My Small Shady Container Garden in Mid-Summer | July Tour

Welcome to my July balcony garden tour! 🌿

This shady container garden gets only some morning sunlight, but you’d be surprised how much still grows here. From shade-loving flowers to lush foliage, I’m sharing what’s thriving right now in this low-light urban space.

Whether you’re working with a small balcony, a shaded patio, or just curious about container gardening in the shade, I hope this tour gives you some inspiration!

➤ Don’t forget to like, comment your favorite shady plant, and subscribe for more small-space gardening content!

______

🌿 Other Videos You Might Enjoy Watching 🌿:

▶️ Fruits and Vegetables for shade
https://shorturl.at/5957X

▶️ What can you plant in your shady balcony garden
https://shorturl.at/8UF0M

______

🍀Follow me elsewhere 🍀:

👉Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/17m2garden/

👉YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/17m2garden

______

🌿 SHOP MY FAVOURITE GARDENING ITEMS 🌿

https://www.amazon.fr/shop/17m2garden

______

🌿Plant Care Products I use 🌿

Plagron “Lightmix” https://amzn.to/3PU277u

Plagron ‘”Alga Grow” https://amzn.to/46Qm8CG

Plagron “Alga Bloom” https://amzn.to/46R3xq3

Plagron “Power Roots” https://amzn.to/3ZUGbh3

Plagron “Green Sensation” https://amzn.to/3Fi0pYK

Plagron “Mega Worm” https://amzn.to/3S4ahwZ

* These links are affiliated, which means that if you make a purchase, I may receive a small commission at no additional cost to you. I appreciate your support!

