🌸 August Front Garden Tour 2026 | FULL COLOR Cottage Garden at Peak Summer Bloom! 🌿

Hi, I'm Katie. Welcome back to Rain or Shine Gardening. Today I am going to take you on a tour of my August garden. Everything is in wonderful bloom still. Here I garden in zone 8b. I'm in the Pacific Northwest in the Portland, Oregon area and we have not had any kind of extreme summer temperatures yet. We did have a couple days earlier in the summer that got up close to triple digits but we didn't quite get there. So everything is still hanging in there pretty well. I've had to cut back some things. Some things I haven't quite had the time or the heart to cut back. But everything is blooming well. Nothing's been completely fried yet. So I wanted to take you through and show you some of my favorite blooms right now. Some of my favorite plants or trees here in my front garden. So come along with me and let's get started. Usually I start my garden tours down by my front sidewalk but today I'm going to start it in a little different place. So here I'm in my side yard garden and this is probably the shadiest of all of my garden spaces. And you can see everything is just really filling in. I'll take you in and talk a little bit more about some of the specific plants but I just wanted to give you a little overview first of what this area looks like. I do have this snowball viburnum here in the middle of this bed and it has put on some really great bushy growth. But this is beautiful in the springtime with those white snowball flowers. And then it's a nice little shade tree the rest of the year. But this year my daughter Carly helped me plant up this garden bed. So she designed it herself. She had the pick of all the annuals over in my holding tank and she got to read all the tags and decide what she wanted to plant. So all of the annuals in this bed are by Carly and you can see the cabbage that she decided to plant in here too. Which really speaks to some of my design and interest in using that cottage garden style. But it is looking beautiful. It is almost to the point now where we're going to harvest that and give it to our chickens. But I think we'll leave it here in the bed for a little bit longer. I have all kinds of things mixed into this bed too. There's a dahlia that's just starting to bloom out here. You can see it's getting its first bloom. And then I have quite a few different supertunias. So this one is Cool Jazz. It's a newer supertunia. It's got that beautiful lavender color. I also have some asters that are starting to bloom. You can see that purple there with the yellow center. Got some sun patients and a really pretty serendipity allium that's blooming in that garden bed too. I did pick up some agapanthus and I planted that in this bed. I thought it needed some some additional height that had color. So you can see there the pretty purple spikes with those pom-pom blooms on the top. That's agapanthus. And then I've got some bubblegum in this bed. Some other dahlias that are coming up. I did plant an artichoke in this bed too but it is kind of getting shrouded out by everything else. So panning back around to this area. This is a space that I completely redid this year. I had some crocosmia in this garden bed that was completely overtaking everything else and I knew I needed to come in and dig it out but I knew it was going to be a lot of work. So I was kind of putting it off but this was the year so we went in and dug it out. Now I have had to pull a few that I've seen pop up here and there but for the most part I think we we got quite a bit of it. So some things that I have in here. Some superbena. That's more of that cool jazz supertunia. And then I have a reblooming hydrangea here too that's called dream cloud. And I just did some deadheading on it because some of the blooms were starting to turn brown. But they do bloom out this really white pretty white almost light green chartreuse color. And then they get a little bit of pink on some of their more faded blooms. You can see one of them right here in the middle of the screen. But you can also see some of the brown that the tips get in some of that hotter weather. So anyway I did some deadheading to kind of see what this plant will do and it seems to be responding well because I see some new growth coming out on it where I deadheaded those blooms. I did plant a clematis on this wall trellis earlier in the season and I don't know if it got a little bit too much sun or what but it ended up dying back. So I replaced it with some jasmine and a thunbergia. This is a black eyed susan vine and I thought that would be kind of a pretty combination to use on that wall trellis and until I figure out what else I want to plant in that area. I did consider a rose but it does get a lot of shade here. And then here in the front of the bed I have some hellebores which obviously are not in bloom right now. Some lemon coral sedum and then a dahlia that is going to be blooming here soon. This is a wizard of oz dahlia. It is a pom-pom type and it's a really pretty pink color. I added some more pink because I have so much purple already. You can see that supertunia bordeaux back in there as well. So lots of color even in the shady area. We have lots of color. There's an anemone there that I just planted for some more pink too. And this hydrangea is one that I've had for