August represents the culmination of months of garden planning, planting, and nurturing—a time when the garden reaches its full summer glory while beginning to hint at autumn's approach. Our comprehensive August garden tour reveals not just the triumphs of peak season, but also the honest realities of gardening in challenging conditions, from experimenting with borderline hardy plants to managing drought stress and making strategic plant replacements.

Foundation Plantings: Setting the Stage

The Front Garden's Reliable Performers

Our tour begins with the foundation plantings that create first impressions and year-round structure. The star performer in our front foundation bed is the hedge of blue Artist Floss Flower (Ageratum), which provides constant color throughout the season with its beautiful blue tone and tidy habit. This annual has proven invaluable for consistent seasonal interest where perennials might have gaps.

The Winter Gem boxwoods across the back, shaped into globes, demonstrate the importance of evergreen structure for winter interest, while the Firelight Tidbit hydrangeas show what makes a truly reliable panicle hydrangea—these three specimens at mature size completely cover their foliage in blooms, creating spectacular impact while just beginning to develop the pink undertones that signal cooling nights.

Tree Strategy for Softening Architecture

Our tri-color European beech, despite losing some luster in full sun exposure, serves a crucial design function underneath which we've established both Vanessa Bell roses and our newly planted Let's Dance Skyview hydrangea hedge. This demonstrates how even plants that aren't performing optimally can serve important structural roles while other elements carry the visual interest.

The columnar Scotch pine exemplifies our strategy for softening the long lines of vinyl siding typical in contemporary suburban settings. While it's getting wider than anticipated, its easy pruning nature makes it manageable for maintaining the desired narrow profile.

The Hydrangea Room: Curated Collections

Strategic Hydrangea Selection

Our dedicated hydrangea room showcases the value of growing multiple varieties to understand performance differences. The mix includes four main arborescence types similar to Annabelle hydrangeas: Incredible (bright white), Incredible Blush, Invincible Lace, and Invincible Sublime. Now in their second full season, these plants demonstrate how patience pays off—they'll continue improving each year as they mature.

The Invincible Spirit Too deserves special mention for its beautiful flower progression, showing both old and new blooms simultaneously. This variety exemplifies why we've moved toward proven performers rather than experimenting with marginal varieties.

Lessons in Hydrangea Performance

Our Gatsby Pink oakleaf hydrangea serves as the entrance plant to the hydrangea room, illustrating the seasonal progression these plants offer—starting white, turning pink, then developing into papery blooms before the real show begins with burgundy fall foliage.

The recent addition of Incredible Storm Proof hydrangeas represents our commitment to improved varieties that address specific challenges. In our windy location, the promise of stronger stems that better withstand weather makes this an strategic choice over standard varieties.

Signature Plant Combinations

Native and Non-Native Integration

One of our most successful combinations pairs the Kinsley Ghost honeysuckle with its iridescent teal-blue foliage against Winecraft Black smoke bush. This pairing demonstrates how contrasting foliage colors can create dramatic impact while both plants remain manageable through strategic pruning.

The Magic Show Ever After Veronica and Peach Berry Ice coral bells combination below illustrates how blue and orange complementary colors create visual excitement in smaller-scale plantings.

Water Feature Integration

Our Borghese fountain from Campania, added this spring, has become a successful focal point, particularly when surrounded by self-seeding Asian Garden celosia. This demonstrates how allowing plants to naturalize around hardscape features creates organic, unforced combinations.

The Gothic arch system supports both Betty Corning clematis and Generous Gardener roses, creating a soft purple and pink color scheme that's proven both beautiful and practically successful. The Betty Corning clematis particularly impresses with non-stop flowering and manageable growth habits.

Tree Selection and Placement Strategy

Specimen Trees for Long-Term Impact

Our Royal Frost birch, chosen as a single-stem specimen rather than multi-stem, demonstrates strategic tree selection for specific locations. This hybrid combines red leaf birch characteristics with white bark birch qualities, creating year-round interest while serving as a sentinel element that defines space.

The Metamorphosis Japanese maple from Proven Winners showcases how newer introductions can offer improved characteristics—in this case, constantly changing foliage color that justifies its name with orange tips, white tips, and promised spectacular fall color.

Pollarded Willow Management

Our dappled willow, purchased years ago for $5 and grown through pollarding techniques, illustrates how strategic pruning can create custom shade in a young garden. By cutting back to the same spots annually, we've maintained a manageable size while creating essential shade for understory plantings.

This technique demonstrates how small investments in fast-growing plants can provide solutions while slower specimen trees mature.

Annual Strategy and Container Lessons

Super Bells Success and Challenges

This year has taught us extensive lessons about Super Bells varieties and their dramatically different growth habits. While some combinations work beautifully, Super Bina Pink Cashmere has proven so vigorous that it overwhelms most companion plants. In containers, it requires either solo planting or pairing only with equally vigorous varieties like Super Tunia Bubble Gum or Jazz Berry.

Container Experiments and Discoveries

Our experience with Superbena varieties climbing trellises represents an unexpected discovery—this trailing plant's willingness to climb opens new design possibilities we hadn't anticipated. Such discoveries remind us why experimentation remains valuable even with proven plant families.

The Kimberly Queen fern in an immovable container presents a common container gardening challenge—balancing plant selection with practical limitations like weight and winter storage.

Seasonal Transitions and Color Evolution

Fall Preparation Indicators

Fall in Love Sweetly anemones loaded with buds signal the approaching transition to autumn interest. These perennials demonstrate the value of plants that peak as summer wanes, providing bridge color into the cooler season.

