December Backyard Garden Tour!! North Texas Zone 8b Winter Garden

Join me for the last garden tour of 2023!!! I have done monthly garden tours of both my front and backyards during the growing season of 2023, and I’m so glad I did it!! I’ve learned so much, from failures to successes. Join me as I show you my backyard garden, North Texas Zone 8b, in early winter and talk about some of my hopes and dreams for the garden in 2024!

Good morning everyone welcome back to grow roots this is Shannon and this is my December 2023 backyard garden tour uh the last garden tour of 2023 if you’ve been following grow roots uh you know that I kind of made a resolution I guess in 2023 to film um

The backyard and the front yard Gardens every month to see how they change to to kind of document my successes and my failures and so this is the last one of the year I’m so excited that I did this it’s been a really neat uh experience

And I hope that you’ll join me for the last backyard garden tour of 2023 all right so I’m going to start with this view up here and come on down it just I love this view from up here this is on my trampoline by the way the kids use this

For my daycare and my daughter that is almost 9 years old uses it as well but it also provides a nice little view of the backyard garden so I’m going to start right here um so it’s December it is officially winter it’s late December today is actually December 30th and uh

So a lot of the things are put to sleep for the most part um I do apologize I have some compost bags that are kind of laid all throughout and I haven’t gotten around to putting them down CU I’ve kind of been toggling back and forth um I

Have put down uh an about 2 in of leaf mulch so we got this leaf vacuum and uh it you know I vacumed up all of the leaves quite a few times my husband did as well and uh the vacuum mulches or creates a leaf mulch from the

Leaves it shreds them up and so I’ve put down a couple inches uh in this backyard garden and I think that’s honestly going to be enough and then we also had some leaves that still fell afterwards and I think that’s okay I think it’s okay to

Have just maybe just a top little bit be the full Lea and it helps the insects to Winter over good and bad I get that I know it’s kind of a it’s a a Hot Topic in the gardening Community whether to leave the leaves or not for uh beneficial insects to

Overwinter and also the bad ones can too but it also provides food and shelter for the animals you know the the birds will get on the leaves and pick off the insects and things but anyway that is what I’m planning to do I don’t think

I’m going to do compost over the top of this leaf mulch I think that’s going to be pretty good for these plants uh this winter and I may use this compost maybe in the spring we’ll see so um starting off here this is my let’s I always need

This see it is Mr goodbud um you can see most of the blooms are now done but I’m going to leave them for the winter and you can even see it’s 30° out right now believe it or not I’m doing my garden tour in 30° weather but we’ve had

A pretty warm fall and a warm early winter I guess you could say so it still has like a little bud it’s so awesome but um great plant I really I love it I hope that it does well in this next year I have some dianthus that is still green

I also have some uh dwar dwarf Mexican petunia it’s pink actually and uh it is still green but in this 30° weather like I even I looked at it last night and it was perfect and then this morning it’s like okay I’m struggling a little bit it is below freezing so that’s

Understandable um here I have my double play Candy Corn spia which I’m so excited about I just picked this up maybe 6 weeks ago and um I was really excited to find it and it was on clearance so can’t do better than that but just look at that beautiful

Foliage color it’s just absolutely spectacular it is deciduous I believe it will lose its leaves but also I hope it can get this color because the color is like the stems are almost red it’s absolutely beautiful it’s kind of a red burgundy color really excited to see

What this does in the next year as well okay so coming over here you guys haven’t seen this this is a little rain gauge that I picked up off of Amazon not that expensive $15 or less and it’s been telling me how much rain we’ve had

Because we’ve been in an El Nino pattern here in North Texas we’ve had a lot of rain in the last couple weeks uh we’ve had two two systems that went through that gave us 2 and 1 half Ines of rain each and then we had had another system

That went through that gave us about an inch of rain so in the last 2 weeks we’ve had 6 in of rain and I know that because of my rain gauge which is pretty awesome right behind the the rain gauge you can see is my star jasmine and I’ve

