Weekly Garden Tour – Secret Cottage Garden – Reality Gardening!

Lets talk chaos in the garden, come on along and see why I enjoy it even if it isn’t perfect!

Hi, I am Pamela and I garden in the mountains of Northern California. I am in Zone 8. I defy convention and break many garden ‘rules’ yet my garden is a tapestry of color and unruly beauty! I want you to be inspired to create a beautiful garden on a tight budget.

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hey Garden friends today we’re going to do the garden tour of the secret Cottage Garden for the last week of June and it’s just beautiful a little wild a little messy I had a comment from a viewer and she was saying it’s just so wild and messy and yeah it is because this is the reality of most home gardeners um I have more gardens than I have time to keep meticulous this is real life gardening friends this is I have a job that I work at um I would rather spend every single day in my garden but it’s not the reality of most people and I’m here to inspire you home gardeners who have to work outside the home but your garden is your therapy and your getaway sometimes it’s messy sometimes it’s chaotic sometimes the weeds get ahead of you and that’s okay that’s okay just get out there and enjoy it don’t aim for Perfection because it’ll just rob you of your joy and you know what just love growing things don’t worry about it being Picture Perfect now I have other areas that I’ve taken you through this week the entrance Garden the rose cage Garden you can see they’re a little more put together um and less chaotic looking but I don’t have to weed in there I don’t have to you know I it’s not like coming along like the secret Cottage Garden right now it’s still in transition because I had to put the raised beds back there had to fill them up and so many things didn’t work in my favor this year and that’s okay too I could be frustrated by that but I refuse to I refuse to give up my joy of my garden for a neat and tidy perfect look so I hope you all will do the same and just enjoy so let’s get going on our garden tour and you can see what I’m talking about so here’s where we left off in the Rose Cottage Garden just gorgeous and now let’s do beside Primrose Cottage there’s my beautiful Safari Rose and here’s this beautiful pink rose which this acts a lot like Dream Weaver but it’s not I didn’t buy another and I forgot which one this was but it’s gorgeous nonetheless and against the yellow look at that sleeping bees I’ve got a few of those so it’s a beautiful morning look at the sun coming through the trees isn’t that just gorgeous even though I have short Winters I do love where I live I mean long Winters short Summers I love where I live so look at there’s my Bears breach it’s doing great this year I think I need to thin out those violas so here is my this is an heirloom Rose and I’m not sure I think it’s Pinky it’s a climber doing beautiful I just tied it up to the trellis I’m trying to get it to go up it I need to remove that one back there um yeah the fox gloves are nearly done back here but Noble Anthony will be blooming again I just deadheaded it well yesterday I need to rinse all the pollen off the leaves too Lark spur isn’t this pink onein lovely these are freely seated self- seated and I was hoping they would seed further back but they’re here in the front of the pathway but when these go to seed I’ll sprinkle the seeds back there this Fox Glove is that peachy pink one with the delicate throat right in there see that I just love that I’m letting this recede here but it’s probably cross-pollinated with the others so I’m not sure I’ll get that color but it’s worth a shot the fever F that will all is all receded I have doubles and singles and I just pull up what I don’t want if it’s in a spot I don’t want it and I just leave the other future Garden future Garden I don’t know what I’ll do I’ll make sure it’s easy though cuz that’s the name of the game to enjoy your garden look at this Japanese maple back here it’s doing great I was afraid it would get scorched so far it has not it’s just done fine my demit toas rose next week should be blooming or open and full of blooms all this new growth and look it’ll be full of those pink blooms this blooms all summer it likes the little bit of shade it gets here um I have been working on that bed I got the irrigation to it put two Tomatoes down there those two Fox gloves I’ll just leave them two or three and then I will Reed this or not Reed I will seed it come fall with um cool flowers cut flowers oh look at Mr be here he’s just napping away on this cool morning more fever few you see how beautiful it is when it just fills in in an area here’s one of my crazy daisies this is one of my favorites um I guess they’re all my favorites but this has the long skinny petals and it just does beautifully so here’s the pathway through here I will tidy up my compost bin there and I told you I was going to get I do have the um morning glory seeds to plant there and look at there’s a beautiful r Rose Campion those just come up everywhere some people consider them a weed or Street flower cuz they do come up everywhere but I let them do their thing and then I just cut them back and they will rebloom this hydrangea I think I need to move it I think it’s getting too hot here for it so some pink Yaro back there yep all gorgeous this bench will be moving I don’t want to get rid of it it’s too comfortable and I just haven’t found the perfect spot for it yet look at this these are the Pam’s Choice Fox Glove look at that with the center doing so gorgeous this is an an enemy I want to put in over here cuz this is the shady area and these will Bloom really pretty in the fall I have a white one and a pink one now these are supposed to be the ones that are not too aggressive I know some can be