quite a while. I'm not even sure the variety. I think it was one of those grocery store hydrangeas that you can buy at Mother's Day. My girls gifted it to me when they were very young and I've kind of left the blooms on it this year to see what it does. And this bloom in the back, that blue one that you can see, is the color that it blooms initially. So back in May when this whole thing was in bloom that's the color of the blooms. And then you can see the color that all of the blooms fade to and it's kind of almost this kind of muted dusty lilac or dusty purple color. So I thought it was neat. Instead of just cutting it back and having some twigs there I thought I would leave those blooms on. I do have some goat's beard that bloomed earlier in the season under this rhododendron which is getting really big. I think I mentioned in a previous video that I need to work on cutting this back and kind of controlling its size. It's just getting a little too large. And this is the pathway that leads back into my backyard which I'm not showing in this video today but I can do a back garden tour maybe a little bit later in the summer or a little bit later in the month. You can see how big the grapes have gotten and I trained it along that fence so I'll show you a little bit more of that as we get over in that corner of the garden. But here under the snowball tree you can see I have some eucalyptus growing back closer to the snowball tree. I've got lavender and gara and more of the superbena that's pink cashmere. I do have some I think it is it stormburst the white one but it tends to have more of the spent bloom look on it which I don't really care for but it's nice to test different things out in the garden sometimes. This hydrangea is a little lime and it has bloomed beautifully. It had those white blooms that have turned to kind of a green color and then you'll notice as they age and they get some more sun they start turning this pretty pink and we haven't had like I mentioned we haven't had any scorching days yet so they've all stayed pretty nice. Sometimes they can actually burn and turn brown but here under the snowball tree it stays pretty protected so they've actually turned out pretty nice this season and it's interesting to see all the different versions of this bloom because you can see this bloom here is still pretty white compared to the others it is starting to turn a little bit pink but then you'll notice there's other blooms that have more of that lime color still that chartreuse and then here in the front because they have gotten some more of that sunshine these have started to turn a pink color so it's just a really pretty hydrangea to have in this location. Again it is under the snowball tree in this bed I'm just backing up on my brick pathway that leads to my backyard and you can kind of see this view so here's the brick pathway under the arch and as you walk through the hydrangea is just framed really nicely in this archway kind of this trellis area so as you walk out it's just kind of front and center of what you see in this space. All right and then here is where I have my fountain in my garden you can see I have a that's getting pretty large here and quite a few more hellebore I've got lemon cypress because last year I decided I needed some more winter interest in my garden. I tend to plant things that will die out in the winter time things that aren't hardy and so I made an effort to try to plant some more things that will keep color during the winter. So this space here is my corner garden and we built this little arbored trellis a couple years ago now probably a few years ago but I did a little makeover to this corner earlier in the year and I have a video on all of that but you'll see I did plant up a couple new planters on each side of this bench but it's a nice serene place probably the most peaceful like I just mentioned in another video one of the most peaceful places in my garden because of having the fountain here and having it in the shade it's just kind of a nice quiet calm space. So I do like to add in color in my garden even in some of these shady areas and because I love that cottage style I have a lot of repeat flowers so you'll notice a lot of dahlias a lot of that dark foliage heuchera I have zinnias that repeat and then of course all of my supertunias and verbenas I really like to repeat those throughout my garden. This is another really large hydrangea that I have it is kind of one of those lace cap hydrangeas and I did get this from my grandma's garden and it grew huge this year. Originally when I had it in my garden I wasn't really aware of what hydrangeas needed and I planted it on a sloped clay hill in full sun and as you can expect it did not thrive it did the opposite so I had to do some research and figure out what I was doing wrong but I figured out quickly that I was doing pretty much everything wrong so I put it here instead where it does get relief from the sun it gets plenty of water and has a kind of a well composted soil to give it a lot of good nutrients and it's really decided to thrive instead here to the point where I had to cut back a bunch of the bottom branches because as soon as they bloomed the bloom heads got so heavy that it really weighed down a lot of the branches so I'm going to be doing a big rejuvenation prune on this hydrangea a little