Got this wild Vine I forget the name of it right now how pretty are those berries I will pop the name on the screen this is just a wild Vine that came in but in the winter time it’s so pretty and I read that the birds do like

To eat the berries although I have not seen that quite yet um let’s see actually I was just standing on a an eona a purple eona that I transplanted over here so I’ll have that as well as I can’t tell where that was either there was a white swan eona

Right here so I think that will be I think I’m I’m buttoning up this portion pretty well I’ve got the purple eon here white eona I’ve got a coreopsis that’s new I’ve got a little lime which will be kind of the the main focal point of this garden bed I’ve got over

Here a hearty plumbago beautiful and it is a ground cover it is not your annual plumbago say hi to Chloe this is a new edition to our family I guess you could say um she is an outdoor cat she chose us and she has to stay Outdoors because I am highly

Allergic and I’ve had cats in my home before and they have caused me to have severe asthma flareups to the point where I’m in the hospital and so my daughter Maya who is almost nine she has been begging for a cat and Chloe had been coming around for about a month and

Finally oh maybe 3 weeks ago oh really yeah about three weeks ago I told Maya that she could feed her just to see I wanted to see is somebody else feeding her she not really hungry she’s just visiting us because she likes us what’s going on no she was starving y’all she

Eats quite a bit and um we’re the only ones that are feeding her for sure she is hungry when she comes and she knows Maya takes care of her this is Maya’s cat and um she knows when Maya wakes up in the morning and she’s waiting here on the back porch

And she knows when Maya gets home from school because she she’s gone all day and then she comes back in the afternoon when she knows that Maya is coming home from school so it’s so sweet I love that it’s teaching Maya some responsibility and because this is solely hers um and

Then oh she’s so sweet uh and then you know we’re kind of trying to help out a stray cat as well we’re I’m working on providing her with some her shelter although I mean it’s 30° outside and her home is kind of back here in this Creek

Area she she has a few spaces that she hides and stays warm um and y’all are like Shannon you’re allergic why are you even petting her well I’m okay I’m not like extreme extremely bad if I wash my hands after petting her I will be just fine um she

Just can’t be in my house if her fur and dander gets into my living space like I will be in trouble with my asthma for sure and I’m also allergic to their saliva which is really weird but Chloe doesn’t she doesn’t Drool on me so that’s good but she is the sweetest

Little thing so I am sure you are going to see her on future garden tours she’s just super super sweet so getting back to gardening I’m so sorry um just needed to introduce you to who’s getting in my shot this is Hardy plumbago plumbago serat stigma again super super beautiful

Blue flowers from gosh late spring through fall and even right now uh this one I picked up on clearance as a second plant because I had the first and I loved it so much and it was in a greenhouse which is why it’s still green and it’s still flowering but it’s

Definitely going dormant my other one is over here on the other side right here and you can see it is completely dormant at this time and it’s deciduous you you know it loses its leaves it’ll get back up and and provide some ground cover in the spring which I’m super happy about I

Have another dianthus so you can see you know I have two dianthus I have two plumbago I have actually yeah two Dianes two pombo two eona and uh the little lime and then the chopis and then the border of the Sedum and the uh dwarf katonia and

The uh spa and then I’ve got my Jasmine climbing there so love this garden bed can’t wait to see what it does I will pop in some annuals to fill in some of those spaces as well moving on okay so here we are at this plant that is just looking like

Dead Twigs right now it is summer carnival hibiscus and Chloe’s kind of showing it off she’s putting her scent on it I picked up Su summer carnival hibiscus as a birthday present for myself in October I was so excited about it I will pop a picture of it on the

Screen what it’s supposed to look like but as soon as I put it in the ground here it started going downhill and it started losing leaves and some of it kept leaves until maybe a month ago so like November but um then it turned into this and all of it

