch planter and look how large it has gotten. So a really good one if you see it at a garden center next season which you should see it out next season try it because I think you'll really like it. And here in a terracotta pot I have a type of rex begonia that looks so beautiful as a standalone plant in a planter. It is the space age black hole rex begonia and it is an annual. This would look beautiful planted in a drift in a shady garden because these leaves have so much color. Silver green like a deep burgundy purple it's stunning. And I actually did grow this last year just like this in a planter which is why I repeated it because I love it. I brought it inside for the winter and it just wasn't happy. One by one all of the leaves started to crisp up. I think it does like a little bit of humidity and with the heat in the house I think it dried out too much so it didn't do well but a beautiful annual to grow in a planter. And I also wanted to show you that it does get some blooms you can kind of see them hanging underneath the leaves they're all budded up and then eventually they will flower in a light pink color. So just a really great little plant. And my hedge of little lime hydrangeas is starting to get that beautiful pink coloration that they typically get with those cooler night temperatures of later summer. Now I know some of you in southern regions with warmer temps don't get this color change so I'm sorry about that but they do look really pretty when that starts to happen. Now one thing I noticed with this hedge this year besides the fact that the one on the end is getting shaded we talked about that in a prior video is that there is quite a bit more flopping going on especially with this one here on the end which gets the most sun and has grown the most. And what happens is if you don't prune your hydrangeas which some people don't you get a lot of framework right you get all of those branches that cross and whatnot and your blooms will be smaller but because you have all that framework it holds them up a bit better. The trade-off is if you do prune them you get these larger panicle bloom heads which are stunning but they're also very heavy so if you get a lot of rain there is a good chance that they will start to flop which is what has happened this year. I've had these here for several years this is the year that I've noticed it the most on this one here at the end but we've also gotten a quite a bit of rain in the month of August which has been nice but this is what's happened to this hedge. Moving over I have my hardy hibiscus which always blooms for me in August. Now this is late to bloom in my garden so like I said mid to late August it is starting to kind of slow down now but it was completely covered a few days ago. I do have a compulsion with this plant though I do not like when the off and cleaning it up but it is so stunning it has these really large tropical blooms they're probably eight to ten inches across and this is the perfect storm hibiscus it has this kind of light pink and darker pink with this magenta almost red center it probably is red love it and the dark foliage also adds another level of contrast it is huge I would say that it's probably about six feet across five to six feet across and about four to five feet in height so pretty substantial it is a perennial that acts like a shrub because it's as big as a shrub but I love it in this corner for late season color they also like moisture so if you have a spot in your garden that stays a little wet a good perennial to try and coming around to underneath our Dr. Merrill magnolia which has also put on quite a bit of size at this point and looking beautiful I planted some macrophylla type hydrangeas earlier in the season they are the let's dance sky view now I did interplant them with some impatience to provide some color in this area because the hydrangeas are still relatively small they were one gallon when I planted them but they have been putting on blooms all season they are a type of continuously blooming macrophylla hydrangea so some of these macrophyllas will give you a big bloom in June and pretty much be done and then the blooms just start to fade for the rest of the season well this one because it continuously blooms it will have a combination of new blooms and faded blooms you can actually see that right here this is a newer bloom and these are blooms at different stages that have begun to fade I have another really fresh one there and kind of a light blue purple so far I'm really enjoying this hydrangea and as it fills out and creates a little swoop here I think it'll be stunning and I'm really excited to see that and here on our patio bed I'm still loving these some patients this is the compact orchid variety they are an annual so they will die when we get our first hard frost at some point at the end of October or November but I love them so much such a beautiful soft kind of lavender purple and they have filled in beautifully I am finding that some patients for me are doing much better in the landscape versus in containers because I have some in my front porch which is west facing super hot and they do get a little wimpy if they get too much sun they're becoming divas out there but here they're doing beautifully so I will continue to grow these in the landscape for sure and then here is the rock and play in the blues salvia looking stunning with these beautiful tall spikes of dark purple flowers with a hint of blue to them very pretty a great way to fill in some color when my perennials are starting to kind of lull at the end of the season I also have some bidens that look like mini cosmos in white this is campfire marshmallow also looking really pretty to finish out the season and my firelight tidbit hydrangeas that I absolutely love are also picking up that pink coloration and looking really pretty these have put on quite a bit of size they are a more compact panicle hydrangea and panicles can take more sun these are planted in full sun as you can see it's getting pretty