Front Garden Tour May 2025 | My Carolina Garden

Ah, beautiful May! Welcome to my front garden tour May 2025 in My Carolina Garden! I’m excited to show you new colors, big blooms, and a sea of yellow Evening Primrose, pansies continuing to bloom, and daylilies just emerging. All this and sooo much more!

Just a note: My front yard flowerbeds are all full sun gardens. You can see fun things blooming right now like the golden sword yucca, and purple balloon flowers. I grow in a coastal garden with sandy soil.

My name is Nicole Roggeman, and My Carolina Garden is in Southeastern North Carolina in growing zone 8B. I enjoy filming, sharing my passion for gardening, passing along gardening inspiration, and having greenhouse chats with you. Please subscribe to stick with me.

#maygarden #gardentour #mycarolinagarden

I would like to welcome you to my front yard garden tour for the month of May. I think May may be my favorite garden tour in the front yard because yes, I have a lot of things blooming, but the colors are even more spectacular than they were even just two weeks ago. Hi you guys, this is Nicole from My Carolina Garden. My garden is located in growing zone 8b and we are in souththeastern North Carolina. We are going to start on my front porch and then work our way around. Now, it’s been interesting because we’ve had like five days of rain straight. So, things have changed a lot for that reason alone. But these planters I had shown you, I made them during the time of my rain. So, I’m not going to go into all the details of what’s in here, but I want to say that they added the perfect amount of color and cheer to my life while the rain was just consistently ah pouring down everywhere. The colladium is the star of the show here. And let’s go see what else is happening. So, while the caladiums in the smaller planters are going to be awesome performers for the heat of the summers that I have here, I wanted to point out the contrast of these guys. So, I have some violas and some snapdragons that I put together in this little container just as a very, very early spring planter. So far, still looking good, but I’ll tell you what, we had the 5 days straight of rain. Now, we’re going to be getting into 90° temperatures and that’s going to be our consistent from here on out. So, these guys aren’t going to be too happy. So, remember I said I have this volunteer tomato plant. So far, I’m leaving it because I figure a bird probably dropped the seeds here. So, it was just nature saying, “Hey, you need to grow some tomatoes right there.” So, I’m going to leave it until it gets maybe too big and it has to go. But on this side, you didn’t see these things in bloom the last time we were walking around checking out all the flowers. My canal liillies are blooming now all over the yard. things are just beginning to open up in each spot. So, the reason why I love this one again is the dark foliage with the red bloom. It just is different than its companion flower right here in front of it. So, this is the Lantana. I talk about the Lantana a lot because this is an amazing blooming shrub here. It gets bigger in size each year, so you have to keep it clipped back, you know, however you want to style it, but it gets so many flowers all over it. Last time you saw it, it was only buted up. And now we’re starting to see the orange pops everywhere. So, this is Lantana. So, the pink I have over here is pretty amazing. Unintentionally did I add this amount of pink. And the reason why it kind of happened is because this plant and this plant are the vitams. They were fall planters. Like I added them then. So at that point, like my echgonatia here was already done for the season. So I wasn’t really thinking about what was going to happen in the spring. But I’m super duper happy, of course, because the Vitams were the prettiest mums that I had. They have more of like starburst shaped flowers on them instead of just round ones. So I like it. Non-standard. Very cool. And then the echgonatia that I have here, this is the double scoop bubblegum. Now again, these blooms are just opening up, so they are not in their full glory yet, but you have a huge pom pom center on these guys. And then the rays drape down. So it’s like a super cool like bigger bloom than a regular cone flower would be. And then of course I have my trailing verbana also in the hot pink. And I love it. It blooms on and off all year through. Even in the winter, I had pink blooms. So, love that as well. If you’re looking for some beautiful like combinations in your shrubbery colors, let me just say this kaleidoscopilia that is variegated. So, it’s got multicolors in its foliage is super cool against the lauretylum. The laura pedalum has like dark colored foliage with a purple tint to it. So the purple and the yellow together, you know, I’m a sucker for complimentary colors, has just worked out really awesome. So I just wanted to point that out just in case you’re looking for shrubs. Those are a beautiful combination together. I always like to talk about my garden easel. And as I said, like with the little container up in the front there, we have violas in here and they’re not going to love the 90 degree weather that we have coming up. So, this is going to have to be changed out soon. But still, for right now, the snapdragons and violas, they look so precious. I had selected these. I think they’re gardinas. See, I can’t even remember. I had selected them because I didn’t have any gardinas in my garden before, but I will tell you that this variety is not my favorite. I end up with so many of these yellow leaves. And the flowers, they’re fine right now. They’re very simplistic looking in design, but I don’t get a ton of them and they’re not longlasting. And of course, with white blooms, we know how quickly they turn to brown. Just keeping in mind, too, if you’re thinking of adding gardinas to your garden, think about what the actual structure of the shrub looks like. This