All of it is dead at this point and that’s that can be normal for a hibiscus a hardy hibiscus that has gone into dormy it could be totally normal um and so it could have just gone into early you know transplant shock and early dormy and I’m hoping that’s what

Happened uh otherwise it died and um if it died I think I will take it back I got it at rooted in and pil Point um I bought several other PL plants there at that time and put them um into the landscape and they did absolutely fine

They’re doing great it’s just this one plant that um you know did the same exact things uh same watering schedule same everything and it did not survive so anyway it was not cheap it was the most expensive plant I purchased that day and it’s a bummer that if it did in fact

Die so moving on here I have this star jasmine climbing the fence and it looks Fant fantastic this area down here I have plans for I want to pick up one or two Claus Vines and put them down here because it is kind of shade um down here

With it being right next to our patio and all and the fence so it does get some shade at the roots and then it gets full sun at the top so Claus does really really well that way and I’ve always wanted to try a Claus so I am going to

Attempt to to pick up one or two chatas and plant them here I have my Texas sage that is Evergreen that’s holding up really really well so beautiful such great winter interest and then the other winter interest I have is my sunshine lustrum that I have uh pruned into a

Tree form which I’m so excited about I planted some auga down here and so it will be kind of surrounded by this burgundy glow auka Chloe um there’s a cut one of the kids cups down here but uh I have four of them surrounding this plant so that will be really nice

They’ll be in the shade from the sunshine lustrum uh I have a dianthus and another star jasmine and another Texas H um right here I have some plants okay so I skipped over these okay okay so there’s another dianthus um and this is a an eona it’s like a

Coral color I do believe it’s Cheyenne Spirit eona after researching and it’s absolutely beautiful but it is dormant and then I have this I was so happy to find this Mystic blue I’m sorry it’s Mystic spires Blue Salvia and uh it’s still green I can’t believe it but I do

Believe it’s supposed to be perennial in our area a native Salvia thank you Chloe for getting in my shot okay Chloe there we go and uh really excited to see what M spire’s Blue Salvia will do as opposed to the other salvas that I have in the front which is May night Salvia

And then I picked up brand new um a pink Salvia and a red salvia so and those are perennial as well totally picking up my Salvia game because the perennial salvas do do so well here in in uh North Texas with our heat and droughts uh here I have a pink muie

Grass that’s looking fabulous um the blooms are no longer pink but they are brown and just provide some winter interest as well that was one of my goals for this year is to step up the winter interest game and my ground cover game and I’m on my way to

Doing just that for sure I have a baby Limelight that’s right here that I know you can’t see because it’s dormant but it was one of my babies from the big one that didn’t make it this year oh I do have three purple eona here as well that

Are dormant um so here is an area that I really want to see some change in 2024 so I have this canoy and they have spread big time and I’m debating I think what I’ve decided to do is I’m going to leave the Canales that are in front of this structure I’m going to leave those here I’m going to take these out because my vision for this it’s actually a water feature the water feature is broken at the moment but I

Know that my husband can fix it it has water that trickles down from the top um and goes into a basin at the bottom but uh my vision for that to have Vines crawling over it and I wanted to do purple bell Vine and I tried that last

Year and it did not work part of the problem is down here it is just the the can ofil overcrowd anything that wants to grow there and it can’t get any sun and nothing will grow and so I I’m going to take these out and I’m going to

Either in a pot or in the ground put an annual Vine and I do not want a perennial Vine or an evergreen Vine or anything like that because of the water feature and if my husband can fix it we don’t want anything permanent over the top there but an annual Vine is perfect

A fast growing annual Vine is ideal and so I’m going to take that out I have some ideas of what annual Vines to use but if you have ideas let me know I’m going to do a future video about all of the new plants that I want to

Introduce and the vines will be part of that so coming around here I have another star jasmine plant and I have another Vine a new Vine it’s Coral honey suckle and again got this one on clearance I’m going to put some kind of trus back here

