Join Me On This Inspirational Tour About Garden Design🌹🌼🪻

When color takes over the garden, every border, container, and pathway becomes a living canvas. 🌸 Join in for an unforgettable tour of Patthana Garden in County Wicklow, Ireland, designed by painter and gardener TJ Mahar. This Irish garden tour is bursting with inspiration—from vibrant pots and bold borders to year-round structure and seasonal planting ideas.

IG: https://www.instagram.com/patthana_garden/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Patthanagardenkiltegan/
Grounded In The Garden: https://www.amazon.com/Grounded-Garden-artists-creating-beautiful/dp/1914902076

TJ shares how he uses his painter’s eye to bring harmony and drama through color palettes, textures, and layers that change with the seasons. Whether it’s dahlias blooming into autumn, hydrangeas glowing in late summer, or terracotta containers overflowing with marigolds, every corner offers fresh ideas you can bring home to your own space.

🌿 What you’ll see in this video:

A stunning Irish garden tour (Patthana Garden in County Wicklow)

How to use color in the garden like a painter 🎨

Container gardening ideas with terracotta pots

Designing borders for small gardens with maximum impact

Dahlias, hydrangeas, cosmos & tender exotics in full bloom

Four-season garden design with evergreens & structure

Seating, art, and personal touches that make a garden magical

Blending natural landscapes, architecture & planting

✨ This garden is more than plants—it’s a personal sanctuary, a place where color, nature, and creativity collide.

📖 Want to go deeper? TJ’s book Grounded in the Garden includes chapters on pots, borders, and color theory for gardeners.

📸 Tip: Take screenshots while watching—this video is packed with planting combinations and design formulas you’ll want to save!

💬 Let us know in the comments: Which part of this garden inspires you most—the colorful pots, layered borders, or the painter’s approach to design?

🔔 Don’t forget to subscribe for more garden tours, design tips, and seasonal inspiration every week: [@LindaVater

SIGNATURE STYLE SATURDAY PLAYLIST 🌿

THE GARDEN LIFE: Season 1 PLAYLIST 🌿

WEDNESDAY WALKABOUT PLAYLIST 🌿

GARDEN TOUR PLAYLIST 🌿

GARDEN HOME INTERIOR PLAYLIST 🌿

Premiumbeat YouTube ID
SSP9YNQ8ARLEUCAX
MPT7H7R16WXKW1RY
PZVVHDRMLKRZWSK7
B1DHHRI0NZVMXFGN
RXRI0UIS5V7UPYWX

Join this channel to get access to perks
@lindavater

SHOP MY AMAZON FAVORITES HERE: https://amzn.to/3NLPpqs

🌳 WAYS TO FIND LINDA 🌳

BOOKS
A Year Of Garden Inspired Living: https://a.co/d/4AAxr4k
The Elegant and Edible Garden Book: https://amzn.to/3kz6eIf
Order Your Garden Journal: https://amzn.to/3JMeMHk

MY RECOMMENDED/AFFILIATE PRODUCTS:
Shop Linda’s Amazon Favorites: https://amzn.to/3NLPpqs
For the Garden: https://amzn.to/3PPDrgH
Linda’s Favorite Pest Controls & Fertilizers: https://amzn.to/4hOE9aj

🍯 Some videos sponsored by our friends at Manukora Honey. Try some of our favorite manuka honey full of antioxidants, pre-biotics, and superpowers. Head to https://manukora.com/linda to get $25 off your Starter Kit.

SOUTHERN LIVING PLANT COLLECTION: https://southernlivingplants.com

Join this channel to get access to perks: https://bit.ly/3ipscuo

✅ HOW TO JOIN MY YOUTUBE Channel on your phone or iPad: https://bit.ly/2W3oijz

🔛Instagram: / potagerblog

🔛Facebook: / lindavatergardens

🔛Pinterest: / lindapotager

My USDA Gardening Zone: 7a
Linda Merch: https://lindavatershop.com
Zazzle Seed Packets: https://www.zazzle.com/linda_vater_seed_packet_envelope-256860347131992223

