My July Garden Tour | A New Beginning in the Cottage Garden

Welcome to my first ever garden tour in the newly landscaped space! And what a transformation it’s been! In this video, I’m taking you around the garden in July, sharing how everything is growing and giving you a proper look at the new layout.

You’ll see:
🌸 My cottage garden in containers – full of summer colour and charm
💎 My jewel-toned borders – bold, vibrant and packed with texture
🪴 A beautiful planter I created that’s bursting with colour
🌱 Some exciting plans for the months ahead as I continue to grow and develop the space

Whether you’re here for garden inspiration, love cottage-style planting, or want to see how you can make the most of containers, borders, and structure, I hope this gives you ideas and motivation for your own space.

Don’t forget to like, comment, and subscribe if you’d like to follow along with the garden journey – there’s so much more to come!

#Gardening #GardenTour #CottageGarden #ContainerGardening #JewelTonedGarden #JulyGarden #GardenInspiration #GardenDesign #BeforeAndAfter #SummerGarden #SmallGardenIdeas

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Music from Epidemic Sound

Hi. I have my trusty little microphone because I want to give you a garden tour and it’s very windy out. It could rain at any minute now, but I think that this is the only day this week that we’re going to have sun. But yeah, let me show you the garden. Now, it’s still a work in progress, but we’ve made some good progress. So, this is one of my favorite corners of the garden. It’s so vibrant. I love it. Now, in fairness, the maragolds are still in their boxes. I will be planting those, don’t worry. But I just place them there to get the general feel. Oh, I think it’s delightful. So, the reason why I kind of went for these shades here is because we remembered we had these chairs here in the shed and the same with the table as well. And we were like, “Ah, sure. There’s no point buying anything new. We spent so much on the garden this year. Let’s just use what we have.” And they’re perfect. They’re so comfy. Importantly, they dry really quickly if it rains. So, I was like, “Right, well, let’s do something kind of jewel toned here to tie in with that.” So, I planted up this pot here, and I absolutely love it. I have like Salvi Amistad at the back. I have I can’t remember the name of this. I’ll put it on the screen, but I adore it. I’m going to try and do cutings because that is after really like taking hold from when I first planted it. Did I do that last week, the week before? I can’t remember. And then we have the osteopermum here on the side. We have a little trailing plant here, one of the ivies. But I just think this is one of the most gorgeous plants ever ever ever. And I just it’s it doesn’t flower, so you’re just using it for the foliage. And I’m always like a big fan of the Amstad. When I had my nephew here recently, I was like, “Doesn’t that look like a snake head or a dragon head going?” And he’s like, “Yeah.” And the foliage on that looks really, really healthy. So I do have room on the side here if I did want to plant something. But I’m trying really hard not to overplant. Do you know? Um and so here we have Adelia. I don’t know what color it’s going to be. And then it’s the other day I was in the garden center. I’ve been in the garden center so much and they had these yellow patunias. I’ve never really seen those. Usually it’s like pinks and purples and that, but I thought that would be lovely here in this little area. So, we have the blossom tree. Now, I thank God people ask me what blossom tree is. I need to ask Catherine again because um I can’t remember. She gave me this as like she got them for free a couple of years ago as part of National Tree Week and I don’t know what it is. Some kind of blossom something. Um but it’s lovely. I don’t know what that’s called but I just thought it was gorgeous. Oh, is it? Hold on now. Hold on a second. Is called It’s called Galardia. It’s called Galardia. Never heard of that. You might see here this in action. Um, you’ll see I’m going to insert footage later in the video showing all the lights at night because we’ve got a few different lights. So, we have those and then we have these ones here. So, mom bought these a couple of years ago in no last year in the garden center and they’re lovely, but I’ll insert footage of that kind of like later on. At the back here, I just have a clatus that I don’t think it’s going to live its destiny there. I think I’d love to have maybe like a an ivy or something vibrant here attached to this um yoki wrap. So, let’s move on here. As I said, this just perfect, perfect, perfect for here. And we did buy um a parasol that we can put here because in the mornings, like up until around kind of like 2:00, this is in the sun and it can get very hot, too hot for me to sit out. And I just have one little geranium here in the pot. And this smells like the leaves of this smells gorgeous. smells like eucalyptus. So, I just didn’t want to pile loads on there because, you know, if we have like glasses and cups and stuff like that, but I would love to have something else kind of happening here. We hung up in the last video these lights so that we bought them in Home Bargains maybe last year. I think last year. They’re really cheap and they’re lovely. They’re not like too bright, nice and effective. I think like it’s like a diffuse light that comes from that kind of lights up around the trellis on it. So, really like those. And the thing is like we only put them there because