For it to climb on or this this is inexpensive just um kind of like chicken wire type of thing but it’s plastic and green so I’m going to put something there so it can climb this fence pretty easily and I did do some research it is a semi Evergreen

In winter so it’s not surprising that these top leaves are are yellowing or or turning red and wanting to fall off it will it will lose some of its leaves but in the spring it will flush back out um on the same Vines so that’s exciting right here I have these sticks

Of midnight Marvel or yes midnight Marvel hibiscus and O even these bottoms are actually still alive so that’s kind of interesting I will not prune my hibiscus until late winter um and these are going to be some of the last things to pop up in the landscape but um

Midnight Marvel is just this beautiful red color and uh my first season with it this past year and the Grasshoppers wanted to eat it alive I’m going to try to figure something out but uh anyway yeah and then so those Canales are going to go away as well and these Canales

Will stay and then again over here I’m going to put the same annual Vine that I’m going to put here and I’m hoping my vision is just to have them growing all the way up and around in this beautiful like Cornerstone of our garden all right

So coming up here we have a mini Greenhouse that I got for Christmas um I’m testing it right now to see if it really can hold any heat to see what I’m going to be able to do with it um I actually just got this thermometer last

Night and put it in there and let’s see what the temperature is inside here okay so it’s still you know just above 30° according to this thermometer it’s probably about the same temperature out here so what I think it’s going to be good for in the winter time is winter so

Sewing seeds so there is a winter sewing method look at Chloe oh my you are the silliest cat yes you are you’re getting some sun up there okay I’m sorry she keeps distracting me anyway I think I’m going to do some winter sewing here and

Um I do have some seeds that are good for winter sewing you can look that up I might do a video about it if you want and uh going to do some winter sewing in there and then I’ve got my Tangerine Beauty cross vine that is an pretty much an evergreen

Vine here in North Texas but this is my first winter with the Tangerine Beauty cross vine and I am noticing some of the leaves are shedding and that’s okay that’s normal I hear that some of the leaves turn purple in the winter and I just read that that’s normal the only

Thing that concerns me just slightly is some of this portion of the leaves are spotted purple I don’t know if that’s normal or not but it’s my first season a friend of mine bought a tangerine Beauty cross find this summer on my recommendation she said the same thing

Is happening to hers I think it’s I think it’s going to be fine I’m so excited to see in the spring this is going to be full of coral colored flowers and I’m so excited about that and to see these grow here we’ve got our side Garden so

Last portion of the tour but oh before I go to the side Garden I just wanted to I do have a Jasmine Vine climbing up there we’ll see if it’s the vine itself survives the winter The Roots will survive no doubt but here’s something that survived a lot longer than I ever

Anticipated and this is the double up pink Bonia by Proven Winners this is two plants in this pretty big pot this has been in almost full shade all spring and all summer and it has flowered like crazy all spring all summer it’s tripled in size and we have

Had like I counted 12 nights in the 20s and 12 nights freezing or below uh from you know to 30° so like 20 something nights below freezing and it’s still giving me leaves green leaves and pink flowers it’s unbelievable now granted it doesn’t look perfect but this is an

Annual that’s supposed to die in you know the frost it’s supposed to be a tender annual like it’s not supposed to survive a frost or a freeze and yet here it is and I may put that in that mini Greenhouse as well just because it is a couple degrees warmer for potentially or

I’m trying to make it a couple degrees warmer than outside and so I think I may just see if this thing May survive I don’t know but even if it doesn’t I wouldn’t expect it to but it’s just over exceeded my expectations and I will be

Buying a lot more of this plant um and putting it in a in shade locations I know it can take sun or shade but some people say like in part sun and Sun it just does not survive our Texas heat but in the in the shade it absolutely does

It’s a a rockstar plant so okay so now taking you through my side Garden these Canales are going to be taken out as well I’m just kind of waiting for them to die back a little bit more before I take them out completely I have this beautiful Evergreen everillo CarX I’m so excited