bit later actually probably pretty soon where I'm going to cut it all the way back because it's just getting so big that it's starting to come out into the pathway it kind of killed the grass off close to the brick because it was so large and I want to give other things a chance to thrive in this area too so I'm going to cut it all the way back I might sacrifice some blooms for next year but I do need to do a little bit of a size control on it and then here walking again in my grass pathway my grass pathways are about three feet wide I put decided on grass because it's kind of a nice refreshing rest for the eye kind of having all of these busy gardens it kind of wants to pull you through the garden and show you all of these different rooms and spaces that I've curated here and so I do like how they turned out we don't have sprinklers for our grass so if it's green it's because some of the water from our drip system is kind of going over into the grass area or it's from hand watering either by moving sprinklers or by just using a hose but this area along the fence line is my cut flower garden this year and this year I decided to move a bunch of roses that were along the fence and I'll get more into that a little bit later too but I decided that I would plant all of my dahlias and cut flowers not all of them but a lot of my dahlias and cut flowers in this area because it actually gets a lot of sun so the sun kind of peaks around the side of the snowball tree and hits this fence line so surprisingly enough they do get plenty of sunshine and all of these dahlias have started to bloom so I'll probably do more of an extensive dahlia tour or cut flower tour a little bit later into the season but as of this week these flowers have really started blooming so I will show you some of my favorites here this one is called apple blossom and it's a really pretty kind of a dainty style flower I really love this one one of my favorites is back here this is cafe ole and you can see the bloom on that one it is just big and beautiful it is a dinner plate size dahlias so it is quite large and then this one here I believe is called preference and this is one of those cactus style dahlias you can see kind of the pokey look to the petals they don't feel pokey but it is a different style this one back here is called high school first love see how pretty that one is and then I do have a zinnia down here too so I started some zinnias from seed this year and kind of pop them in this garden bed as well so they'll pop up through my dahlias and there's another one that is looking like it's going to be blooming here soon but this one I have mislabeled I have this labeled as something else but I believe this one is called jomanda and it is kind of a ball type dahlia too you can see how far around the back of the flower the petals go that's a really pretty kind of I don't know if it shows up here but it's almost like a pumpkin pie color I think is how I would describe it and then these I have quite a few of these planted but these are called alley candy this one's a little bit more of an open bloom but one of the reasons why I like this flower is because it really can vary you can get blooms that are almost completely white with just a little bit of that burgundy wine color in it or you can get blooms that look like this one where they're almost all completely that wine color so it's really kind of fun and interesting to look through and all the different blooms and kind of see what they're going to look like but they all have a little bit different style to them I have quite a few of these doing well I have some more dahlias in the back here too this one let's see what it's called I can't see the tag for this one but it's a pretty pink color this one might actually be sweet natalie I'm not sure I'm gonna have to wait for more of these blooms to open up and then I have one back here that's called andy's legacy this one that's not blooming yet this one in the front that's also not blooming yet is omega right here we've got rose toscano more zinnias and then another cafe ole and this one is kind of crazy because I don't know if you can see all the way up in this tree there are blooms that is so tall that I cannot even reach it to deadhead it so my cafe ole is definitely loving this area in my garden and it's actually being kind of supported by this flamingo dappled willow tree that I have here it's kind of funny how it's growing up inside of the tree and it's almost acting like a support this dahlia here is ka's mocha joe and this one has been so beautiful I have loved the color and the blooms on this one you can see some of the variants too in the color of the blooms but these blooms have lasted a really long time and I've been really happy with it the only thing to note with this one is that the stem length is really short compared to some of my other dahlias but that's okay I'm using this as more of a decorative dahlia plant in my garden because the stems aren't as long and then panning over to this side of the garden this is a little walkway I have and you can see some of the dahlias that have grown really tall here I'm actually we're getting some sprinkles so this is very pacific northwest right now it was overcast and now we're getting some sprinkles on this summer day these are some zinnias I started from seed here and we've