Front Yard Garden Tour April 2024 ~ birdhouse garden

Hi Everyone! It’s been a beautiful spring. We’ve enjoyed the mild weather so much. The new cocktail gin begonia border is filling in and soon will look full. The Carding Mill rose is in full bloom. The variegated hydrangeas are beginning to form buds, and soon will be full of color. Thank you for stopping by! 🙂

good morning everyone how you all doing today is a gorgeous day it is nearing the end of April and we’ve had several days in the 80s uh not quite hitting 90 yet almost uh and I think it’s going to cool off next week and then we’re going to go right back up and I’ve never done a tour of our front garden in April and I thought I would show you some of the different plants that I’ve added to the front flower beds uh this year I want to start out right here Under the Redwoods normally I have had well I shouldn’t say normally in the past I have put lemon Coral or Lemon Ball Sedum around the border and that has worked very well I can keep it year round of course it looks better in the spring and summer than it does winter but this year I thought I would try my hand at some Bonas and I have to say I am loving it they have performed so well I planted them during a time that all the nursery said you probably shouldn’t put them in the ground quite yet because we’re still having some cold weather but I haven’t lost one and I think they’re doing real well now I have to say the true test will be for the Bonas that are on the outskirts of this side of the flower bed during the height of summer when the sun begins to set it kind of comes across cross here and at 6:00 that can be our hottest time of the day so hopefully and they don’t get a lot of sun during that time but they will get some I am hoping that they survive our summer we’ll see but I’m loving the result thus far and I also decided to add I get the asparagus and the foxtail fern mixed up but I added a few of those in the middle my lemon lime hookas coming back except for one and then I decided to add a few wizard I think it’s called wizard mix colus and then near the front of the curve of the flower bed you will see some ranuculus that I also added this year so I’m hoping those will Bloom we’re kind of past that season so so far I’m not seeing any uh flowers yet but uh we’ll see if we’ll see if they bloom this is the edge of our property line which is the edge of this area is west facing and we have three camper trees that were here when we purchase the house of course not knowing what camper trees uh do I had no idea that their Leaf Drop after the winter uh was very significant and um that you will not see mulch in this area because um the Leaf Drop is just by the end of the day there will be a massive amount of leaves you can see this is one of the plants that I did not dig in and get all the leaves out of what happens with these camper trees once they start dropping leaves in the spring they will fill up under the Roses inside the geraniums and I have to go in and dig them all out because I don’t want them to stay inside and and kind of I don’t know Fester disease or anything anyway I planted these Olivia Rose Austin Roses oh I think it was 2021 and this is probably the first year that they are as full as they are I did not prune them back how should I say that I I did not give them a hard prune during um February when I normally do that because they were so small to begin with and I almost lost a few of them this next winter I will definitely give them a hard prune and you probably notice that I have Japanese beetles on these roses I don’t have them on any Rose except for this one I don’t even have aphids which is amazing but I’m going to have to find out how and why I get them on this particular Rose and how I can keep them at Bay even so they are a stunning Rose and I just think they add so much to my garden and then off to the side you’ll see the carding Mill that we planted last spring so this is the first year I’ve been able to see it in full bloom and I absolutely love this Rose it is so stunning I think I want to get more they’re just absolutely beautiful the African Daisies down here I planted oh maybe four years ago and they are called Serenity purple except for this one you can tell this one’s different I thought it was the same but it’s not this one um see camper tree this one uh kind of died off and so I cut it back but it must have self-seeded I bought another one that I just haven’t had a chance to get in the ground but these do very well in our Zone they take the heat they take uh our Winters they can sometimes get into the 20s so i’ I great addition and when people stop by they say oh it’s the first thing I noticed were your purple daisies the society garlic does extremely well in our Heat this is west facing and they’re not they haven’t uh bloomed yet this year but I love the foliage I don’t care for the scent but it’s far enough away from our neighbor and us that uh I can enjoy uh the beauty of the plant without uh smelling it quite so much around the side here are these are Grace and grit roses from Monrovia and I purchased these on clearance and so they kind of look a little misshapen but I absolutely love the color and the bloom and they’re a beautiful rose around the edge of this flower bed I decided to continue the dianthus border that I have over near our uh front family room area and I’ll be showing you that in a minute because I’ve had so much success with that I decided to add it right here do you ever