Well, hello everyone. I wanted to give you a little bit of background on the video that you’re going to watch today of Patana TJ Mar’s absolutely color infused fabulous garden in Ireland. It was one of the venues that we visited when I was there with Gardenate Magazine and their tour in June. It is simply beyond. You’re going to get so many ideas from this tour. And I’d encourage you to not only take some screenshots from today, but then also check in on Monday because we’re going to have even more information on this fabulous garden. I did a short interview with him while I was there. And of course, we took lots and lots of stills of these different spaces. So, it’ll give you more um more opportunities to deconstruct what he has done there and kind of get a feel for how it’s laid out. So, today I hope you enjoy it. It truly is a magical place, a spiritual one, and I think you are going to truly love it. Hello, Linda and to your followers. Um, this is TJ Mar here in Ireland, in County Wikloo in Ireland, and I’m going to bring you on a tour of my garden called Patana Garden. So, I said I’d start here. I’m in the pots here, my pot display. Um, I love I love growing things in pots and there’s a lot of things to consider in pots. I like to keep um one material so I don’t mix up my colors of my pots and I don’t mix up the shapes. So for me I’ve gone for all terracotta pots together. And of course I let these age as well because they get very beautiful as they age. They have a lovely natural patina to them. And then different palette of plants going on here as well. And I tend to plant um in three plants per pot. And that way instead of getting a small little plant in the pot, you get this lovely big theatrical um scene going on. So a lot of these like the kolas here, the French marry gold, there’s three plants in each pot and trying to get some drama as well going on. So some are elevated on little plints or I use maybe the pot turned upside down, a terra cotta pot, and then put a pot on top of that. So it’s kind of staged as well. And I’m outside our new T-room here. So I have three blocks of pots here of potless plains. And this changes all of the time. This starts in the spring with tulips. So but pots were a lovely way to bring color into your yard um through the seasons. And in my book actually grounded in the garden. I have it here. I have chapters on all different topics that I do here in Patana Garden. Um I have pots and containers a chapter on that. Then I have a chapter on how to use color in the garden because I’m a painter. First and foremost, I’m a painter and a gardener of course. And then creating um borders and recreating borders because our borders change all of the time. We have to keep reinventing them. And then nature in our garden, which is very important to me. Actually, I’m sitting right underneath a bee insect hotel actually on our new build as part of the build. Simon might just pan up to that and you might just see it. Um, I’m sitting underneath it and this is for solitary bees. It’s part of the architecture like a piece of sculpture as well here. So, I’m going to bring you on a little tour of Patana Garden. I am in the inner garden. Our box balls here. This is the original garden that we have. And if you look around, you’ll see it’s just a third of an acre. And the houses down here very I suppose it comes in layers all the time. It starts up with all our spring bulbs. Um hundreds and hundreds of tulips here in the spring and there two island beds. Actually this is interesting because it’s a it’s a noval lawn in a small space. And to get the maximum plants in and the layers of color as you walk I’ve put in two big island beds. So it means I can walk through the island beds like this and I’m in between the plants and from here on I can get layers of color building and of course in this garden as well. Lots of autumn color of course for the autumn. Beautiful hydrangeas here. Lot of perennial plants. I bring out a lot of exotic tender plants in for the summer. And then of course we also have our annual plants. plants like um cosmos for example or antimons or amaranthis that we just grow on for the season to bring color to this space and then after the autumn has dropped all its leaves we have some lovely winter structure in the form of evergreens and of course that’s very important in any size garden that you have some the structure the bones of the garden are there for the winter time. So, I’m sitting on these lovely steps in the courtyard. Lovely circular millstones. Very lucky to have these. And again, they’re bringing the hard landscaping into the garden. It’s very important that I think as well that we choose very careful how we choose materials in our garden that we don’t put in too many materials and it just becomes very complicated and very visually chaotic looking. So very simple here our house is granite. So these steps are granite and then we put in this handrail. This handrail of course is for the public um coming up and down when they visit here. And what I’ve done is I’ve designed this handrail around very naturally around the garden itself. So it reflects the tendrils of climbers and it references the plants in the garden. So it’s very organic even in its shape. So it kind of flows with the form as you walk down. You can hold on and it it flows down the steps with you as you walk. So I’m still in the courtyard. This is a very small little area designed really for when you come home from work. You get the evening sun. This was the last area in the in the garden to get the sun of the evening. So, we have little table and chairs here. Of course, you could have a sun lounger as well. Scented plants for the evening time. We have our Buddha here set into the garden. And I use