bright in this area at the moment and I would say that they're probably three by three in size at this point and they have filled in to touch each other so it's creating a hedge I have five of them planted here and we planted them in 2023 and so they've been here for what four seasons now yeah they're looking great my millennium allium has finished blooming now but I have another variety in the front border that we're going to look at that has just started blooming it comes in right after the millennium but even when they're done blooming you can see that these sphere-shaped blooms provide a lot of interest even as they age and the bees are still hanging out here this is a plant that the pollinators absolutely love and I just want to point over to this joe pie weed I'm actually going to come around the corner to show you how tall it is and in past years for the last two years or so George and I have done a video in the fall called the fall switcheroo where we move around some things in the garden that need transplanting dividing moving etc and this is one that is on the list for this year look how tall it is this is the baby joe joe pie weed it is not baby in the least it is quite tall and it is covering my fountain when I come down the driveway so I have bought a smaller variety of joe pie weed that I will be replacing this one with and this plant is going to move over to another bed and I'll share that with you and some of you have said good luck trying to move the joe pie weed I'm guessing that it's probably going to want to pop up in this area for a few years but I'm going to do my best to get every last bit of it out and in this bed here in my front border I have a plant that is wonderful for late season interest it is the Japanese anemone now I will tell you that sometimes if they're happy where they're planted they will spread a bit and get carried away but if you're okay with that it is one that provides blooms later in the season this one here is the honoring joe bear and it's got a really pretty white bloom look at that gorgeous I really love this white coloration it's so ethereal it just looks really pretty these are plants that like a bit of moisture they will do better if they get consistent moisture and I have another variety called the fall in love sweetly now the good thing about this variety and even the honoring joe bear is that they are here in full sun and generally anemones like a part shade location with that moisture that we talked about and these have a ton of buds on them and they're growing in full sun looking really pretty it has this rose pink coloration and I have it floating right above my other variety of allium this is the lavender bubbles really pretty has almost like a blue color to the foliage so it's a little bit different than the millennium and it blooms a few weeks later and you can see that the bees are already finding the plant and really enjoying it so I have a drift of three plants here that have filled out and created this little swoop and I have one on this corner of the bed as well as on the other corner in front of my bobo hydrangeas earlier this morning when we filmed the garden tour I hadn't noticed that this plant was in bloom but as I came down the driveway this afternoon this beautiful color caught my eye this is the beyond midnight caryopteris and it has a really beautiful kind of violet purple coloration and the pollinators absolutely love it I planted it here at the end of last season so that I could fill in a little bit of a gap that I had in this corner so earlier in the spring that green foliage that you see before the bobo is a white peony so obviously the peony has long finished blooming and now this caryopteris comes in at the end of the summer into maybe even early fall depending how long it blooms to add some late season color last season I also planted these beautiful coneflowers that I had purchased at Lowe's I don't recall the variety I did buy four of them and only two returned but the color looks really stunning with the coral jade sedum that I have planted right beside it which is also in bloom and moving on to the front porch these planters have been going non-stop from the time that I planted them at the end of May they were smaller and of course they filled out beautifully you can't even see that there are pots underneath at the moment but this has been a difficult year to keep these planters happy because this is a very hot spot this is a west facing location so these planters at the end of July beginning of August was starting to require water twice a day now some of the plants are okay with less water like the gara perfectly happy with getting watered once a day the verbena also a rock star but I have found that the sun patients in these containers they will start to wilt on me if I don't water them twice a day in the height of the summer so that taught me that I cannot use sun patients on the front porch landscape they do great maybe even in the backyard containers as you saw those orange ones excellent but here on the front porch it is just much too hot for them but all in all I'm really happy with this pink purple and white combination that I used in these planters I really love the look of the gara because it's really wispy and magical I'm actually going to try to dig these out of these containers at the end of the season and throw them in my landscape to see if they survive now gara can sometimes survive especially in warmer climates if they're in a very well draining soil so I'm going to see how it goes but the larger planters in the back here with the purple fountain grass I can't tell you how much I love purple fountain grass and now as we end out the summer and transition to fall they are just such a perfect plant to carry us through another season in this corner I have some Sahara rudbeckia that some of them have faded but this one just started blooming and they have self-seeded some so if you're growing this beautiful plant in your garden let it drop some seeds because you'll get some