got a little cypress down there for some evergreen winter interest and in this bed we've got salvia we've got those tall dahlias that are blooming we've got verbena the superbena and then through this bed I actually planted a river so I think you can see it goes all the way back to the other side but it is completely overtaking most other things in this bed to the point where I don't know if you can see up in that dahlia but the bubble gum has actually climbed way up towards the top of this tree so it's kind of funny how much it wants to just keep climbing and grow and spread out but the little bumblebees are enjoying the dahlias too in the garden you can see there it's fun to come out at the end of the day because the little bumbles will be asleep in the dahlias you can see maybe they're they're finding a place to rest during this surprise little sprinkle that we're getting there's another one on that one so I think I will walk through this garden space I did have to spend some time cutting back my lavender I have to kind of figure out what I'm gonna do in this area because the lavender completely overtook this pathway I was not expecting it to get that big I got these plugs lavender plugs last year and planted them and they just completely exploded this year so I am thinking I might dig them out and move them to other places in my garden and then I might actually plant nepeta which is better to size control one of the smaller versions of it in this garden bed instead because it will not overtake the pathway as much so I do have some black-eyed susan back in this garden bed I tend to not have that warm color story in my garden as much as I like to have the cool colors the pinks and purples and blues and whites but that is one that I've let come back because it just recedes itself and it is a nice little pop of interest back there it kind of draws your eye I have italian cypress and I have some lemon cypress planted along this fence line I have some peter cottontail yarrow in there which I love cutting for bouquets that's a really nice filler to use another blue evergreen I have a little pedestal with a pot I had planted some other things in there but we have a little watering oopsie on it and I had to pull out some dead plants but I might plant something else in there for the fall walking through this pathway I do have you can see this really kind of pretty minty green plant it's almost like a sage green with a little bit of chartreuse on it but this is a rose scented geranium and it does smell like a rose but you'll see it has these really pretty little purple flowers on it too but this is just two plants and you can see how far it has grown it's grown over into the bubble gum over on that side and then it's grown all the way over onto this side and it was just two little I think they were even quart size maybe they were a gallon but really small and I've heard that you can propagate geraniums pelargoniums really easily so I'm actually going to try that and see if maybe I can get some to overwinter and come back next year but these are rose scented geraniums you can kind of see the the sea of the supertunias there they look really beautiful with the black-eyed susan in the background I think I have a tree seedling coming up right there which I need to come in and try to pull out by their roots but the squirrels are running rampant in the garden and they like to come bury things bury treasures in the garden so I need to come in and probably remove that before it gets too big and on this side of the pathway I have some verbena benariensis this is a really pretty flower it's got each flower head has these little tiny blooms on it which are really beautiful especially in my cottage style garden here and I did have these banana cream two shasta daisies blooming and as you can tell I need to come in and deadhead these now because they're on their way out but they lasted a really long time maybe even a couple months they were really great you can see too I've got some coneflower around this birdbath with another lemon cypress and I do really like having the lemon cypress there because it really adds a pop and again that winter interest I really try to strive for that because I don't want every single thing in my garden just to die back to sticks in the winter I want to have something there so trying to improve that but look at all this echinacea coneflower it's really beautiful here it's growing up this is about the third year that I've had it in this space so it's really thriving it's great for the birds they love the seed heads and it's great for winter interest too because I can leave that in the winter and the cone the seed heads kind of turn black and it's especially pretty if we get a little dusting of snow to see the snow on those so now this pathway kind of leads us out into my grass my front yard area let's see I think I'm going to take you through back through the garden so this is close to where we started the tour today and instead of walking back around into kind of that side yard shade garden area I'm going to take you through another pathway so this pathway here leads you into my anniversary rose garden our anniversary rose garden so my husband and I pick out a rose every year for our anniversary I've got some other videos that talk in more detail about how we do that but these climbing