About this plant I wanted this plant for quite some time and when I saw it on clearance just one plant at DNL I would have picked up more if they had more but I I had to have it it’s gorgeous I have an amarillis called Rapido amarillis

This is my first winter with amarillis in the ground as well it is marginal and I that’s why I’ve kind of put it up against the foundation it’s next to this boxwood and there’s another reason I’m leaving these canas up because it will help insulate it um and keep it its

First uh winter and I’m hoping it survives because if it does it’s going to give me glorious red uh multip full blooms per stem um in the springtime and it created a baby for me and here’s the baby I separated the baby and put it right there so really excited about the

Amarillis that’s there this is a part shade location I have a boxwood that’s there I had a peie but I do not think it’s coming back at another one in the landscape before too and in it was in a more sun location but that is my pany and we’ll see if it comes

Back coming around this is I believe pink skull cap I already lost a skull cap that I transplanted in the other part of the garden this one has survived I have my uh Purple Heart tra tradus gantia that was like five cuting from my mother-in-law last winter and then here

Is how it’s done throughout the growing season I have a day lily right there that gave me a baby that I’ll show you in a minute I have this guy that has gone to sleep is a Rose M that also the Grasshoppers were just eating it alive that poor thing I’m

Survived I’m surprised that it survived I have these were just cuttings of vinka major ground cover and and it’s doing well and taking off and then I have my Endless Summer hydrangea hedge back here that has done pretty well it still has leaves and yeah this one’s starting to lose its

Leaves but I still have my beautiful maroon blooms on the ones that did Bloom so I just love this I can’t wait to see this grow through the years and grow in together all right so this right here is my no dig garden bed that I prepared in

September to plan in uh no let’s see August is when I did this I used the no dig garden bed method and it is working fantastic um for the pl plants that I have planted here so this is my day ly baby I have purple heart cuttings all

Throughout I did Pink Turks cap this is a part sun location the Sun is from about 10: in the morning in the summertime 10: in the morning until 2:00 in the afternoon so it’s kind of midday Sun but a break from the after real intense afternoon sun as well so pink

Turks cap it’s done fantastic I can’t believe it still has leaves on it it is deciduous and then we’ve got a Alliston Wonderland dwarf Oakleaf hydrangea look at the beautiful color that it’s giving me it’s just beautiful and this is exactly what I wanted for

Back here I kind of wanted to keep the hydrangea theme since I have all of these hydranges this way um kind of a pink cottagey theme pink and purples and that’s what’s going on back here um I am slightly concerned again with this purple spots that I’m seeing on my Oak

Leaf it could mean some type of bacterial or fungal thing going on so when it does shed its leaves there’s Chloe again hi um I will probably be discarding the leaves just to make sure that that bacteria potential bacteria or fungus isn’t overwintering and creating problems for next year’s growth

I have um red Oxalis which is beautiful I’m not sure when this is supposed to lose its leaves but it’s still it’s still providing beautiful color and it’s winter and then this is the Kaleidoscope ailia so my neighbor gave this to me and even had some new growth after planting

It um we’re going to trim this up in the springtime and it’s kind of like you know it lost some ior leaves um but yeah I mean it this is a great location for it I think and then I have Mexican petunia growing up this way so this

Garden bed is definitely a work in progress but it’s looking so much better and it did and that pretty much concludes the last garden tour of 2023 thank you all those that have been continuing uh to watch thank you thank you so much for those that are new I

Hope that you will uh comment let you know let me know what you think and I hope that you will subscribe to my channel I have a lot of things planned in 2024 uh monthly garden tours for sure some other plant maintenance um and design idea um post

And then other garden tours not just my own that I have planned for 2024 so I hope that you will subscribe and check them out I thank you all so much for watching I hope that you have a wonderful happy New Year bye-bye everybody