The Autumn Joy sedum beginning to show early buds with pollinators already investigating illustrates how observant gardeners can track seasonal progressions and plan for successive interest.

Color Temperature Changes

Our Lady of Shalott roses showing more intense orange on cooler nights demonstrates how temperature fluctuations affect flower color—a phenomenon that adds seasonal dynamism to plantings when understood and anticipated.

Plant Performance Evaluations

Successes Worth Repeating

Serendipity Allium throughout the garden proves the value of perennials that are both beautiful and easy to divide and spread. This plant's late summer performance and pollinator appeal make it an ideal backbone perennial.

Super Tunia Mini Vista varieties, particularly Pink Cloud and Indigo, have proven exceptionally reliable for filling space while permanent plantings establish.

Morning Light Miscanthus continues to excel in both full sun and part sun locations, making it our most versatile ornamental grass selection.

Experiments and Borderline Hardy Plants

Our Center Stage Pink crape myrtle experiment represents calculated risk-taking with borderline hardy plants. Rated to zone 6B while we're in 6A, this plant will likely die back to ground level but could return annually if root systems survive, potentially providing substantial seasonal color.

Plants Earmarked for Removal

Purple Pillar Rose of Sharon demonstrates how plants can fail to meet expectations for multiple reasons: late bloom timing, inadequate narrow habit, and competition with more interesting specimens. Recognizing and acting on such disappointments improves overall garden performance.

Water Management Reality

Drought Stress Indicators

The extremely dry summer has revealed the limits of our irrigation coverage and highlighted areas needing system expansion. Plants showing stress despite being labeled drought-tolerant remind us that even adapted plants have limits during unusual weather patterns.

Pinky Winky hydrangeas at the edge of our irrigation coverage showing drooping illustrate how water availability dramatically affects performance, even in established plantings.

Irrigation Evolution Needs

As plants mature and root systems expand, irrigation needs change. Our recognition that larger plants need more coverage rather than just more concentrated water at their base reflects growing understanding of plant root development and water needs.

Seasonal Garden Management

Rabbit Protection Strategies

Black chicken wire caging around vulnerable plants like roses, yarrow, and aronia demonstrates practical pest management without sacrificing aesthetics. This protection strategy has proven essential for maintaining plantings in areas with significant rabbit pressure.

Invasive Plant Management

Our ongoing battle with milkweed spreading beyond intended areas illustrates the challenge of balancing wildlife benefit with garden control. While valuable for butterflies, its aggressive spreading requires constant vigilance and removal efforts.

Container Garden Insights

Houseplant Summer Success

Our collection of houseplants summering outdoors—including Pink Princess Philodendron, Jungle Cat Alocasia, and various Calathea varieties—demonstrates how indoor plants can contribute to outdoor seasonal displays while benefiting from summer growing conditions.

Seasonal Container Transitions

Night Owl mangaves that remained dormant indoors all winter then turned dark purple and put on substantial growth outdoors illustrate how some plants require specific seasonal conditions to perform optimally.

Edible Garden Learning Curve

Honest Assessment of Food Growing

Our acknowledgment that we're "really good at flowers" rather than vegetable production reflects honest self-assessment and appropriate focus on strengths. Successful carrots and cherry tomatoes alongside mixed strawberry results show the learning process inherent in expanding garden skills.

Future Planning and Plant Longevity

Trees for Long-Term Vision

Paper bark maple purchased as a clearance specimen with shaping issues demonstrates the long-term perspective gardening requires. With proper limbing up and patience, this tree will eventually provide significant presence and winter interest.

Vanderwolf pine growth from a small specimen to substantial presence illustrates how patience with slow-growing evergreens pays dividends in ultimate garden structure and year-round interest.

Seasonal Succession Planning

The upcoming transition to fall containers reminds us that successful gardens require thinking ahead to maintain interest through seasonal changes. Container gardening particularly demands this forward planning to maintain continuous impact.

Design Evolution and Maturation

Garden Room Development

The successful development of distinct garden "rooms"—the hydrangea room, shade areas under the pollarded willow, and the new west border—demonstrates how gardens mature from individual plantings into cohesive designed spaces.

Plant Partnership Understanding

Successful combinations like Ancient Mariner rose sprawling naturally while Verbena bonariensis self-seeds around it show how understanding plant growth habits can create naturalistic effects that appear unforced.

Maintenance Efficiency Insights

Coppicing and Pruning Strategies

Our plans to coppice Blue Kazoo spirea and manage the oversized Winecraft Gold smoke bush reflect proactive maintenance approaches that prevent problems rather than reacting to them.

Rock Steady Chaste trees that will be cut to ground level like butterfly bushes demonstrate how understanding plant behavior in specific zones allows for appropriate management strategies.

The Philosophy of Garden Touring

August garden tours capture gardens at their most complex—showing not just peak performance but also the management decisions, experiments, and adaptations that create successful landscapes. They reveal the constant evolution that makes gardening endlessly engaging, from celebrating successes to learning from failures and planning improvements.

Our comprehensive tour demonstrates that successful gardens result from understanding plant performance, honest assessment of what works and what doesn't, and willingness to make changes that improve overall results. Whether dealing with drought stress, experimenting with borderline hardy plants, or simply enjoying the combinations that have proven themselves over time, August gardens tell the story of a full growing season's worth of learning and growth.

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Thanks for growing with us!