very very aggressive I just love my Heron’s Bill isn’t that gorgeous my Safari Rose so let’s head on over to Prim um not Primrose this is the secret Cottage Garden I did not get to all the chores I wanted to out here but that’s the name of the game in the summer but I just enjoy it anyways I’m just going to enjoy every little day I can be out here yesterday I was trying to get out here to work to tidy it up a little bit better for the tour um but it was so hot I kept just the perspiration kept running in my eyes and so I did what I could do and I’m not sweating it over here is candy corn Spa I want to put these in somewhere I I’m not sure where I’m thinking in the front by the boxwoods in front of those two barrels with the super Tunas I think that’ be a spot that I could see them all the time though they’d be beautiful out here I might I could even plant them instead of these right here and they’d be about 3 ft round I think 2T tall and they might work perfectly there too so like I said I’m still debating look at this this is a Luna hibiscus I Grew From seed and I need to get it in a bigger pot and put it out here somewhere to grow on so I did mention the spia going here but also I have those two tree roses I got at Lowe’s I was thinking I have two more pots like this putting those tree roses here instead of these two trees right now the name of SK um they’re the dwarf Alberta spruces um you see how that one is so much taller than that one I I haven’t switched them back and forth yet and it could be just the nature of that particular tree but they’re not symmetrical not that the tree roses would be either so I’ve been trying to clean up some of the um weeds between the Stepping Stones uh I’ve been debating with just graveling between there so I don’t have the work of weeding or just being patient for the ground covers to fill in and they choke out most of the Weeds now look at this Sedum I just love that that’s why I planted it there I thought I had one over here oh there it is it’s over there um and I planted some elsewhere I’m not sure it took off you know it’s all about the plant right plant right place this is a volunteer larser doing great here and I let it cuz it’s gorgeous I’ll show you one in a minute that just it’s beautiful it’s got an odd coloring here’s my coca roses look at that now this is what I want to show you right up here look at the color of that Rose I just love that some people I know they they don’t like it it’s too muddy or just different so it’s not their thing but I happen to love them so we’ll pan across how the shade garden is doing this hydrangea is got blooms on it that one over there does not and they’re the same so I’m not sure what’s going on but my hostas are filling in beautifully you can see all the different ones I planted the different colors um the elephant ears I transplanted into the ground seem to be taking a bit to get going they didn’t like that disturbance there are the hydrangeas that I potted up because they were dying where they were and and uh hopefully they will give him a second chance my princess Alexandra of Kent Rose is going to bloom fully really soon I got to move my tree limb look at that and that going to be gorgeous and you notice how they’re all pointing that way cuz that’s where the sun comes from so this bed is where I was thinking of planting lettuce along the front and this is a sun Pati and even though I planted it out here when it’s cooler the sun direct sun really scorched it but I see it’s coming back so maybe it needs needed time to adjust so I’m still getting strawberries we’re on the back side of my Coco Loco Rose Barrel my that’s my weed bin when I get out here and weed I have something close by to throw things in and some volunteer blackeyed Susan so I let things come up and sometimes I let them stay just because I don’t have any plans for area yet so over here between the stones I did plant some of my Heron’s bill but it’s really taken a while to get going because it doesn’t stay moist enough for it during the heat so I need to I’m trying to keep up with that but these are too far forward so I’ve been transplanting them I transplanted some over here Etc so that’s I can leave some when I get to things I get to them that’s just how it flies around here the I I’m thinking those Fox clothes are a foxy mix because they’re short where all my other ones are tall so the roses in here I’ve deadheaded this is my e tide some of them really have been decimated by The Rose Weevil I think the population is is dying down it’s the off seon and these red poppies even though we’re thinking of moving them they just have been pollinator magnets look at these bees can you see that down in there I’m trying not to scare them off but these are always filled filled all day long with the bees so I’m letting them be for now no pun intended and I’ll work with it see they’re going to seed the all the seed pods so I will um pull them out when they’re they’re done they’re annual anyways so it’s not a big deal but I had been going to pull them out sooner and changed my mind I was just thinking they’re just so so far forward so tall and kind of making things a little more chaotic than I wanted um but if I pull these out here they’re all almost done too um that will bring the calm and the red can stay but there are some plants down in there that I wanted to have room so yeah just one step at a time now my patunas are starting to show through the pansies on this side on the other side the pansies are still super thick so I may um do something but I’ve noticed that the patunas are getting eaten by these are slugs it’s not the um what is that worm Bud worm um I saw a slug on one earlier and that’s how I know so I need to do something with that get some bait or something so this bamboo got moved when I was moving the hydranges from