______
#balconygarden #shadegarden #containergardening

Good afternoon, guys. How are you? Welcome back to this new video. Welcome back to my garden. If you’re new here, hi, I’m Dominica. It’s the end of July, so I want to give you guys a quick tour of my garden, show you some updates on the plants and projects that we completed together. July was a really pleasant month because the temperatures dropped to around 30° C, which for us is a huge refreshment given that we had temperatures reach 40° C every single day in June. So, July was a nice refreshment. meant I could spend a little more time in the garden. But today it’s actually very windy and I think that storm is coming because it starts to rain. So let’s do a quick tour and I’ll tell you more about everything as we walk through the garden. As we move through the garden. All right, let’s walk out through my kitchen window. Here is how the balcony looks on the left. We are going to go there in just a second, but I think we are going to start with the right side of the balcony. at the end in the full shade garden. So, this area of my garden doesn’t receive any direct sunlight at all. It’s in full shade for the entire day. I have some perennial plants as you can see, hostas, hukuras, tiarella, and a Japanese maple that actually decided to bounce back. Take a look at this. Doesn’t look half that bad. It always defoliates in May and then for some reason it just bounces back right after. I still haven’t figured it out why it defoliates in May. Uh, but I guess the essential point is that it bounces back. So, I mentioned in some of my previous videos that I had a little bit of a pest issue in here. I have vine weevils, as you can see on my hukura. They are eating the foliage on the hukura. Uh, so I’m going to have to apply some nematodes here soon to prevent those adult beetles uh from laying eggs. Uh, and then I also had grasshoppers. Take a look at this. This is grasshoppers. And I did not realize that because I thought I was um just another damage from vine wevils, but in fact, I noticed that I have grasshoppers, which is like really strange because I’m on the seventh floor in the city center. I have no idea how come I have grasshoppers. They are cute, but they do a lot of damage. Uh, the raining planters are looking really nice and full. I’m super happy with these. uh euphorias, these pink euphorias and the double bloom beonas. Really love these. They are so drought tolerant, so wind resistant. I basically never water these planters. When it rains, it’s just enough for those plants to survive through the summer. Uh, in terms of tomatoes, I also mentioned in one of my recent videos, I made a whole video about tomatoes, the micro dwarf tomatoes, and I mentioned that I had a red spider mites problem, but um, they are bouncing back and they are still producing quite nicely, especially those ones over there. But before we go there, here’s a quick look on my kalillies arum. Beautiful purple blooms. One of them died. Not sure why because they are maintained the exact same way. They have the exact same exposition. I think that maybe wind initially broke the main stem of this one because I just found it dead on the floor one day. Like like the previous day everything was fine, the next day it was dead. So I think it just the damage done by the wind. On this side we have some perennials and some ornamental grasses. Really like adding ornamental grasses in my garden. And I feel like it just kind of softens the edges of this little kind of plant groupings or sort of flower beds, let’s say. So, we have a beautiful blue salvia that just keeps blooming in waves. It’s a new addition, so I’m hoping for more blooms next year. I wasn’t sure if Salvia is actually going to do fine here because it doesn’t receive a lot of sunlight. These planters here receive about 4 hours of morning sunlight, but you know, morning sunlight is not very intense. And these plants on the floor don’t really catch any sunlight at all because the sun kind of goes this way. Another Japanese maple. Uh, this one is called Garnet. And as you can see, it’s a little bit bold. And I was wondering what the heck happened. Why is this plant bold now? And I realized that, you know what’s happening? Pigeons are happening. They are messing with all of my plants. And they’ve been messing with my Japanese maple. They are pulling the leaves off the plant. They are breaking the branches because apparently they are nesting at this time of the year. I posted this in my stories on Instagram and someone told me that they are they are nesting and they are collecting like dead dry plant material and I’ve seen them kind of just sit in my planters and they broke my tomato plants. Look at them. Look at some of my tomatoes. I mean, they’ve been damaged by red spidermitites, but then pigeons did this. Like, they broke the entire branch of this plant, two branches actually, and it just uh makes me really upset because it just takes one pigeon to sit on the plant to ruin the entire season. But I’ve placed, you know, these um CDs because it worked really well on blackbirds. I had blackbirds dig up my uh vertical planter uh because they are search blackbirds were searching for worms. So I placed some reflect reflective cities, but it doesn’t really work on pigeons. They they don’t really care. You will have a pigeon just like sitting over there in the morning. So so far I haven’t found a method that would work. Apparently, you can place like artificial birds and such. We’ll see. Uh, in the planter here on the table, I’m actually really happy. Kimosi apple blossom snapdragons. I grew them two years ago. I think I grew them last year. It’s one of my favorite varieties because take a look at this. They stay so short. Like, this is the mature size of the plant. And they have this beautiful kind of peachy yellow color. And I think that makes them perfect for like really small containers and window sills. And what’s nice, you still have enough stem if you wanted to use them like as cut flowers. You still have enough stem to do so. But they have this beautiful color. And last year uh because the heat wave arrived quite late in the season. They did not reloom for me. But now because it’s cooler, they are blooming again. And they are perennial in my zone because they are hardy to zone 7. I garden in zone 8. So, I could potentially keep them as perennial. I will see if I will. Uh, just one last look here at this part of the garden. We have a I have a new hydrangeanger that I was really excited about. Beautiful ruffled petals. Uh, so I’m keeping the spend blooms because I think they look really unique and I really like the color and they are still green. So, I find this really beautiful. So, this is this part of the balcony. Now, let’s take a look around. in this part of the garden. It’s more of an experimental part. Like I have a lot of plants here that I’m not sure about. Plants that I’m trying for the first time um and stuff like that. So, not much in here on the floor. My beautiful head planter. This I can show you because this is pretty cute. Look at my lady planter. I planted sedum little missy. I think little miss or little missy. Beautiful variegated foliage and sedums do really well. uh in uh in partial shade in the shade. They are winter hardy. Uh so that was a really really good idea. We have a new clatis that I planted this spring and it bloomed super beautiful in the spring. Like the blooms lasted so so long. I’m really happy with this plant. But then it kind of stopped. It kicked into that summer dormcancy because it was so incredibly hot. But now that the the temperatures are cooler, we have some new fresh growth appearing. So that’s beautiful. That’s very nice because it’s probably one of my favorite clamatis varieties. Cleatis Josephine. On this side we have Scabioza which is not in bloom now but it also blooms in waves. Beautiful blooms. We have some new fresh um flower buds. And above