(G)arden Tour [New Additions and Future Plans]

We’re moving right along with our Summer A to Z blogging challenge and I thought this would be a good opportunity to share an updated garden tour with you. I haven’t shared one since 2016! Get read for a photo heavy post…

We’ve been in this house just a bit over five years now and this is the year that I’m really starting to reap the benefits of some of our hard work in this yard. I frequently sit on the front or back porch, looking out over the property and think about how much I love the yard and how excited I am about the future plans we have for it. Today we’re headed out to pick up a swing set to put on this big grassy area for the kids!

I talked about how my dream garden would include raised beds in my last garden post. We have them now! We built them from old pallets last summer. I think they’re beautiful but so far, I’m on the fence about gardening in raised beds and whether I like growing in them better or not. Time will tell. So far we’ve got tomatoes, peppers, and a couple of squash varieties out there.

You can see in the above photo that the garden looks a bit of a mess right now as we work to kill all the weeds in the walkways. I’m considering gravel or mulch between the beds but that won’t happen until next year.

We’ve really struggled having the garden next to the chain link fence. Next door is a hay field and they frequently spray for bugs and weeds and I suspect that it gets blown into our garden area and has been negatively affecting the growth of our plants. We put the raised beds in the existed garden plot but in the future we’ll build a garden shed on the space and move the garden to the side yard (shown above.) Getting it away from the fence line will help. We also plan to add a vinyl fence around the whole property and that will give us some much needed privacy, security, and barrier from the field.

It’s kind of hard to see but the shot above shows the two trees we added this year. To the right of the garden arbor we have an Elberta Peach tree and a Bartlett Pear tree and this year we added a Yellow Delicious Apple Tree (because they were on sale for $3 from Walmart.) My neighbor is experimenting with grafting her Asian Pear tree to our Bartlett Pear and so far it looks to be successful. We have blackberry bushes against the chain link fence as well and I would really like to move them to a better spot.

On the left of the above photo you can see the shade tree we added near the patio. It’s a Tulip Tree. My husbands brother gifted us a Tulip Tree when we got married and we had it planted at our old house. I was sad to leave it behind so we planted one here. It gets these lovely tulip shaped blooms on it…

And here’s a shot of the flower beds which are filling in so nicely. They already look different from these photos as the yellow daylilies have finished and the red daylilies are just starting to bloom. The asiatic lilies finished blooming last week and I cut them down to make room for my gladiolas to bloom.

This year we added a Weeping Blue Atlas Cedar to this bed when a neighbor was digging it out of his yard to make room for a patio. I really love it but it was in poor shape when we got it and I’m not sure it’s going to survive the transplant. I’ve fertilized it and have been giving it lots of water. We’ll see how it looks after a winter here. If it survives I’ll have to teach myself how to train its branches.

I’ll leave you with some shots of my annual flower pots. I have four of these. Two sit on the back patio and the other two flank the garage door in the front of the house. I bought these for $25 a piece from Walmart nearly ten years ago and they have been awesome. They’re plastic so they’re not too heavy for me to drag around if I want to move them. They hold up well against the weather too. Just goes to show that you don’t have to spend $150 on a fancy, large pot.

I always ask for a hanging basket for Mother’s Day and the one the boys picked out this year is so beautiful!

Growing up I always wanted a garden and flowers. Instead of subscribing to Seventeen like all my friends, I secretly subscribed to gardening magazines. Ha! I almost majored in Botany in college but I’m glad I chose to keep gardening a hobby. It’s so very rewarding and I get really excited thinking of all the things I still want to plant in our yard. I nerdily walk around my yard every morning just to see what’s newly bloomed. I probably love plants just as much as I love books!