ideally the star jasmine I’ll talk to you about that in a second will be growing up that trellis. So and as well when you’re standing in the house this is the corner that you see. So I just didn’t want to have I don’t want to like waste money and put them further in the garden. They’re not going to be seen. So let’s move on to this bed. Now as I said this is still a work in progress and like everything is so small at the moment but hopefully now next year hopefully things will have grown up. So we have like the original, we have the amis that are actually after sprouting up a lot. We’ve got more of those lights there, our bird baths. We have um what you call that stuff snapdragons or arenthum the nepita and we like another one of those lights on. Oh no, that fell over. Now I just wanted to show you here. So you see here that we have a rose um inner pot on the back. Originally it was here, but mom felt that it was kind of too cluttered and then I went and I put that there. So, but I just wanted to show you that you can put things in pots in a bed. Like you don’t necessarily have to plant them out yet. And the reason why we’re not planting it out yet is because this rose bush here that’s easily like that’s going to be like the peach one that we have and that generally comes up to, you know, a good kind of like chest height for me. So, I was like I didn’t want to plant that out and then have it, you know, hidden by by this one. So, um, hold on, let me just fix this. And also putting things in pots before, like if you remember in the last video where I showed me kind of like placing everything in here, and I did have everything in pots originally, so I could kind of see if I liked the look of them, if I like the feel of them there. And so that’s why I put this beauty, this pink beauty there. Mom wanted to get these. She’s had her eye on these for weeks now, and I just want to keep saying, “No, no, no.” But they’re actually gorgeous, like the yellow um, snap dragons. So, we got one for there and one for another part of the garden that I’ll show you now in a second that I love. So, the white scabius not looking great. I need to see I should I dead head them. And I can’t remember what that is, but it’s coming on great. The jasmine looks kind of happy and healthy there. I’ve got the flocks, the geranium. I must see if I cut back that geranium, will I get another flourish? And then this poor little thing. I need to figure out if this gonna live its destiny here because I did have it in another part of the garden in on this obelisk now is where I have the two sunflowers. And there’s actually a second little head coming out here. So, we’ll see. You can see a head starting to form on the top there. But like I just realized all the leaves from this one fell off. So, I need to give everything a good old feed. The pink thing fell over again. It’s just so windy. Actually, maybe I’ll put it at the back here. Hold on. Hold on a second. It’s looking a little bit higgledy piggledy, but I think as the garden as this bed evolves, it will look better. Okay, so I’m not worried about here. Now, this is a part of the garden that I still need to tackle. I’m going to try and get that done this week or next week and turn this into like a little container garden. And I was spoken about this before and I have been buying plants for here as you can see. So, did buy three of these grasses last week. They’re gorgeous. just for the movement. I don’t know if they’ll live their destiny here because I love when grasses see like that are backlit by the sun and I don’t know if I would get the full effect of it like of them here. Now we have just like kind of like a mix of things here at the moment. I do love these. Aren’t they gorgeous? And like really vibrant as well. And I thought that like this area could be like a again more of a jewel tone. So, I have like the yellow and the purple of the lavender and then the orange of that thing that I I bought a smaller plant of there. And then we bought these yesterday. I love them. So, I can’t remember what they’re called. I did keep the pots. So, I’ll try and find them and put the the name on here, but man picked this one out. And I think the leaves and foliage of this will go um like a you know, kind of burgundy, orange, yellow and stuff in the autumn, which is what we wanted. And then I picked this one out. Isn’t she beautiful? Now it’s called Viburnum Expotin. You all Charles Lamont, we’ll just call it. Now, the reason why I left this tag on is to show my mother that it says do not prune on it. It’s one of these that has four stem. So, we’re talking multi- stem. So, what I’m thinking is when we’re like looking out the back garden, like from the back door, we’ll get to see all like these jewel tones, the chairs, the lights, the color, and then have these up here in pots for now. Like, I’ll keep as they grow, I’ll keep potting them on into bigger pots. But this part is not finished yet. This is also not finished yet. So, I’m working with Quick Crop at the moment and they sent me one of the regge trucks that I’m going to move into a different location. I just put it there just to see what it looked like, what it felt like, but I think for the vision that I want, um, that’s not the right place. Now, in fairness, that’s not where I had originally thought that I was going to put it. Anyway, I am thinking I’m thinking about putting it along here. So, have it reach the edge of this door here. Go along probably finish about there. And then I’ll move the barrel around to the side there. That’s what I’m thinking. But here, look, we’ve