roses I have three new arbors that I've installed this year as we redid this space so this was completely different last year and even as recent as January this was all just dirt and so what we had to do was install the pathway edging we put the gravel and the flagstone in we transplanted all of the roses into this space and I am happy to report that they have all done really well and everything's getting really established now which is great I obviously have more planting to do as the years go on I'm kind of filling in some spaces but I did want to walk through and show highlight some of my favorite roses in this space but you can see this pretty pathway that leads you through another thing to highlight are my limelight standards which are in beautiful bloom right now too this one here on this side since this is a new rose garden is actually new this year so we just planted this one it is much smaller than the other one that I will show you as we get over on the other side this rose here is called falling in love and this was our 2025 rose that we purchased together you can see that a lot of these blooms are kind of on the way out they're mostly spent but this rose holds on to its petals really well some roses as soon as they have opened and bloom you know a day or two later they will drop petals but this one will hold on to them which I really like and it starts blooming out more of a pink color you can even see kind of the bright pink on this bud that hasn't quite opened yet and then it fades to a softer pink and then it eventually fades to almost a white color which you can see with these blooms that are mostly spent so these blooms a lot of them are mostly spent as well but this rose is called Anna's Promise this one on the back side is not quite as spent as some of the other ones here but I love this one because the petals actually have ruffles on them so they're not smooth on the outer edges they kind of have ruffles and it kind of brings that added depth to this rose and it's kind of a soft tangerine color so it's really pretty and you can see that vigorous bubble gum that's trying to climb up the rose it's gotten almost to the top you can see there on the right hand side in my garden you'll also notice that I don't just have roses it's not as formal as some rose gardens because I also interplant with things like petunias delphinium I've got alyssum along the pathway which is filling in you can see it's kind of inching in on that flagstone I've got some other roses here like this one that's called Pop the Cork and as it blooms it blooms kind of a brighter gold color and then it fades to this yellow with the pink on the outer petals and then this rose is really beautiful right now this one's called Stainless Steel you can see the spray of blooms is really gorgeous you can see it's almost a steel color it's kind of almost hinting at gray but it is a really light lavender color here are some more blooms on this side it is really blooming right now and this is actually the third flush of blooms on this rose but this one has a really great fragrance to it too it's kind of a soft smell but it is really fragrant I love this one this is Stainless Steel this is another one of my favorite roses I think I have a lot of favorites here but this one is called Sunstruck and this is another one that has a great example of how the color on the same rose can change just beyond the age of the bloom so you can see how tight this bud is here and it's a pretty tangerine color almost orange and then this one is a little bit lighter as the bloom opens up and then here's another bloom as it's more faded you can see that center is a little bit of that kind of tangerine color still but it has faded to a creamy color and then that's a much more spent bloom and it is almost void of all of the tangerine color and it's really kind of white so you can see just on this one rose all of the different colors you get I really love this one this one also holds on to its petals really well this next rose is called Moonstone and again one of my favorite roses but look at this bloom it's so pretty it is kind of a white almost light pink color rose and the edge of the petals are pink so it kind of just like has a little highlighter color on the outside of the petals it's really beautiful and you'll notice I have a lot of areas that I've cut back on this because it just exploded and went wild and I had to count because it had so many blooms and I counted 45 blooms I think I have a picture of it to you when it was in full bloom but it was beautiful with the sunset behind it and all of these beautiful blooms I had to cut some of them and make bouquets because I knew it wasn't going to last forever but this rose is definitely happy where it's been planted and here in the front of my rose garden I do have a couple new climbers and these I did get from heirloom roses this year and they were just little sticks when I got them but now they have canes that are taller than me and this one is called Kiss Me Kate and you can see just how pretty those high petal count blooms are but it's a beautiful pink color these have a really great scent too they do not keep their petals as long but when they bloom they're so beautiful so I can't wait to train these canes up and around this arbor it's going to be a really pretty little welcome into the rose