Video: Susan’s Flower Garden Tour

If you’re looking for an uplifting and inspiring video, this one’s for you! This week, I take you on tour of our large front flower garden. My previous two videos were on heavy subjects: powdery mildew and Japanese beetles. Important information but I felt you would appreciate seeing lots of colorful, cheerful flowers this time around!

As much as I love growing all sorts of vegetables, I also have to have all sorts of flowers. I’m talking about annuals, perennials, bulbs, flowering shrubs… you name it. In addition to making me happy, the flowers attract pollinators, butterflies, beneficial insects, birds and more.

If I had my way, I’d probably rip out our lawn and turn it into one big flower garden. But our lawn isn’t huge and I do have Dutch clover and other non-grassy plants in it. That means it’s also helpful for insects and birds. And I’ve heard that lawns give your eyes a place to rest, so to speak.

We created our front perennial bed not long after we moved into our house. It was roughly 35′ long by about 4′ deep. Just a boring, long rectangle. Over the years, we’ve made it larger and given it a more pleasing, curvy shape. And, of course, I’ve planted all sorts of fun things in it. Bee balm, Gloriosa daisies, Sedums, columbines, daylilies, spring-flowering bulbs, and lots of peonies. That means I get season-long bloom, which is such a treat.

Bill and I created the pollinator garden back in 2019. (it’s hard to believe it’s been that long!) Our goal was to attract all sorts of pollinators and other types of insects. We planted a lot of native plants as well as reliable bloomers to reach that goal.

Here’s a link to my blog post and newspaper column about the process: Pollinator Garden. And at the very bottom of that post, you’ll see a chart showing exactly what we planted. The chart includes the common and Latin name for each, height, water needs, and flower color.

Of course, over the years, I’ve added a few more things. In this video, I mentioned that I tossed “scatter garden” seeds from Renee’s Garden in very early spring. Those have added quite a bit of color and interest, which is very cool.

There are also a few of the original plants that have “gone forth and multiplied” more than I’d like. These include lupines, Shasta daisies, goldenrod, and Maximilian sunflowers. I’ve tried to take a hands-off approach but sometimes I have to step in and take action.

OK, here’s the Susan’s Flower Garden Tour:

Did you enjoy it? I was tempted to make the video a bit longer but it was so hot when I filmed it! But at least it gives you a feel for what our front garden look like this time of year.

Here’s a link to my YouTube channel. Believe it or not, I now have 677 videos! That just boggles my mind. If you’d like to see more flower-focused videos, here’s a link to my Flower Garden playlist. That way, you can just pick and choose what you’d like to watch.