babies I thought this was just an annual and it's been coming back in my garden for the last couple of seasons and I'm thrilled about it because it's beautiful so across the front you can see that I grew an annual this year called vinca all of those pink plants along the front they were very easy to grow from seed and super low fuss drought tolerant they love the heat and they've been doing really well all season I think I only watered them maybe two or three times when I first planted them and they've been completely on their own so I will definitely grow vinca for the borders again next year my phlox is still doing well I had some blue fortune agastache that returned that's a plant that's not always reliable for me but it came back this year these two on this side on the other side I have a very small one that returned one did not so I'm going to let that one self-seed a little bit this year and see how it goes but a plant that I want to show you is right here this purple aster this aster is an absolute rock star I planted it for the first time two seasons ago last year was its second year and this year is its third year and it has really spread and is looking gorgeous it's called monch m-o-n-c-h and it is so pretty it's got this gorgeous lavender purple color with a yellow eye and it blooms later in the season so as you can tell I am really thrilled about plants that continue to keep the garden blooming all the way to the end so this is one that I added to get that continual color in late August and it has performed beautifully so if you can find monch aster I highly recommend it and you can see my knockout rose in the center is starting to bloom and other things have begun to fade like the cone flowers and even these echinops the blue glow globe thistle but I'm leaving these seed heads to dry out so that I can collect some seed from them and the cone flowers I also like to leave up quite a few of the cones for winter interest and for the birds but this bed I have been really happy with this season and right here on the outer corner of this same bed where I planted my engelmanis bushes lace spruce it's looking beautiful I absolutely love this evergreen but this corner is looking not so great because things are starting to die off at the end of the season so it looks a little weedy it needs a little bit of work which I'll get to eventually but what I want to share with you is this here is cone flowers that have sort of toppled over and they're starting to dry and be done but once they start to drop seeds they will create a bunch of new plants for you and this is a video that I had made in the past if you want some plants in your garden to self-seed you just want to make sure that you have some exposed soil so that when those seeds drop they will more easily germinate and give you more plants so George just said oh this looks like a weedy mess and it does only that these are not weeds they're actually a bunch of echinacea purpurea plants you can see I have one here here here here here and they're everywhere there is probably a dozen plants here that are already a pretty great size and these will probably bloom for me next year now I have the option of digging these up and moving them around the garden or sharing them with friends but this is a great way to get free plants you just let them drop seed and with no effort on your part you're getting a whole new plant that one in the corner looks different yes so this is a salvia see good job George you start to get a discerning eye after a while so he thought this was all weeds I knew exactly what they were that they were echinacea purpurea seedlings but this one looked different that's because this is a salvia and some of this coneflower has germinated in and around this salvia so it might require digging up the salvia as well to be able to weed those out but that's what happens now something that is a weed and has become a huge problem in my garden George has called it creeping jenny it is not creeping jenny it's actually spurge but it is going rampant right now look at that I call it creeping jenny because it just creeps all over the floor it creeps all over the floor right so the name sounds appropriate but it's actually spurge terrible weed it is everywhere and I do have to go through and get a handle on it but let me know if you are dealing with this weed in your garden it is quite a huge pest and here in our hillside garden you can see our greenhouse is still sitting there it's empty we do have a plan to add a sink to it and some shelving maybe starting next month when it gets a little cooler it is too hot to work in the greenhouse here in our zone between June and August but I'm really excited to get some things done in there for fall and winter but what I want to show you is this shrub right here if you've been around the channel for a little while a few seasons back maybe three or four years ago now you might have seen me plant a small shrub down low and it was this plant this is a heptacodium or a seven suns flower and it's called the temple of bloom I really love this you can either grow it as a large shrub or limb it up into a small tree which is what I'm starting to do with it you can see I've already started to limb it up and why I love it is because in spring it will leaf out with these really large glossy green leaves but it has multi-season interest right now at the end of summer it is starting to bloom and the pollinators absolutely love it you get these clusters of white flowers all over it and even when these white flowers are done the bracts turn red so then it looks like it gets a second flush of blooms in that beautiful red coloration and in the winter when all of the leaves have dropped you have appealing bark so if you don't grow a heptacodium in your garden you should think about it because it's a really good one and we're going to look at a few more things here in the back area a change that I made this year was growing more zinnias in place of dahlias and I have to say I have not missed the