garden this is a pink rose called Sweet Surrender and these have really beautiful large blooms not as many petals as you can tell but the smell is amazing on these it is kind of that classic rose smell and I it's well named because it's called Sweet Surrender but it is really sweet oh I have a little visitor in the garden let me see if I can zoom in look who decided to join me we do not have bunnies that often that is really funny well welcome to the garden tour little bunny I don't notice much damage from bunnies so hopefully it was just here for a nice little little visit it looks like he's on the on his way already and this one is called Medallion and this is a spent bloom now but you can kind of tell the size of this bloom I mean it was probably six inches wide when it was blooming this one is also an aged bloom but you can see how large that is it's getting ready to bloom again you can see some of the blooms here but it is huge and a really great rose it gets a little bit more shade here because my limelight standard hydrangea ends up getting so big and it is in its full glorious bloom right now I'll try to show you from multiple angles but this is an amazing hydrangea if you don't have a hydrangea standard in your garden definitely try it I know they don't do well in some really hot climates but I love having mine here we do have a little bench here right in front of our front window and it's in the rose garden and we call this our sunset bench because we can sit here and look out over the roses and watch the sunset over the trees across the way so it is a nice peaceful spot to come sit in the late evening after things cool down and then just kind of ending the pathway here we've got some some creeping ground cover in this bed and some Supertunia Bordeaux in the bottom here and then I have a climbing rose and this was gifted to me by a friend at first she thought it was Bathsheba and then I sent her a picture of the blooms and she's like oh that's actually the generous gardener so take a look at that bloom right now isn't it the most romantic beautiful color and flower against that brick with the arbor behind it it is absolutely beautiful so I've been trying to train this one along this trellis this year so I'm hoping next year it has even more blooms but I think it's really beautiful with this brick and along each side of this other arbor I have a rose that is called honeymoon and you can see it's got some really beautiful blooms right now too almost like a creamy yellowy peachy color center but a really pretty creamy white so this will grow up my arbor next year I've actually got a honeysuckle on another arbor close by and it has gone through the garden bed and found this trellis so you can see it's actually growing up this trellis too I thought about cutting it out but I might actually leave it there and see how it does it's kind of funny that it has spread this far over into this area okay here's another angle of my limelight standard hydrangea it is so beautiful right now as soon as the sun comes out the pollinators are everywhere on this thing it just starts buzzing you can hear the noise from them too but all of these blooms some most of them are bigger than my head it's just really pretty to have here I love that it is kind of balanced by the other one that I have on the other end of the rose garden too that one like I mentioned we just planted this year so it's much smaller this one has been here for about five years now so it is getting a pretty big established trunk and it seems to like this space too unfortunately as soon as we get a heavy rain most of the blooms flop just because they're so big they become really heavy when they get wet but I will enjoy it now as it's in its full glorious bloom this one will also start blushing and turning pink a little bit you can notice on some of the blooms some of the petals are even starting to do that now as it gets a little more sun and then cooler nights it will start to turn that pink color maybe we'll get to have these upright blooms for a little bit longer this year we'll have to see this is kind of the front sidewalk next to my driveway where I walk up to the front of my house and you can just see everything is looking so beautiful right now all the colors are really popping everything looks great these hostas get a lot of sun so I did cut out some of the most damaged and burnt leaves but you'll notice that they are looking a little bit tired this time of year but just take a little bit of a panning look throughout the garden and show you what everything is looking like everything's blooming everything is just looking really great for color I was able to keep the grass a little bit green even which makes it look nice I don't like to put too much water on it but I do like to not have it completely brown out I think we're going to walk down the driveway garden now so we have some cleome and some gonfrina in this bed along with those repeating flowers like the petunias and this is one of my favorite views of the garden too because you can just stand here and see all of the blooming flowers kind of all the way around the garden you can see the hydrangea trees and the climbing roses this is an iceberg climber on this arbor here in the front and it's starting to push out its second flush of blooms for the year too I've got a lilac right