candles. I love to use candles and props in the garden to bring that intimacy into into little compartments and little rooms in the garden. standing here underneath this beautiful small small tree cers to defile herwood globe and actually you can see here between the island bed between the island bed and the main border I’ve put in these little granite piano keys just for the public to walk along and be immersed in the planting and be between the plants so you get up personal and close with the plants. I’m going to bring you out into a new garden, brand new garden that we made. um five years ago, which used to be a field, and we’ve turned it into a new garden. [Music] I’m sitting here watching the insects and the butterflies on this little pink chair. These are chairs that we got and they were white when we bought them. So, I painted them pink to blend in with all the colors that I use here. Of course, because I’m a painter. And of course, white when you think about color as well, white is a very stark sty color. So, I tend to use it very carefully in the garden, maybe in the shade. So, here I am in my pink chair getting lost in all the scent, the color, the sounds of course are very important in the garden. and all the little creatures, all the little insects. And this is the new garden that we’ve created. And you notice that here on on my left, I have a different color palette going on kind of based on the golds, the yellow spectrum, the yellow, oranges going to red spectrum. Say if you look at the color wheel and then over here, it’s much more pink, burgundy’s, different in color palette. And then I also I mean they’re very different borders to each other color-wise but yet I have certain plants that pull them together like this lovely um geranium azour rush here in the front because it’s a color that kind of goes with all the golds and it goes with all the pinks. So certain plants I like to use to link other colors together. So we’re going to look at some of these plants. Look at this dia for example. Ders are so easy to grow from seed and I love ders and they’re just one of the stars of the summer border and actually they’re a bigger star of the autumn borders cuz these will go right up maybe even into November depends when we get our first frost here in Ireland. Look at this for example. Look at that. Isn’t that beautiful pastely a soft yellow? And back to color as well. People are often afraid of yellow. I tend to use softer yellows so they’re not as jarring with other colors. Um, of course, you know, as a painter, I always think of this like paint. So, I’m mixing my colors together. So, for example, if I start to mix white as a painter with another color, I’m bringing it down into a pastel form. So, here in the garden with a strong yellow, I can if I put white through it, I bring it into a much more soft yellow. So, I’m getting my yellows to mellow mellow yellows. So, and then if you go to the red on the spectrum, you’re getting between the yellow and the red, of course, you’re getting all the oranges and terracottas, all these lovely warm shades going on together. Over this side, then it’s more pinks, um, burgundy’s, purples, a whole collection of plants, tender plants, exotic plants, hardy plants, annuals, perennials, and shrubs. I’m using shrubs like this. This is a lovely idea for any size garden that you have, you know, a lovely structure in the form of maybe a tree or shrub because it lends its form through the season. This is the tree of heaven, purple dragon. Its purple dragon, which I cut back really hard in the spring to get this lovely tropical look. Even though it’s very cold here in Ireland, these plants because they’re deciduous and lose their leaves, these are hardy through the winter and you have to give this lovely airy structure to the border and they’re giving me height and drama. This is really this border on my right is really one big giant island bed with actually travel around and I’ll show you. And again, it’s layers of color. And this is important when you’re creating borders that know you’re conscious of that when you walk any step in the garden, the colors and the plants change as you walk. You’re seeing them all in relation to each other. So the the dynamics and the relationships keep shifting and changing all of the time. And the gladioli, look at the gladioli. I put in these years ago, often treated as annuals here in Ireland. Bulb as an annual. This is one called gladiola gladioli espresso. But actually this has bolt up and come back for the last few years. So this is great. Then looking at some of the plants just here. This is a lovely one. The St. John’sworth hyperamerical night gorgeous foliage shrub and it’s given me all these burgundy burgundy backdrop to all of these pinks and purples. Aster monk here. This is going to flower for the autumn. And a gorgeous plant here with this is for being the dwarf for being a lollipop. But look at this lovely pink cloud through it of dia personata. And then we have loilia hats purple. Lot of detail through all this planting as well. You have to look very close at it. And I I like that in a garden that you know you don’t just see it all from a distance. You have to walk up close and in doing that you discover all little things that you don’t really see from a distance. And for me that’s the joy of being in the garden that you’re engaged with the garden. You’re walking, you’re getting the sense, the color, you’re watching the insects, looking at the plants in detail. And of course the name of the garden is patana which means to be present in the moment. And I just love that because when you’re with the plants and the animals like this and looking, you forget all everything in your head and you’re in the moment with the plants and the