dahlias in the least I actually adore these zinnias this year and I especially love this linen variety that I grew I got the seeds from johnny's but it has the most beautiful soft peachy colors and really roughly blooms and I'm definitely going to grow this variety again I love them I am glad I went with it I don't know what the ballerina looked like but the linen is also really pretty and then I have some cosmos here with some sunflowers the cosmos are starting to go over at the moment but the sunflowers are still going strong this is the sonata white and it's a really large bloom on this cosmo and I really love it I think it's so beautiful but something I'm not thrilled about is that the deer are going to town on this lilac shrub that I have here on the side this is the miss kim lilac and as george and I were building the greenhouse this spring it was blooming but there were only two or three clusters of blooms on it and I was telling him I don't know what's wrong with this shrub because it has been here for a while now and it never gives me good blooms well now I know exactly why because the deer keep eating it and you can see that they've ripped at it and what happens is these bloom on old wood so if they start ripping off the buds I won't get any blooms next season so now I have a decision to make do I want to add another thing that I have to spray on my list or do I move this out of here in favor of something that is more deer resistant because I do have a viburnum right behind george a popcorn viburnum that they don't touch so that is a decision that I'll have to make but such a bummer to make this discovery and speaking of things eating things let me show you something that happened right here in a woodland tree ring bed that I have I had planted a really beautiful yellow rhododendron earlier this spring and I shared with you that I was going to plant it in the middle of this geranium macarysum because I was hoping that the scented leaves would deter deer or anything from eating on the rhododendron because I have found deer to eat the buds on my rhododendrons when they start to swell so that was my plan well we went away we actually went on a family vacation with the kids and my parents and it was actually george's birthday so he celebrated a birthday and it was really nice we went on a cruise which we have gone on one of these oasis ships by rural caribbean before and what I love about them is that they have this beautiful central park which is like a garden on the sea I shared some pictures over on facebook when we were away and it's just really peaceful and it's a great spot to hang out but anyway when george had a birthday they actually brought out this flag and a small piece of birthday cake I guess when you register they know your birthday so they did that without us knowing because george would not have wanted this whole to do on his birthday he would have been really embarrassed by the whole thing and so anyhow it was really nice and then we walked by this zip line that they have on the ship and there was a 13 year olds doing this zip line and george said well you know what if they can do it I can do this so he went ahead and did the zip line on the cruise boat which was really fun and he had a really good time I'll insert some footage for you to check out you did it so how did it feel it was easy yeah it was very easy all right good it wasn't that scary actually so it was something good to do on your 47th birthday it was good yeah looking down is the worst but once you went forward it was fine well congratulations and happy birthday my shoes oh look at you that's official but we had a great vacation I had my garden was left in good hands I have a friend from my garden club who has been so gracious and will come and water for me and do the deer spray so everything was taken care of at home and I will say that it's much easier to go on vacation and leave your garden in August than it is earlier in the season when things are really thriving at this point I'm only worried about things staying alive and they were alive they were great it went well but one thing that did happen is that I noticed George was out here cutting the lawn when we returned from our trip and he saw that there was a shrub just hanging out on the fabric here and he asked me why did you just leave this dead shrub here and I hadn't so I had no idea what he was talking about came out checked it out and after a few minutes I figured out that it was this rhododendron that we had planted in the spring here in the middle of the geranium macarysum which was such a bummer and I didn't do this and I know that nobody else did it who lives with me so my only thought is that maybe a deer was trying to eat on it because it was still alive when I left I remember watering it a few weeks back and they must have went to eat at it kind of pulled it and then just dropped it right here which I'm really disappointed about because it hadn't yet had a chance to root in it was just newly planted a couple of months ago so now that it's been sitting there in the heat not getting water it died so I'm hoping that I can find a replacement at some point next season because I really thought it was such a pretty vibrant yellow rhododendron and different but that was something that happened while we were away and right across we have this bed that we created last fall in addition to the well bed so we created both of them at the same time with a path in the center and if you didn't get a chance to check out that video I will link it below in case you're gearing up to make some new beds or even expansion of some beds this fall but what I want to show you is that I planted some ligularia this is the bottle rocket variety and it's supposed to bloom mid-summer I planted it this spring and I never saw blooms on it so perhaps I missed them because I did get them in the mail and they'll bloom for me next year but let me know when your ligularia typically blooms but what I wanted to show you is that these magic wands this is