back behind there these flocks are the white flocks they run um they had stayed put for a long time and now they’re starting to really become a bully so I will thin those out dramatically this fall but I’ll let a lot stay so along here this Japanese maple I’m trying to find where I want it I wanted to put a lot of my Maples out into the garden instead of you see my shadow the sun’s coming over the trees instead of in pots so back here is where I pulled out the hydranges they were not doing well and I’ve put dalas back there inside of pots to grow they should be fine I did not have dalas back there last year so I should not have a problem with gall um this Fox Glove is blooming pretty I need to maybe support it back against the fence more so it’s not leaning things tend to lean towards where the sun goes so if you see them leaning that’s why um yeah if I just support that against the fence it’ll be do fine and then I’ll print it back and there’s things back there that will show that will be blooming so yeah down here along here I pulled out a bunch of log Spurs so now the patunas can get sun so they can get going they have been struggling battling with it now look this eona so far the Gophers have left alone last year they ate all my EAS out here o I got a bee trying to get on my gimple I don’t know what color it’s going to be it’ll probably be red it seems like the red ones are the ones that come back more readily than others I had a beautiful pink one I was Hing we come back but look at this Larks spur isn’t that the beautiful color I just love it when they shoot out these colors of their own valtion that are just different and beautiful so these daisies I I think I finally settled on it they do so great um I’m going to put them all the way all the way around this Outer Circle and then because I think the NEPA Blends so well with it I think I’ll I’ll put more of the NEPA in here too and it already has the boxwoods so the boxwoods these daisies and the NEPA I think that’ll be the great color combination that will kind of blend with any color I put up here as far as the patunas I always want patunas in here so far I love them so as I’ve mentioned before I did not expect these pansies to take off so readily so that is was a surprise now I will prune some of them back so the Tunas can shine more and hopefully in the fall they will rebloom well we will find out and look at these Larkspur this is what I was hoping for so look some are purple are real pretty purple and others are more blue and look even some pink ones came up amongst them these I’ve had for a long long time every year they reced themselves and I let them and then I just you know pull them out because they don’t they’re not a perennial they are a self- seated annual and they just do beautifully here is my Daisy made Daisy I planted three of them I wanted to compare them to my own seed grown uh crazy daisies and or just Shasta daisies and my poppy was is done I last one year I had kept pruning it or deadheading it and it kept blooming but this one doesn’t look like it’s going to do that so I don’t know what I’m going to do with it I think there’s three in there I probably just let it let it be and see if the Gophers leave it alone now that Lark spur back there you see that I thought that was blue I don’t think it’s blue I think it’s pink or purple and these are my Sutton’s apricot Fox gloves they are just so gorgeous and my Iceberg white Iceberg Rose it took a beading with with those late freezes and it’s just now really recovering another self- Ceder this is Rose Campion I just those electric pink flowers are always such an outstanding view in the garden now my Patricia hardy geranium is looking a little frazzled so I need to cut it back and it will rebloom and right now with the rose Campion blooming it’s okay that I lose what’s left of these blooms to be able to cut it back and let it ref fles the Orion seems to be still going strong and it’s getting quite tall both of these since they are getting so tall now not for everybody do ro Hardy geraniums get as big as they do for me I spoke to a woman at Monrovia and I was talking about them cuz she was displaying them under a uh Rose and I said no I mine don’t stay as a ground cover mine get huge and I said why because they’re supposed to stay low growing and she said they just love it there so this is up here at my house that’s why they grow so well is they love it here so they get really tall so I’m going to start planting them further back in the bed and then I can have something a little more low growing here that um don’t hog up all the space cuz I have a beautiful um plant down there that you can’t even even see because of they they’re just taken over but they’re gorgeous so gorgeous so this is the other side of that bed and the poppies and here is my seed grown Daisy and you see compared to the other Daisy how short and fat these these uh petals are hopefully that came into Focus for you so I’m always testing new plants now this is a silene that um had these pom pom flowers and I don’t o it looks like it’s going to seed can you see the seeds in my hand yeah so I will collect some seeds to spread in other parts of the garden then I’ll go ahead and dead head this and I will see if it will rebloom I need to look up about it and see if it does reloom oh now look see all these poppies they’re hiding my manard down there my B balm which I wanted it stays it’s a short shorter growing one my others are very tall growing that’s a shorter one and I wanted short there and these poppies are obscuring it now I just let these come up because the seed you know it was a volunteer so yeah I will probably right around that I will clear it out so that that really can Thrive and not be crowded oh look at here this is another volunteer poy let come up in the path and look