It’s my last garden tour of 2023. I’ve already started pulling some of these plants, particularly the ones that were on the downward trajectory. Others, I’ll probably leave for another week or two. I like having the garden tidied up around the beginning of October. Having to be outside working in the garden when it’s chilly is not my favorite, so I really try to wrap it up before our weather really turns.
My favorite month for this pot:
September:
The August garden. It always looks a little wonky around here. A few things are passed their prime, but the zinnias and ornamental onions are just entering as the star of the show. Only another month before most of these annuals will come out and I’ll be trading the summer colors for fall reds and golds. Here’s a look at where we started and where we’re at now! We had a big storm come through in late July, and some plants have just never recovered. Such is life as a gardener!
May:
August:
This one turned out to be more purple than I had intended. The purple flowers seemed to enjoy their spot more than the other flowers I had in there that provided some depth of color.
Last Friday, a massive storm blew through Kansas City. I looked outside and thought we were in the middle of a hurricane. Everything looked like it was literally being tipped sideways and flying down the street. What resulted was massive tree damage and no power for several days. Thankfully, we had very little damage, aside from some large branches falling down. But the winds did not help my poor plants. They still are standing sideways today.
But plants are resilient, and they’ll bounce back. Before the storm blew through, I took my July garden update pictures.
May:
July:
May:
July:
May:
July:
May:
July:
May:
July:
June:
July:
May west side garden:
July:
June:
July:
Everybody has fared pretty well so far! Now I’m off to do some staking of my flowers that tipped over during the storm. 🙂
The June garden is my favorite, I think. Everything looks the very best. The bugs haven’t started to really come out quite yet, and things don’t look terribly overgrown. It’s just simply my favorite time of year in the garden.
I use lots of containers on our patio to bring color up close to our house. Our west side garden is my full sun, cottage garden. Over the years, it’s become a combination of annuals and perennials. Our garden path in the backyard is primarily a sun garden as well and a combination of annuals and perennials. I’m dreaming up how I want to landscape the east side of our house, that will be primarily a shade garden, now that all of the bushes I hated over there have been removed and we finished installing an egress window in the basement. Lots of dreaming and sketching, and of course finding inspiration from other fellow gardeners. 🙂
May:
June:
May:
June:
May:
June:
May:
June:
May:
June:
I forgot May pictures of the garden path and the rest of the backyard….but June is looking pretty…
May west side garden:
June:
I forgot a May picture of my front container, too.
I’m still working on finishing up mulching, and bracing for the onslaught of “what’s wrong with this plant?” That comes in July and August every year. But for now, I’m enjoying all of the color!
Oh this is has been a week. It’s been potty training week for Baby J, and I am exhausted. But were here. We’ve made it to Friday! And being home all week with a 2 year old gave me enough time to finish my fall outside refresh!
I love refreshing my outdoors for the fall. While some gardens I take out completely and clean up for the upcoming season, I try to do a few fall containers to hold on to some of the beautiful fall color. It’s refreshing to see fall colors outside in my containers to match the pretty leaves that start to fall this time of year.
I went around the outside of our house and snapped pictures of anything I spruced up for the fall season. If I salvaged some of my summer container for the fall, I’m including a picture of what it looked like for the summer, as well. Often times, I find I don’t need to pull everything when many things still look really good into the fall, and can instead just add to them.
I’ve so enjoyed sharing how the garden has grown over this past season. September, though, is generally the end of our summer gardening season. Invariably, October brings at least a few cold snaps, so I pull all of my annuals out in September and tidy up the garden for the winter. I’ll keep a few late season annuals until the first freeze, just because they still look so beautiful. And, of course, will add some mums and replace a few container plants to “autum-ize” a few of my containers. But this is the last true garden update for the summer!
I’m going to include pictures of how things looked just planted in June as a reference point of June to September. September is certainly not most plants best months, but it is truly magnificent how much growth happens in just a few months!
June:
September:
The coleus has just grown beyond my wildest imagination in this front container.
Time for a monthly garden tour! Early to mid July is what I call peak garden season here. It’s absolutely stunning during those couple of weeks, and then it really heats up here in KC. The plants that really love the heat go bananas, and I’m out in the garden at least weekly cutting things back so they don’t look leggy or overgrown, and the things that like slightly more mild temperatures just kind of wonder what in the world I’ve done to them.
Last month, I showed a picture of these areas in June and July. I’m going to add on an August photo, so you can see how much everything grew!
June:
July:
August:
Watching the garden grow in the summer brings me endless joy. I love seeing how things play well together, making mental notes to myself on the color combinations used. Dare I say that this may be my favorite year YET. I went out at the beginning of July and took some pictures of the gardens to share!
I’m going to share the June picture followed by the July picture, because I always thinks it’s so amazing to see how things fill in during such a short period of time.
June:
July:
Happy June! I hope you all had a good long weekend!
Gardening is one of my favorite things to do in the summer. I spend so much time poking around the gardens outside, seeing what’s growing, admiring how things grow together and interplay. Every summer, I try to give you a little peak at how my gardens are growing this year. So here’s my first installment of the Lane family garden 2022. There’s still work to do, but you don’t fully appreciate the work and growth without the ’before’ pictures.
The west side garden. This bed gets full sun. I love zinnias as fillers of this garden in between the peonies and other annuals. I’ve added a few more perennials this year. The lime green stonecrop in the front of the beds is an annual, and I planted white supertunias in between each one this year. The clematis on the trellis is in its second or third year, and looks super full and gorgeous.
It’s my monthly garden tour! The pests have slowed down, finally, and most of the garden still looks great and is growing like crazy. It’ll probably be another month or so before it starts to fade, and I start taking out my annual flowers.
It’s incredible to look back at the pictures from June and just how much things grow in a few months!