got more plants here. I got some GMs here. I’m thinking I’ll put them in here. I might even plant them separately or with other things. I’m not sure yet. And then a couple of like little extra bits here. Now, we won’t go into the greenhouse. Greenhouse needs clear out, but I think that’ll be next week’s job. But I will say the tomato plants are looking great in here. I do need to prune them. And look at this. Look at the size. Sorry. Look at the size of the little da tomatoes. I don’t think that uh that would do us for dinner, but look at the back there. But at the back there, we have some tomatoes. And also, actually, sorry, I know I said we weren’t coming in here. Now, here we are now. But look, hold on, let me zoom in. Can you see the peppers are going red? I can see the hint of another red one under there. This one here are there’s one around the back there that’s starting to go red. And look, sure. Sorry. Right here. I have a melon. A melon. Actually, let me turn around and talk to you. I hope the battery doesn’t go. So, yes, we have had a heat wave here in Ireland. And I know I’m sure you probably, you know, if you live in America, you’re probably like going, “What? It’s not that hot.” It’s very hot for us here because our houses are built to keep the heat in in the winter and it also keeps the heat in in the summer too. But I have a fan and um yeah, just as meant that in here it’s just been super super hot. But things are growing. I’ve got a big old cucumber over there. But it’s been hard to work in the garden when it’s that hot because I just don’t do well here. I’m even sweating just now and it’s like think like 11:00 in the morning and this is one of the cooler days with that nice breeze. I think we’re supposed to have rain this week now. So, we haven’t had rain for the last maybe 2 weeks or so. And I looked at the weather forecast um this morning and like this is the only time that I think we’re going to have sun. And I want to show the garden in sun and it said, “Okay, rain in 24 minutes.” So, that’s why I’m kind of going, “Okay, I need to be efficient today. I need to be fast.” The poor little sunflowers. Sorry, sunflowers. But, do you know what? Despite all of this, I’m still learning so much about the greenhouse and the garden and how things are working in the heat. what I will do for next year already, you know. So, I definitely I think it’s probably too late to get fans in. No, maybe it’s not. So, I’m gonna keep an eye out for fans. Um I think I was speaking about this before have having a few fans in here just to keep the air circulating. So, that’s on the the cards, but I need to clear this out. Let me just show you. This is like you were sitting in there a second ago, but like this is the current situation, and I needed to gather all of my pots together just to see what I had, what I was dealing with. Um, but I think maybe if it’s raining one of the days, it probably will flood in here, but sure, it’ll be fine. It’ll dry. It’s like warm enough. I’m still figuring out what I want to do in terms of the flooding and the the leaking and all that, but I’m get there. I just I want to do it kind of properly and very sunny. But yeah, maybe one of the days that it’s raining, I’ll come out here and just potter. Feel like I need to potter, but it’ll be it’ll be less hot. Actually, I’ll show you the other bed and then at the end I’ll show you like one of my favorite bits of the garden. And you know what? Now I have multiple favorite bits of the garden. So, I love the patio. I love the corner with the chairs. I love the I love the green. I love it all. I still love it all. But let me show you the other um flower bed. Things seem to have really established here in this bed. I like that there’s a good bit of greenery. Now, there is definitely room for more plants, don’t get me wrong, but I love this. I think it is beautiful. Just real delicate and the way it’s blowing in the wind. Really like that. Um the cosmos are they’re doing okay. I can’t remember what all of this is, but again seems to be coming on along here. The scabies now they seem happier here as opposed to the white ones. So this this bed has shade for most of the day and especially here. This little section has shade for all of the day really because the sun comes down this way kind of mid-after afternoon and so this tree shrubby thing gives here shade. So that’s it’s good to know. See I’m learning kind of what’s working. Oh, look at the ammy mages starting to get ahead on it. Cute. We’ve budlia that’s starting to bloom. And I love looking at the budia cuz you can see the purple starting at the base. And so it’s like the purple moves up and we have the um honeysuckle is looking good. It smells gorgeous as well. This climbing hydranger isn’t climbing very much. Um but the still bees here are working well. What is that bag? Don’t know. And this is a pink gu. This seems really happy here. So I’m delighted with that. This is what we were working on last week and I absolutely love it. So I’m working with Quickrop which is an Irish company now. I’ve been a paying customer of theirs for years, but we’re working together on their container soil mix. So, I decided to create this gorgeous I think it’s gorgeous display with all of these amazing plants. Let me just take this chair down so we can show you. If you’ve been following me for a while, you will recognize this mirror. I bought it in the um salvage yard a couple of years ago. Love it. Love it. It’s attached to the trellus that won’t be going anywhere. And we’ve got like a couple of grasses either