here and this I'm excited to have kind of grow in and fill out in the garden because I want it to grow up and kind of create a little bit of shade in this bed because right now everything seems to struggle a little bit in the hot sun just because it gets blasted here a little bit more than other areas I recently planted a new Japanese maple here because this bed needed some of that red purple foliage to add to it and I have a new rose in this bed from heirloom roses this one is called top cream and it has white blooms and you'll notice I have some of my beneficial insect packs hung here I was dealing with some thrips and some aphids in my garden but those beneficial insects have been really helpful this year and controlling those so I don't notice them nearly as bad as earlier in the season I do have kind of a random dahlia here I thought about cutting it out completely I did cut back some others and I'll be planting some new things in this area that's a little bit empty right now but I'm cutting off of this and I'm making bouquets and they actually look decent right now the problem is gravity is not my friend so here in the front of my garden one of my biggest challenges is that I have to garden on a slope and gravity makes that difficult sometimes especially when plants get really big and they have really heavy blooms so I did stick in some rebar in the ground and I do need to put something on top of it there so that it's not unsafe but I think I'm and then maybe just put a little terracotta pot over the top or something but this is kind of a random dahlia that I have in this area of the garden so I have a little step up into the garden this is my front sidewalk at the front of my house and I've got some dicondra that I planted and most of the time I use this as a spiller in different pots that I have or containers but here I decided to plant it in the ground and see what it would do and it's actually turning out to be a really pretty blue silvery color ground cover I might actually do this again because I kind of like how that looks in this area again more of those supertunia I've got bubblegum and cool jazz here got some more dahlias these came back from overwintering and then you can see up into the garden it's got a really pretty view that's the front of my rose garden in the front of my house and we've got the hydrangea standard over there everything looks really pretty right now especially in this overcast sky it's really making the colors pop okay right here in this bed I have the whirling butterflies gara and it is amazingly tall so it's probably six feet tall it's taller than I am for sure but I also have a thundercloud flowering plum in this bed so this one is a really pretty purpley red foliage and the reason that I planted it there is because my Chinese dogwood needed some shade and I found out after having my Chinese dogwood in the front of this bed that it struggled once the temperatures got warm in the summertime it even has some brown tips on the leaves now but it really wants a little bit of relief from that really hot summer sun and so I thought do I dig it out do I move it somewhere else and so my solution was to keep it in this bed but to plant something that would give it some shade so I planted that tall thundercloud flowering plum and it has the most beautiful pink blossoms in the springtime but it also has that really pretty red purple foliage the rest of the year so I love what it brings to this front garden because I don't have that color up here anywhere else and it made it so that I can leave my Chinese dogwood there I do have some iris some nepeta I do have a sweet potato vine there too for a pop of chartreuse and then those gara on each side it just kind of frames in this tree area now you don't typically find Japanese maples in cottage gardens but this here is a Japanese maple and I think it fits in fine it really adds something here so I thought you know having two trees is nice but what's better than two trees is three trees so I decided to get this final fire maple by aisley and you can see the new growth on it it's really pretty bright almost yellow green chartreuse color and then the very tips have that kind of apricot almost orangy color on it too so it really has this beautiful depth almost like a red bud does like one of those flamethrower red buds but this is a maple and it's so beautiful right now I'm really happy with all the new growth that's put on in some areas it looks like it almost has like 12 inches of new growth it's pretty amazing but the reason it's called final fire is because in the fall right before it's ready to lose and drop all of its leaves it turns the most amazing fire engine red that you have ever seen on a maple it is outstanding so I'm definitely going to do a tour in the fall when this tree is red because I want to show you what it looks like but yeah it is absolutely stunning and it's put on so much growth since last year too but I'm really excited because it's going to continue to grow and continue to have that show but it's going to like be escalated every year because it's going to get bigger and bigger so can't wait for the fall time when that's going to turn color I have some more foxglove kind of tucked into this garden too and you can see the bees I don't know if you can see the bees but I can hear the bees they're all