how pretty this one is so that is why sometimes I let them just come up just so I can see what they are so here’s this pink rose I think this is passionate kisses passionate kisses or kiss of Desire sorry see I always do that kiss of Desire I think I have both of them and these are a couple of suckers that I dug up from lilac and they’re in pots and doing okay so that chicken feeder I was going to make into a planter for succulents I need I just need to poke holes in the bottom of it and then fill it with potting soil mixed with sand or a cactus mix and do make a little planter so over here I’ve put my milkweed starts that I started from seed and not one of them made it so I put in some aaki or aachi some of my cuting Salvia cuting um I have a volunteer look nana coming up and isn’t that a pretty very subtle color and this is my watermelon sweet pea and yeah this is um this is a gar look at this it stays smaller and it’s got these beautiful bright pink flowers and the bra are red now most Gars that get tall to me look too weedy and I’m not a big fan of them so I have the shorter growing ones and look this Delphinium is beginning to bloom I have struggled with Colette she has not been a very Hardy Rose for me there’s some blooms up there but I’m still working with her because I love her the blooms are gorgeous fully ruffled very romantic roses the apricot pink is gorgeous um I she’s just not cold hearty those late freezes really did a number on her so I just need to be more aware of that I don’t know what I could have done we get been getting these late late hard freezes um more harder colder than we used to and so yeah I just have to maybe find another spot for I thought it would be protected with the bespoke greenhouse there and so she is in a pot which I’m sure the roots have gone down through the ground but look look how sad her base looks yeah I am not sure about her but that’s just it you try out things it might work for someone else but in your conditions it may not and you may have the same zone so that that’s not always the um determining Factor but look down here look at this pansies I put in down here I had a spare down here is some flowers I started from seed I’ll have to put it on the screen at the moment the name is escaping me and they are coming along they were struggling at first and they seem to be doing fine now this is America a climbing rows now this one I told you last time I’m putting into a deck box which is just the size and shape of a planter and I’m going to put it in front of the greenhouse over there to I’m going to train it along the top we’ll see how well that does this is one of those cheap roses you get from Lowe’s in the spring 9 bucks um and struggling and so I pot them up get them going and put them in the garden see how they do so down here is Sexy Rexy the one dyed you can see right here it is I ped it up cuz I could see it was dying and it didn’t make it there was nothing I could do but look down there sexy rexie is one I’d always wanted I always liked it I’d see it in a down at a winery in Murphy’s and it was always so beautiful loved it and wanted to try it when I picked it up for n bucks I was thrilled so this hura I think it’s caramel something it’s a beautiful specimen it seems to thrive right here so I just let it I love the foliage color so my Crimson Queen Japanese maple I was out here this morning trying to figure out a way to shade it now just during this time of year see look it’s getting scorched um the sun is so hot that it tends to Scorch it and so you see that that’s an umbrella stand I’m going to put my umbrella let me see where is it behind me ah yes this tropical looking umbrella over it during the heat of the day and then I can Fold It Down Etc and then um as summer wanes the sun will change positions in the sky and it won’t be so intense right here um I had thought about that a little when I was putting this in and thought maybe I would have to do that um but yeah I hate to see it get scorched cuz such a beautiful color maybe look at this this is 16 Candles I need to tie it back to the fence more but it’s just blooming away doing beautiful um and this one right here is missan something and I’ve been tying it back it used to cover this whole piece of lattice and would just Bloom and it’s so heavily scented you walk out here but I trimmed it back hard this year because of things we were doing and um yeah now I got to retrain it along here for the summer and let’s see let me turn around here I have some changes for this area that’s one of the benches that is not comfortable not comfortable at all and so I don’t I don’t sit on it whereas when I had the other bench that’s over by Primrose Cottage here I would sit on it quite frequently and yeah this one sits up a little bit higher the other one sits a little bit lower and so you feel like you’re more immersed in the garden but I like the shape of this one I think it’s pretty so I don’t know what I’m going to do with it cuz I hate to just get rid of it I think one I’ll take down to uh the family grave site because when we’re out there cleaning Etc it’s nice to have a place to sit down now bespoke greenhouse and the P Garden is doing okay still a lot of things I wanted done and it’s not done yet but again I just try to enjoy um my Clover pathway is doing pretty good it’s choked out many weeds you can see there’s some weeds right there but right here I don’t know what happened this was thick and just all of a sudden they died and I have no idea why so but it it um spreads pretty easily especially kep moist um yeah who knows maybe the Gophers ate the roots look at this is the first year I’ve had any real success with canes and look at that it when you find the right spot that’s the ticket I guess everywhere else I had it was either too hot or you know but right there