have a flower bed that’s just this continual work in progress you’re not sure what plants will be successful especially if you have an extreme climate this area behind me gets shade almost the entire day except for a little bit of sun in the afternoon and during the winter that’s okay and the spring but during the summer whatever I plant right here has to be able to take extreme heat and I think I know what I’m going to put here I’m I’m a little on the fence but I think I know what I’m going to put and I’ll let you know about that here in a few weeks because I believe only one Garden Center in our entire area carries what I’m looking for my husband went ahead and sank all the stones and um we’re just we’re almost ready to open the gate here in the back uh so I can have access to our raised vegetable garden but I absolutely love how this area is turning out and then off here to the side are my variegated hydrange is and look at all the buds I am so excited you guys to see how they perform in this area I have a feeling I might need to move the furthest one it is blooming I mean it has set buds but I can tell that the variegation isn’t as striking and it’s not as full as these other two however I am I’m going to wait for this season to be over and I probably will not move them until about the one here in the corner I probably will not move that until October I wanted to show you part of the reason why I struggle with mulching these little Twigs here I can fill up a full 3 gallon and that’s a lot just with these in this area I only grabbed a handful but what happens is when you combine all this with the leaves down here it just for me looks so messy and when I try and either blow or rake it up I land up raking up all the mulch here you go you can see them all they’re just and I don’t know what it is about the camper tree that makes these drop but anyway every year come spring I have to pick all these up and I just wanted to show them to you you’ll even see like maybe some little stray ones that have already fallen since last night last fall I planted yellow violas and white pansies in our two front earns here and they performed amazing what I decided to do this year is super tunia mini Vista pink star purple prince alternanthera and Licorice hrsm and yeah I know it looks pretty full so we’ll see if these kind of take over this is our last flower bed that I wanted to show you here in the front of our house this area faces South this corner right here gets Morning Sun you can see the sun starting to come up over the house and this again is one of those areas or flower beds that I have struggled from time to time if these hydranges perform well this season cuz this will be our first full season with them in the ground and I’m hoping that they do I I think maybe I’ve got a winner for this corner the I have three Let’s Dance blue Jangles in the corner and they have all set bud in the front I have three of the early blue hydranges that I transplanted from our back garden and they seem to be doing well and beginning to set Bud as well intermixed of a steel bee that I planted and I have never planted that before for we will see how that does but I’m I’m hoping it does well I think I have it in three three different spots scattered in front of the hydranges the dianthus I believe we planted that in the spring of 2021 this again is one of those plants that has just performed phenomenally for us it gets hit with the sun in the afternoon this part of the garden slopes just a bit and so these again I’ve had uh from proven winter um rock and fuchia Salvia and they’re performing amazing so this area can can when we have a rainy winter stay very wet so they can take a lot of water here in zone 9 and they can also take extreme heat here in the back is the Limelight Prime that I had in a few different spots this by far is the best it has ever looked so I’m again super excited to see what it does come late summer and fall this area of our flower bed looks rather empty and that is because I lost two bandana pink Lantana and a h butterfly bush a dwarf butterfly Bush I did move some butterfly bushes from the west side of our garden and those seem to be doing very well and I did take one M miscanthus grass out that was just in front of the uh Fountain here and I put it on the West side and I like that it’s opened it up a little bit more this is my sunshine lagustrum that I I just think it it adds that super bright pop of yellow and I it’s does very well again with our son um I can’t express to you just how hot it gets here I have friends that live in the East Bay of San Francisco where it can get very hot and I also have friends in the Sacramento area specifically the Davis area and they get hot just like us the difference is they all cool down in the evening and for us we just don’t in the height of summer when when it’s its hottest it will cool down to maybe 89 90° if we’re lucky 82 83 and that’s not very cool so the plants that I have in my garden have to be able to withstand the evening heat even though the sun isn’t shining it has to withstand the evening heat the rose tree that looks like it’s out of control is strike it rich Rose and I will I don’t know if I can can I get in there and bend this Rose over hang on let’s see here so you can get a look at it isn’t she beautiful she’s so so pretty this is the largest I have ever seen it I’ve never seen it grow like this before and I really didn’t do anything different honest to goodness I pruned it back I gave it a