the magic shows white wands I planted them this spring and they're giving me a second flush and the pollinators love them there's always bees on this plant and they've put on some good size since I planted them in spring so far I'm really happy with them and right across the way we have the well bed and this here is calimenta it's a later blooming variety of nepeta or catmint the bees love it it has that minty fragrance and the deer and rabbit stay away from it has a really pretty kind of ethereal look with these dainty white blooms they almost look like baby's breath from afar but I also have some sedum that is starting to bloom right here and let me see if I can find the variety of this sedum the foliage is a little bit darker and then it has these rosy pink blooms now I did have a tag somewhere here it is now one thing I don't love about it is that it is splitting in the center that could be for a couple of reasons either they're getting too much moisture or not enough sun it could also just be the weight of the blooms so I'm going to kind of watch the behavior of this sedum and see how I feel about it in a couple of seasons but it is the stone crop sun sparkler dazzle berry and it blooms summer through autumn my grasses have also started to put on their plumes now this is a more petite type of fountain grass it is called the piglet now there is little bunny and piglet both of them are pretty compact this one gets to be one foot in height one and a half foot in width really compact great for the front of the border to add late season interest and I really like it along the front here you can see that the yarrow that I planted recently this is the tutti fruity grapefruit is starting to fade a little bit but this salvia that many of you have told me is great and I'm finding to be the case is the rose marvel it has continually put on blooms since I planted it so it is one that blooms for a really long time look at this you can see it's still creating bloom buds so a really great variety it's pretty compact low growing making it perfect for the front of a border now something that was a little bit unexpected was these daisies they bloomed beautifully early in the season and for a really long time they are the amazing daisies banana cream too but I thought that these buds would have opened up by now and they haven't so it's not going so well for the second flush but I have to say the first flush was very impressive gorgeous blooms they start off yellow then they go a bit creamy and they bloomed for a really long time the phlox is still going and I left the seed heads up on the culver's root which I think looks really pretty so all in all I'm really happy with the way this bed performed this season another thing that we noticed when coming back from vacation and looking around the garden is that this beautiful shrub had died this is an osarios gold pine an umbrella pine and we've had it for a few seasons now in fact we moved it a couple of seasons ago in the fall in a video called fall switcheroo and it was doing really well it even put on a good amount of growth this spring and then it started to look a little weepy and we touched it and felt it and it was kind of like the soft growth of spring so we thought well maybe it's just weepy because the growth is still soft and once it hardens up it'll look fine well it continued to decline and eventually it just died and sometimes that happens with plants for no good reason it was getting enough water the light conditions were fine and it was happy for a while in this spot so it's such a bummer especially with conifers and trees and plants that can be a little pricier we do have some plans to replace it with something else this fall but it is such a bummer when that happens and here in our Japanese maple garden pretty soon most of our maples will start getting a little bit of fall color our collection really shines in the spring but we do have some really pretty colors in fall as well and even the trees in the back of our garden will start to transition and just feel like a really beautiful New England fall our ferns have also come into their own this is year three so they did that sleep leap sleep creep and leap so this year they definitely leaped as well as the hookahs the caramel are doing really well and our Japanese forest grass is looking amazing it has put on such good size actually I can divide this and move it around the garden which is really exciting because Hakana Kloa or Japanese forest grass that can be a pretty pricey plant so it's always great when things get big enough to divide but something else that I've been thinking about a lot is as we transition from the summer garden into the fall garden is how my channel is going to change being here in the northeast we can't create garden content outside in the colder months of late fall and winter so in the past I've had my series the hooked and rooted at home which I do plan to continue but something I had mentioned in a video earlier this year was that whenever I posted a cooking segment the algorithm hated it and it would never share it with my audience or perhaps some of my audience just isn't interested in cooking content but it is something that I do a lot of in my life I probably cook six out of seven nights of the week and so I have decided that I'm not going to worry about the algorithm and I am just going to continue adding some of those cooking segments to my videos this fall so let me know in the comments if that's something that you have enjoyed in the past or what you liked most about the hooked and rooted at home series and of course Rocco will be coming back and making some appearances in our videos our sweet Italian greyhound pup I'm actually going to link a video right here that you can check out of 12 I believe it was 10 plants that you can add for some late season interests that will keep your garden blooming through September so you can go ahead and check that out thank you so much for spending your time with us and I'll catch you in the next one