that thing is just thriving I bought one of the cheap little bulbs from Lowe’s and decided to go with it no Tractor Supply I got a tractor supply and so look I’m just thrilled with it and over here in my vgo garden bed I put my Peppers which were struggling in the greenhouse and then my Tiny Tim tomato this only gets like a foot tall but here’s my idea for this let’s talk about it this thing is nearly 8 ft long and um it doesn’t work well here because of now of the greenhouse being here so this SP part back here doesn’t get utilized as well as I would like so here’s my idea now forgive this part this is this part’s still getting cleaned up and prepped and my husband’s supposed to remove all those hoses soon but I was thinking right along the walkway here have it and then because this area right here stays Shady a lot it would be perfect for my lettuces lettu uses spinach Etc um cilantro because they like during the heat of the summer they like shade and when um the sun goes down further it’ll still be warm enough for it to grow but they won’t be getting scorched in the hot sun so I was thinking and like spring crops like radishes and having it so tall would be easy just to walk by and care for it so I measured out how far that would go and yeah I think it will work here and I have better access the other thought was to go along the back with it and stuff so those are my two ideas for that bed look at my Kiss Me Kate Rose isn’t this gorgeous and it’s doing great all these buds are going to bloom down here this was the old growth and it’s all blooming and I need to dead head it soon but this came through the freezes like a champ it didn’t even miss a beat and unlike the Colette so it might be the ticket this is um an arbor Rose from cordz the German breeder so maybe they breed them for the cold I don’t know now this one is I do believe Viking queen or lavender lassy so I need to look up both of them and see which one of the attributes it mimics the best but but I got this one from Heirloom Roses and I have to give a shout out for Heirloom Roses I have bought lots of roses from them I love them because they are own root and I need own root because if my roses die to the ground I need them to come back true but I just had sent them it’s been o almost well over a year and they they guarantee their roses for a year but one rose I got and planted it is not the rose I ordered and last year I thought oh well maybe it just needs to bloom the second year cuz sometimes the Roses changed they’ll get bigger or do whatever and so this year it’s blooming again and it’s not the rose I order so I just contacted them and without even a hiccup when I said it’s not the right Rose sent them a picture and they are replacing it for free so it’s just wonderful here is in bespoke Greenhouse I have some seed coming up here I have them in here because in my larger Greenhouse I seem to have a spider M problem it’s not going away and over here is my cucumber I had planted a couple in here but that’s the one that came up from seed I just planted the seeds and here are some of my tomatoes and I got a lot of um morning glories trying to come up in here and these are my tomatoes I think this one is my beef steak and I think that one is genuine and over there is my Camp Joy and they’re all doing very nice in here these are all the Roses I started from cuting look at this one this one is look at that’s red Cascade these are vintage roses and that one is um Pearl in in a dragon’s mouth and it was a pretty bright pink with white in the center so this one here seems to be a couple of them are struggling and one is taken off but that’s why you want to take a lot of cuting because you will have that issue you’ll have some die off I usually have I used to have an 80% success rate now it’s down to 50% I don’t know what’s changed but here’s a couple more doing great also because the soil in here is moist it’s keeps humidity now I’m getting too long with this video I probably should start over and just not be so chatty but that my friends is basically this lemon lemony lace I love this I had also thought for next to the Japanese maple planting one of these that would C would shade it during the heat at the summer and this being deciduous meaning it grows all the way to the ground I mean um Fades dies to the ground what do you call that um and it’s a perennial so in this in the winter it’s not whatever I’m going to stop right there so let’s again I try to stop and get an overview of the garden for you at the end well I hope you enjoyed that garden tour of the secret Cottage Garden and I’ve been working in there and I’m trying to get it a little more in check um and not because that I want it show worthy for you um it’s because I love working out there and I know exactly what’s in my mind as far as a vision for it and sometimes I get Inspirations from other gardeners I have there was one oh I can’t remember Instagram anyway she had this like bird cage gazebo out in her garden and it had roses climbing up in over it and there was two little chairs in it and it was like shady in there and I thought oh I could do that with my Arbor bench something similar and then In the Heat of the day I could go in there to enjoy the garden but be out of the Heat and the direct s so that is an upand cominging project um that I’m going to be working on towards using the arbor bench so I hope it turns out it could be a total flop but trying is half the fun and trying to see it’s the same with my Rose Cottage guard my Rose Alley I’ll link to the original of what it looked like when I was talking to you about it and what I had in mind and now how it’s coming to fruition is just gorgeous and I love it so it starts with a dream guys I wish you happy gardening take it slow and just enjoy that’s the important part see you next time bye