good hard prune this spring so when all these come down it’ll be more shapely when all these Bloom I wanted to tell you about uh some all of our trees here in the front but before I do that I did want to sh show you that this is the one flower bed near the front here that I actually can use mulch and what we typically lay down is a compost the reason why I can do that here is because when it’s windy and all the Redwood needle leaves fall down underneath the Redwoods and the camper tree leaves fall they’re far enough away that this area isn’t messy and so uh I do know that it makes a difference and I do know that it uh helps the plants it helps the soil and obviously it looks stunning when you put mulch down I did want to show you that I do mulch some flower beds I briefly wanted to tell you about all the trees that we have in our front garden we have 12 total we have three redwoods and I’ll show you all of them in a minute but we have three redwoods three campers two Japanese maple two crepe myrtles and did I say the avendelle red bud I might have I’m sorry and one Chinese pistache if you pan down our street the city when they built this neighborhood lined the park strip that’s what I call it the park strip with Chinese pistache they are all female some of them might be different trees because this is an older neighborhood um ours in particular fell many years ago it split six ways went across the front of the street on our house one went through the Redwoods and one went through this Japanese maple near the kitchen and I almost thought I lost that tree so we Ed up replacing it ourselves because that was during the time when uh a lot of cities were having budget issues and they were not going to replace the tree um so of course I you know asked my husband I said we’re going to have to just you know make the investment because I didn’t want to start with a small tree and I think this tree was almost $300 when we bought it many years ago and uh we landed up getting the male version which is uh not quite as messy as the female stunning tree in the fall I’ll make sure I put a photo of it up it turns this reddish orange it’s absolutely beautiful and the shade is second to none and so many people here in uh the Central Valley have these trees because they do perform so well uh I’ve talked enough about the camper trees they are’t Evergreen um so they never completely lose all their leaves we thought about getting solar for our house many years ago and every company that comes through says all your trees have to come out all of them because we would have to put the solar on the front of our house and there too many trees block it and that’s just I I couldn’t bring myself to take all the trees down um for solar so uh yeah we pay a high pg& bill here for the summertime the Japanese maple near our front is probably what 30 feet tall and 30t wide I would say probably I did not prune it this year I think they call it lacing it uh I do need to do that next year because it’s a little too thick for me I like it a little bit more wispy but it’s a stunning tree it’s absolutely beautiful and I’m I’m so thankful for the previous owners who planted all of these this one near our kitchen uh the previous owner told me that when she bought it the tag said red and I don’t know if they bought it during the winter when there was no when you know the tree didn’t have any leaves uh but she said it has been green ever since so uh maybe it was mislabeled and then right above me are the three redwoods that um again provide amazing shade probably not a tree that I would put in my landscape they do consume a significant amount of water and they drop needle leaves when the wind blows and those are not easy to get up because they kind of stick to all your plants and uh but again they were planted probably 30 years ago and uh again I’m just not ready it’s not something I want to take out so we live with it and work around the mess and enjoy the shade that it provides this is the avendelle that we bought avendelle Red Bud that we purchased a year ago from Lowe’s when they were having their huge spring early summer sale I think I purchased I got two and I gave the the bigger one to my mom this is the first full season that it has put on growth and I got to see all the blooms and I think I showed you that in one of our other videos a completely different shape of tree than our Oklahoma red bud but I do love it here it’s um not quite it doesn’t block the windows and I definitely love the leaf structure and actually it looks like it could use some iron I’ll come back in a few months and show you what the front garden looks like when all the agapanthus are in full bloom and hopefully by then even the Bonas will be that much more Fuller and beautiful so happy with the Bonia border I couldn’t love it any more than I do and I like the Red Leaf foliage cont cont with all the bright and deep green that I have with the Japanese Forest Grass and then of course the Dian is probably I don’t know if it’ll be blooming quite as much as it is right now this is when it gives its just this beautiful show of blooms in the spring and I I have to say for us that Diantha they do Bloom even in the winter sporadically it won’t be quite as many blooms it’ll have like one or two but they will push out a bloom or two but this is the biggest show that they give is during the springtime thank you guys so much for watching I hope you guys are having a wonderful day and we’ll see you soon bye SK ch SC he we ch