there’s my rose experiment. So I’m trying to grow rose in the shade. It gets maybe 2 and 1/2 hours to 3 hours of sunlight over here. It’s called Rose Mary Delaney. Last year I was really happy with it. It bloomed repeatedly throughout the entire summer season. It looked very healthy. This year doesn’t look nearly as healthy. It had one beautiful flash of blooms earlier. I think it was in May, but then it hasn’t done anything since. And um I mean we have some new fresh growth appearing, but there’s also a lot of damage uh done by all kinds of bugs. I have all kinds of bugs in my garden. And I have initially I think it was damaged by soulfly larvae but then um vine wevils had their their bites on it and slugs and all kinds of things. And I want to show you this because that’s one of the things I get often asked, do I have pest in my garden? And obviously I do. Every garden has pest. You can’t not not have pests. You know what I mean? Like pests are part of part of gardening. So that’s the story. So this year not so great. We’ll see how it does in its third season. We may have a nice surprise. Uh just one last look wanted to show you. Beautiful tomato. Lots and lots of tomatoes. This one is called Little Peeps. My favorite variety. I made a video all about micro dwarf tomatoes. We did a little taste test. So, uh if you’re interested in growing these beautiful micro dwarf tomatoes that produce so much on such a tiny plant, don’t hesitate to check out my playlist about micro dwarf tomatoes. Some of them were really badly damaged by spidermitites. I mean, take a look at this. I don’t think this poor guy can bounce back, plus pigeons also. So, moving forward, a couple of summer bulbs that we planted earlier uh this year, we have ornito galoom that has its first flower bud. Look at this. How interesting this bulb looks looks. I mean, I never I’ve never tried ornitos at all, like in my life. not only in my garden, but like I’ve never planted these bulbs before, so I’m really excited. They’re pretty tall, so I’m hoping that it’s going to be fine because it’s pretty windy over here. And on the other side, I have another plant. Forgot the name. Uh, spider lily, I think that was called. We don’t have any flower buds just yet, but lots of beautiful, healthy foliage. So, uh, maybe flower buds will appear a little later. uh Dalia hamoso that I kept from last year. Dalia was also a huge thing for me. Like Dalia was something I really wanted to grow in my shady garden with only like 3 hours of sunlight maximum four here. I don’t think this part gets four. No, the other part over there, they get four hours of sunlight. These guys, they get 3 hours of sunlight. So anyway, always wanted to grow dalas. They are one of my favorite flowers, but you know, Dalia don’t really grow in the shade. But well, we have a couple of flowers. If I did a better job at removing these spend blooms, maybe the plant will have more energy. I I kept this tuber from last year. So that’s my dalia from last year. And as you can see, it’s um I mean that’s fine by me. And bees absolutely love this variety. It’s usually covered with bees. Beautiful cos looking healthy. and just wanted to show you my herb planter because when we planted it together in a video, I noticed some comments that I shouldn’t have planted it in such a big um container that herbs prefer small smaller pots. And I think that the good part about herbs is that you can plant it in a small container that will work. You’ll just have to water it very regularly, especially basil because basil doesn’t like to dry out. But herbs are like the more space you give them, the bigger they grow. And as you can see, look, this basil became absolutely massive. And I’m harvesting it pretty much every single day. Even the dill is not looking that bad. The dill, I knew that it’s not going to grow in the shade because dill needs full sun, but it’s doing pretty okay. And parsley as well. It’s a short shorter parsley variety. Uh so it’s not going to like bulk up. I had a parsley that was like really large and I got rid of uh because usually you can keep them for a year or two and then they kind of go in seed. they don’t taste well anymore and they just don’t grow anymore. Um, as well in the vertical planter we have lettuce. Beautiful lettuce. Rafal. I love this variety because it just produces all summer long. It doesn’t u mind the heat. It doesn’t mind a little bit of drought and it doesn’t bolt the most importantly. So I can harvest it. I just like harvest a couple of leaves at a time and I harvest it also pretty much every single day and it just keeps growing. Um, what else can I show you? Strawberries. Strawberries are up for their second run. Uh, I had a couple of strawberries initially when I bought them and now they put on some really lovely growth, new fresh leaves, plenty of flowers and we have some strawberries forming and a couple of more micro dwarf tomatoes over here. Just one last thing I want to highlight on the floor. This beautiful caladium. Look at the size of this leaf you guys. My hand for comparison. And trust me, I don’t have small hands. So really lovely. I keep colladiums from year to year. I keep tubers. I have some indoors as well. But yeah, chives. More micro dwars. Hydrangeanger that got a little scorched because of the heat, but she’s absolutely massive. and beautiful variegated ivy behind. All right, you guys. So, overall the garden doesn’t look that bad. I’m not really spending much time in the garden these days because I am pretty busy at the moment, but I am really happy that I’ve reached a point where most of my plants, as you can see, are perennial. The ravening planters are not obviously, but I enjoy changing it um twice a year. I plan them for summer. So I plant them around May and then I change them to something autumnal autumn/ spring. I will be doing this probably in October or November. So I change them only twice a year and pretty much the rest of it is perennial. There’s a couple of bulbs like uh for example arums or um colladiums that I’m going to be digging up at the end of the season because they are not frost hardy. For the most part, it’s it’s perennial. And at this point, they are pretty much kind of self-sufficient. I just water them from time to time and and that’s pretty much it. All right. So, I’m really enjoying my summer garden. I enjoy the fact that I don’t have to be out here watering every single day. Um, and that was like my goal, my objective for for the longest time. Um, but yeah, I I enjoy my summer garden, but I’m not hiding. I’m really looking forward to fall. Fall is by by far my favorite season in general and in the garden. I have a couple of new plants on my wish list that I would like to add this year. So, I need to wait uh still a little longer to be able to plant them because most deliveries in all cases are done in autumn. Uh plant companies don’t really deliver in summer. Um I also have a couple of bianual flowers to sew. I’m going to be sewing pansies. I’m going to be sewing uh fox gloves. Uh, so maybe I’ll share that with you in one of the upcoming videos. I currently have the seeds in the freezer. I for absolutely forgot to cold stratify them and they need to be cold stratified. I should have done this in June and I should have planted them in like well the first week of June, maybe second week of June and here we are by the end of July and I’m still not planting them because they are still in the freezer cold stratifi. So I’m running a little bit late but that’s okay. Hopefully they will bloom. Um, but uh yeah, these are my projects for the upcoming weeks and months. Uh, thanks so much for spending some time in the garden with me. Hope that you enjoyed this little update. I’m going to head inside because the wind is picking up and, uh, yeah, storm is definitely coming. So, thanks so much for joining me today. I hope you have a beautiful day and we will see each other in the next video. Bye.