side. Let me zoom out a bit. So, we’ve got two of those grasses either side just to give that bit of movement in front of it. And we have this is hydrangeanger. Oh, limelight. I just planted that yesterday. I got these pots, two of them yesterday or over the weekend. Aren’t they gorgeous? They’re plastic, but they look like ceramicy. So, I’m happy with those. and got these little wooden planter barrels like those two, that one and that one in Home Bargains. So, only 10 or each. And so, I’ll actually link the reel below to show how this came about because it was a process and we had to do it in the evenings because it was too hot to be out here. Look, that’s what it looks like from the other side. And see the way those grasses when they’re back lit from the sun. I just love them. I love them. And this one here is hydrangeanger pinky winky. I think it’s gorgeous. So as they grow, I’ll just keep potting those on. And this is kind of like the cottagey garden area. And if you’ve been following me for a while, you know that that’s what we’ve always kind of done here. Now, in the past, I have had so many pots that has come out to here, but we were like, “No, let’s just keep it kind of streamlined.” And having the pots like this, it’s kind of like an extension of that flower border, do you know? So, it kind of just makes it feel like bigger. But this is all the blooms there. I can’t remember what these are called, but when I was out in the one of the nurseries there over the weekend, saw it and I was like, “Oh, that’s gorgeous. That’ll be perfect for this area again with these. It’s some kind of verbina, but they’re just really punchy and purple. I can’t remember what this is called. I think it’s a salvia. I don’t know. Now, there could be I could definitely fit more in here, but you know me, trying not to over plant, which I will have that little flower there. And then these pink hydrangeas are from cutings that we did um a couple years ago. So, they’re happy out. And then here to kind of Oops. And then here to kind of tie in the um snapdragons on the other side. We decided to put that here just in front of the mirror. I just have them in the pots that they came in for now. There’s me. Hi. I love this area. So, what I will do is now that we’ve decided that we like all the pots here, I’m going to put Oops. I’m going to put the pots on pot feet just to keep them off the patio. But the bees are loving this. It’s gorgeous. I love it. I love it. I love it. And so, when you’re sitting here on the swing, that’s the view. Oh, it’s my fave. I love Now, I just need to sort this out. It’ll be fine. Famous last words. It’ll be fine. We’ve got like more of these lights here. Now, I did film footage last night of the lights on, but I can’t film these ones close up because we have um like a security light that comes on when there’s movement. So, and here’s going to have more love later this year because I want to put hucers in here. I want to put like lots of bulbs. Oh my god, that’s I’m going to have everywhere full of spring bulbs. But like the apple tree seems happy here in the little wisteria. So, that’s good. And then these little chundulas, I presuming that these are seeds. I said to mom like not to touch them until they sprout a little bit and then we can pop them on. But this rose is okay in there as well. I’m looking for more more apple blossoms. I’d love to be able to even just have like one apple off of here. But lad, it’s getting there. I feel like because the patio is so much bigger or like fuller in terms of flowers, I need more flowers here. But I’m going to try and be good. Here is just like a junk hole at the moment. Um because I want to get seeds from the fox gloves. This is a third one of these plants. Oh, what’s it called? Here we go. Compan compana lona. Never heard of that before. Never seen it. But when I saw it in the nursery, I was like, she’s beautiful. But I just love it. And to be honest, like this was, you know, a last minute idea in terms of putting this seating area here. But we use it so much because it’s not overlooked. It’s so private. But that’s that is the garden at the moment in July. It’s about to rain. No complaints. Cuz do you know what? It’ll be good for all the plants. Now I need to take my towels in, but the plants need all of the the rain water. Oh, I think I feel it. I feel it. But that’s like, how lucky am I to have this garden? And like if people are asking me where I’m going on holidays this year, this I’ve spent so much money on this garden and on the plants because I wanted to be able to enjoy it this summer, you know. But anyway, right, got to go take the washing in. Sorry, I meant to show you here. I have some vegetables that I will be planting some of them in the veg tug. So stay tuned for that. But I’m excited. I love growing my own food. Love it. And like lots of that will fit in the veg truck. I just want to show you like this is the view when you’re sitting down here. I love it. Look at those clouds. They look very ominous. But no complaints. No complaints. Plants will plants will be happy. But yeah, I feel like this border looks like just a little bit messy, but it’s kind of like my jewel toned border. My little jewel garden if I was Monty. But actually, let me insert some footage of this at night. like this side of the garden at night. And sorry, this is the color of the foliage without the sun. Like, isn’t that just the biggest pop of color here? Like the whole area is just colorful. Now, the patunias definitely need a nicer pot. I just love this little corner. I just love it all. [Music]