buzzing all over this gara they love the blooms and I love how the gara kind of moves and bounces in the wind it really does make it look like little butterflies in the garden and this is big I chopped this gara all the way back down to the ground it's only a couple inches in the winter time and then it comes back to be this huge so it's pretty amazing what this plant does in just one season so moving over into the bottom corner of my garden this is one of my favorite spots I have so many favorite spots in my garden but this is one of my favorites I just love how the colors turned out in this garden this year with the the different flowers and choices of plants that I have I've got supertunias again that cool jazz and bubblegum that repeat throughout my garden the cleome that's blooming that's the rosalita the the pink one pinkish purpley one that's there I've got some salvia that's popping out throughout the garden you can see it's pretty tall and then this lady's mantle here so this is a little flagstone staircase that leads you up into my garden into the grass area and this is from my sidewalk so you can see that just has those little steps inviting you up into the garden you can see the rest of it up there I planted two new boxwoods this year these are from heirloom heirloom isn't just roses they also have perennials and some shrubs like boxwoods I also got some veronica from heirloom so you can see that pink spike flower right there that's called first love veronica that's really pretty I picked up some zinnias these are actually from godfrey nursery down in the Salem Oregon area and the cleome is amazing I have never had this in my garden before but it is probably four feet tall and fills up about that much space this is cleome senorita blanca I believe it's called and this is just three plants total in this area I can't believe how big these got this year so I'll be planting those again but maybe just in a little bit of a different space I wasn't really aware of how much total space they were going to take up until they grew up and grew in this year and it kind of surprised me so I love what they're doing I just I'm going to be a little more intentional with where they go next year look at the colors and how everything turned out isn't it beautiful I love the cottage inspired garden and the colors everything just seems to meld really well together this is the very bottom corner of my garden this is where I usually start my tours but I'm going to end my garden tour here today and you'll see I planted some chitalpa on this side so that will get tall and I have a little hedge of some other evergreens along this line too as my garden ends but I have some different adjugas here that have bloomed really well this year this one's really pretty actually it's kind of like a sagey green color with those pink bloom spikes and then I just picked up these bright chartreuse color adjuga from Andrew's seed company from their nursery when I went over to visit in Ontario Oregon that's Laura's family from Garden Answer that owns that garden center and nursery so I love to go over and see what they have every year when we visit the area I did post a little video of a tour of that garden center on my channel too so if you're interested in checking that out I will link it below so you can see what they had and what I ended up picking up from their nursery and got it planted I have this moonstone blue juniper here too to bring some blue into the garden and I even have a dwarf blue atlas cedar back here too in the garden to bring some additional blue color I've got a little buddleja back there that's blooming too with some pretty purple flowers and I planted a new hydrangea as well also from heirloom roses but yeah this is the area of my garden that I just kind of stand back and look at sometimes you know do you ever do that and you just like seems like your head down working all the time in the garden everything is you know I got to get this planted I got to figure out where I'm going to put that oh this is starting to bloom and then all of a sudden you just step back and you're like wow look what the garden is doing look at all of these blooms look at the beauty here in the garden so I'm just really happy with how this turned out this year and I'm definitely picking up some of the things that I want to do again and some things that I want to do different hey that is my garden in August my front garden thanks for coming along with me everything like I said is in beautiful bloom right now I don't think I'm waiting on anything else in my garden to bloom that I've been anticipating my dahlias are starting to pop the petunias are looking amazing and so just continue to feed it and support it and let it grow but everything just is looking really great right now so thanks for coming along with me let me know which flower maybe stood out to you that maybe want to try in your garden I'm definitely looking for some of my favorites to repeat again but always looking for new things to you so if you have any suggestions of things maybe I should try in my garden let me know make sure to subscribe if you haven't yet so you can come back along with me in the future on other garden tours and kind of follow me along as I'm doing projects and updating my garden and as things continue to bloom so rain or shine I will see you next time