one may not be for you either. I don’t know. Okay, you guys, this is the unintentional rainbow garden because what did happen for me was these orange dlies started to bloom before my gorgeous pansies gave out for me. So, the pansies again, cool weather flowers. That’s in like the purple, blue, the yellow. Those are cool weather flowers. The dianths starts blooming in early spring, but I expect it to keep blooming through the summer. Dusty Miller. Awesome. Just awesome structure in here. My Kilmer willow tree, the draper. Love it so much. But the dillies, I was not expecting them to be blooming at the same time as the pansies. So that is just so funny to me. So moving in front of my house, we have my peninsula garden. And the magnolia tree is right beside me here. I don’t know if you remember, but I had some cone flowers that were planted in the ground closer to the tree. And earlier this spring, I moved them forward just so their roots could have a little bit of freedom. Well, so far it looks like we’re doing okay. And of course, cone flowers are generally summer bloomers, so hopefully we get even more size on these. But what the heck is this? I’m trying to remember if I actually planted something here. It seems very intentional because of the line that it’s in right here, but I don’t know what this is going to be. So, just moving down the line of the peninsula garden. Do you remember how I say I have so many blanket flowers? And maybe even a month ago, you probably didn’t believe me unless you saw my gardens last year. This is what happens. The blanket flowers start popping up everywhere. Their seeds blow in the wind, land wherever they want, and then I end up with tons of blanket flowers everywhere. This is not the only spot. This is only the beginning. So, wait till I show you how many of them I have. But here we have more of the trailing verbana. And this one is actually a piece of the one that we just saw in the front. And I had told you before, if you just bury one of the little arms of your verbanana under the ground and get it to root, you can separate that off from that plant and add it to other areas. So, I did that. Artameeseia is on the ground in a couple different spots. And the reason why I love it is because it’s a ground cover. I wanted to fill up some space and I really do like the way that the silver looks next to the pink. So, these two are both ground covers. We’ll see. We’ll see if they compete with each other or not. But so far so good. This is just one of my dianths and it was the gorgeous pink carnation style flowers that were on it. But as you can see, the blooms are spent and it needs to be deadheaded. So, a lot of people have asked me, do you have to dead head dianths? Yes, you absolutely do. It puts on its first flush early in the spring and then you dead head and then you’re going to get more blooms. And honestly, this all happened very very quickly because like I said, the the massive amount of rain that we hadoo really took down a lot of blooms. More blanket flowers. This is actually like a perfect little plant. It’s not even that little that I could kind of dig up and share with somebody. The only thing I say to people when you’re sharing or newly planting blanket flowers, they’re very thirsty. Like it probably takes a nice week of you watering consistently to get them to like perk up and look really good. But this one, I’m not sure if it’s going to stay or not. Here’s something that is going though. I have gorgeous zebra grasses that kind of are forming a little bit of a back wall of this peninsula garden. This one, however, doesn’t seem to be that. It just looks like weeds and grossness. So, I think if this is not zebra grass, this little plump has got to go. No southern garden would be complete without dollar. Yep, that’s right. The rain not only brings different flowers to bloom, but also brings more weeds. Dollar weed, hate it. But what I really wanted to point out was two things here. I have lavender that I’ve been keeping an eye on. This is the purple elegance lavender because it doesn’t love a lot of wet. And it’s looking okay for now. We’ll kind of see how it fares in a little while. Though lavender likes to stay pretty dry, so keep that in mind when you’re figuring out where you want to plant yours. I have a black and blue salvia that’s here that’s going to start getting super tall and have like dark purple almost black looking flowers on it which is really cool next to more orange. So this is like a little sea of dillies that’s just beginning to open up. So this is one of my most favorite spots in the May garden in my peninsula garden. I have a lot of different colors happening. One of them is unusual and that is this. This is the golden sword yuckas bloom. What do you guys think of this bloom? Fan, not a fan. Let me know what you think. I am not really a fan. It’s unusual. Um, and it’s also funny because the yucka is like so low to the ground and the flowers so super tall. You can just take a look at my gardens and all of a sudden say, “Oh, I can see where every single one of her yuckas is because we have these humongous blooms.” The flowers themselves are a little delicate looking in nature. They almost remind me of like a water lily. So, they’re cute and sweet in that way, but again, overall, the structure of it, not the biggest fan. All right, so what’s happening right in this area right around my feet? Something you didn’t see the last time are the yellow evening primrose. So the evening primrose is another aggressive spreading plant, but I end up with a sea of yellow around me for that reason. So it has just started opening up. So it’ll be with me now for a little while. You’ll see lots of yellow, but some cool pieces that go along with that are the purple balloon flowers. So this has really opened up since the last time you saw it. Again, purple and yellow complimentary colors. And then my echgonatia right here. Only one pink bloom so far. And