animals. Come with me. We’re going to explore this garden further. I am Oh, a butterfly just landed on me. Loads of butterflies here. Here I am in front of this color palette with my French maros das. Look at this really tall one. Over 6 foot tall. Now my daily is I do take up out of the ground for the simple reason that in the in the spring when they come up just as they’re coming up the slugs and snails tend to graze them for the so for that reason I dig them up and then in the spring store them for the autumn of course in the winter and then in the spring I’ll plant them into just plastic black pots bring them on and then after the first after the last frost I should say of spring have gone I can plant them into the garden and they’ll already maybe be about a foot tall at that stage. age so they’ll be hardened off and then get them into the garden where they play their role for the whole summertime and I’m using herbs like dill as well. So there’s all kind of things to this look dill for baskets for next year. I mean that’s a lovely thing about gardening that it’s very personal how we garden and it’s a creative process of course it expresses how you feel and it expresses who you are and I talk about this in my book as well because it is a personal journey. Our lives are personal journeys of course and our gardens and our yards are personal spaces. They reflect that. So I think our gardens are very holding places. They’re spiritual places. They’re our sanctuary to get away from the world and our own little space to call our own where we connect with something higher. Our higher spirit, nature, whatever you want to call it. Our [Music] [Music] gardens, they are personal spaces also. they’re also in relationship to the spaces around them. So, and that’s very important to consider that, you know, we’re always looking at something outside our boundary, outside the walls of our gardens or our yards into somebody else’s, you know, we’re looking at their tree, their building, whatever it is. And sometimes they’re lovely things that we can bring into the space, our borrowed landscape. So, here for example, we’re very lucky that we have this lovely building form of a church behind. So, I designed this when you walk in from the inner garden to the new tour garden that you’re looking at this um pallet of plants and color against this backdrop of architecture that’s in the background and also our native mountains, our local mountains. So, I’m bringing in the shapes of those mountains into the shapes on the ground in the form of the borders, but also earth sculpting with soil to replicate the shapes of those mountains. And I’m going to show you, we’re going to look at that now. So, we’re very lucky to have this building behind. And if you notice um I’ve got a a seat got a seat designed and done by an Irish blacksmith sculptor. And you see that even in the wind even in the windows of the church that brought into the garden in the shape of the seat. So we’re connecting our garden to the landscape outside. And then actually what we’ve done is as well because we had to take soil out for our new building, we’ve used that soil to earth sculpt and ri and reflect the shapes of the mountains. That’s what we’re doing. So we’re bringing the landscape, the borrowed landscape into the experience of the garden. Here I am in one of my favorite places to sit. You can’t underestimate um the different areas in your garden and the importance of seating. So, we have all kind of seats here. Of course, you’ve seen the church seat, the pink seats, um louners here to sit, the landscape behind me here. And I’m actually in this lovely cocoon of plants and color and just hear the insects buzzing around me and it’s beautiful and the scent of plants. This, by the way, is geranium anthompson. And Thompson is a fantastic geranium for us here because it flowers for six months of the year and I’m actually using it if you want to call as a weed suppressant. So I’m actually using it in blocks as we as we um take over new areas to put borders in the gardens. I’m using it just to keep down weeds until we decide what are the permanent plantings and what shrubs we’re going to get in. So it’s actually functioning in all kind of ways. So, while it’s doing keeping the weeds down, it’s also feeding all our native insects for six months of the year. It’s full of butterflies today. When I was actually designing this this new garden, I was actually thinking, will I put an edge along the path? little cton steel or a lovely fine um hard edge. And I thought, no, I want actually the plants to dictate the shapes and how you navigate your way through the plants. So sometimes it’s quite wide, sometimes, like behind me, it’s quite narrow, but actually that means you’re very engaged. The plants are dictating how you engage with this garden. So the other thing to consider is you know creating borders that we have some you know perennials in this plants that come back every year. I’m also putting in annuals um plants just for instant summer coloring color to add to the mix. And then selfseeders of course are very important. So a plant like verbina bonarensis here that butterflies love. I can let this seed all over the place and it’s actually pulling the garden together. And what I love about gardening like this is, you know, as gardeners, you know, we’re creating all the time with plants, but mother nature has intentions of her own and beautiful things she does on her own. But when the gardener meets but mother nature, there’s a duet going on together and we’re creating something together. [Music] You can’t underestimate how tactile some plants are. So on my borders, I tend to use a lot of herbs and plants for the winter. So when you touch often they release their scent. But