that amount of vibrance. One, two, three things together. I love it. The orange dlies are going to add yet another color to this whole area. But for now, things are just starting to open up. So right here, I can already see the tiniest buds. It is a perennial hibiscus. Hibiscus is one of my most favorite flowers. And having perennial hibiscus, which by the way, I think is hardy up till like zone four or something is amazing and outstanding. The flowers are huge. These ones are going to be magenta. Glorious, glorious color for like almost anybody’s garden. More of the evening primrose. More blanket flowers. And the last aggressive cedar that I talked about was the evening prim. No, no, twilight. It’s twilight. Twilight primrose in pink. two different looking primrose flowers between the yellow and the pink. But both of them amazing spreaders and selfseeders as you can see looking through my garden. Hello. Oh gosh, is that a Japanese beetle already? Japanese beetles are out. I felt like it was pretty early and now suddenly I see them everywhere. So start being mindful of your pests because oh my gosh. Okay, so we know that I’m a humongous fan of dividing up our perennials and putting them in other spots in our yard, right? Well, I have some fabulous examples of something that’s going to show off this year. And this is my lily section. I have a lily section in my backyard. So, I created one here just by dividing them up. I have dlies. A few different colors of dlies are all going to be here. You can see some buds right in the spot. So, dillies here. These are stargazer liies or they’re they’re going to be, but they are fabulous, gorgeous blooms. Oh my god, they have a wonderful scent. I love them so much. And these are tiger liies. These are the very unusual almost upside down looking blooms that come in orange. So, three different styles of liies all in this spot. Like I said, just divisions of other plants that I have in the back. All right. So, we’re on the other side of the magnolia tree. So, you know what that means? The island of misfit toys. A garden completely created by either garden sharing or divisions of my own perennials or clearance plants. That’s it. No full dollar amounts were spent on any of the plants that are in here. Just want to point out a few goodies because, well, they’re fun. One of them is this right here. This is a crocosmia. It’s going to bloom in a gorgeous red color. I got it from my sister who lives in New York last summer and I actually didn’t know what it was. She didn’t know what it was and my plant identifier app wasn’t working if you could believe it. But then one of you told me it looks like crocosmia flat leaves and again it’ll have stunning red blooms. So this one at least doubled in size since I put it in the ground last year. That’s why it was special to point it out. This is hilarious cuz it’s just another tiger lily. Oh my gosh. Self seeding and adding itself to my garden from even who knows what. There’s not even a tiger lily right here. I have some Joe pieed here. This is from my in-laws house. They also live in New York, but their area where I got that from was kind of like a wet almost like pondy marshy area. So, I thought it could do really well in like next to my drainage swale. It’s okay. It hasn’t grown tremendously and I’ve had that in the ground for about 2 years now. But look at all of this lusciousness that largely just like kind of sprung into action from the rain. My hostas are loving their life right here. Even though they have a lot of sun being next to the moisture working for them, they’re all buted up. Now host blooms, much like the yucka blooms, they’re not my favorite, but that’s okay. They’re that’s the flowers are not the reason why I grow hostas. The hostas are for their foliage. Oh my gosh, though. The sun-kissed coropsis. Ye, it looks so amazing. All of these things are new plants for this year. They’re already huge and bushy, plentiful in their blooms. So, I mentioned this earlier. If you’re looking for an early blooming statement flower that just like transforms your garden like kind of quickly, look at the coropsis because it’s pretty cool. And the fact that it has a contrasting center to the flower petals. I love that part of it as well. More dillies heading in this direction. We have like some color, some not color. I have things I need to take care of right here. I have some wisteria blooms. You see this purple? Meanwhile, these are divisions from something inside. The ones that were inside the backyard bloomed, I don’t know, 3 weeks ago at least. Yet, these are just coming out with their blooms now. So, it’s interesting. You never really know. These are the drift roses that only a few days ago were looking absolutely outstanding covered in pink. And now, look at this. I have so much deadheading to do. They’re going to be relooming though for the rest of the year. So, I’m not worried about it. It’s just more work. Blanket flowers. Blanket flowers. Just growing wherever. Not a lot of color. Not a lot of color. And then the end of my garden that I have yet to finish all the way is ending with some evergreens. So I got this holly on clearance in the fall. And then these are the Anna’s magic balls that are meant to stay as small round evergreen shrubs. And I wanted that purposely because it gives me color and it gives me a compact shape which is really cool. So not every single thing in my garden has to be completely wild. So, and then this holly with its iridescent leaves. Oh my gosh, just such a gorgeous stunner. So, in a nutshell, this is how the front yard is looking right now. Largely, I would say I’m very, very happy with things. But again, keep an eye out for these pests cuz if the Japanese beetles are in the primrose already, they’re going to be showing up in other places as well, and we don’t want them to ruin our gardens. Thanks for following along on my gardening journey. And until next time, you guys, happy planting.