look at this beautiful plant. And of course I planted this. I have a few of them around but I put them right on the edges of the path because it’s very hard not to you just automatically reach out to touch them. They’re so tactile. This is a sangua sangua lilac squirrel with its lovely pink tails. I start my chapter on color. How to use color in the garden in my book. And I say that we live our lives in a world of color. And we do. We live our lives in a world of color. And then when we go to bed at night, we dream in color. Color is all around us. And it ex it affects how we feel. So oranges, reds, yellows, they’re stimulating colors. These are stimulating colors, which is a good thing. But if you want to relax after an evening at work and you want to come home and just relax, maybe it’s not those stimulating colors that you need and might be more to this color palette, the pinks, the blues, the purples, the calmer colors, cuz they affect us in a different way. They make us feel more relaxed. And these are very important things to know in your house, of course, in the interiors of your house, how you use color and how they affect your mood. So here, for example, behind me, it is all the pinks, and they’re lovely, joyful colors, but they’re they’re happy colors, but they’re pleasing colors as well, and they’re not too stimulating. It’s very easy to relax with these colors behind me. White is quite um a stark color in the garden. I tend to use it in shady areas. It’s lovely. One of the last colors you’re going to see at night time, of course, with yellows as well. You know, at night time, and the evening time as it starts to gets dark, all the blues and purples will just descend into the nighttime, but you still see the whites and the yellows. And in in a small space as well, if you have a small garden, a small yard, it’s important how you use colors because blues and cooler colors will seem further away. So in a small space that can make the place feel bigger actually if you use blues in the furthest corner of a small space it’ll give a feeling of space whereas warm colors tend to to come come at you very very fast and you see them. So warm colors in the distance will appear closer than they are. So in a small space, you have to be careful to keep your warm colors very close to you and keep your cooler colors in the distance to give the illusion of depth and make your garden feel bigger than it is. The garden is a collection of plants at the end of the day. It is all the color. Look at all the insects in front of me. It’s fantastic, isn’t it? I love this part. I love this thing about gardening that you’re engaged with the activity of the garden, the living of the garden, the breathing of the garden because it is a living thing. These are all creatures sharing the planet with us. And in the winter then of course we have structure because we have osenothamness here for example behind me lovely winter um evergreen and then behind the cers will have lovely autumn color. So this will bring us right through the seasons of just texture, form, color, um, and life. I’m here behind beside our house here. And of course, this is really the importance of the 12 month garden, a garden for all seasons, all days of the year. So I tend to plant a lot of evergreens beside the house. So, I have all different things here. Some autumn color and of course lovely pots for display as well. Is the potting shed behind me. Um pillars here, but it is really so when we’re looking out in the winter time, I can see a lot of foliage plants and that’ll just hold the space for the winter. The importance of these evergreens for the winter time. When you think about it, our gardens are personal and our space we create spaces we create are personal spaces. I am in our potting shed here. So these are very old stone walls but it’s beautiful here in the evening. We have twinkly lights on and I have my cushions, light some candles, play some music and have all these beautiful plants around surrounded by plants still. But it’s beautiful to create a space that’s personal to you. And that means, of course, you have to choose the colors that you like in your materials, in your plants. You have to choose the materials that you like and the plants that you like. These are all of the things that are going to feed your soul. So, I’m just at the area we call our meadow, the new area we’re developing here from the field. and just backing onto the garden. And actually what I’m doing here is I’m transitioning very gently between the curated garden itself and the wilder space where mother nature is having more of her say. So I’m using plants like this is our native plant loose strife purple loose stripe native teasel as well here. And then another native plant, this persaria persaria alba. Beautiful plant. So marry them, marry them together here in a very gentle way. Course there’s eupitorium coming up here as well. I spotted a little upum coming up. A nice transition plant cuz it has it’s a wild plant of course. So this is the thing really of gardening that you know you’re creating you’re expressing who you are all the time. you’re creating expressing personally your choices of plants and how you’re gardening for me, for nature, for color, for all of that, for people. Um, but also nature is doing her thing all the time and wants to have her say. That’s the importance of being threading very gently on the garden, letting nature self seed maybe some areas where she wants to. I can also take out any seedlings that I don’t want or I can relocate them. But together, we’re creating a garden. I hoped you like this little tour of Patana Garden here in Ireland. Um I am TJR and Linda. I hope you and your followers enjoyed um this little introduction to the garden. [Music]