Join me as I take you on a tour of my backyard garden in December, showcasing the latest updates and changes that have taken place during this winter month. From seasonal flowers and foliage to the various garden projects I’ve been working on, get a glimpse into what’s happening in my garden right now. Whether you’re a seasoned gardener or just starting out, this video is perfect for anyone looking for inspiration and ideas to enhance their own outdoor space. Watch as I share my experiences, tips, and tricks for maintaining a beautiful and thriving garden, even in the colder months.
Hi there. Welcome to the Gardens and Graveyard channel. Okay, there’s traffic everywhere. It’s crazy. I’ve never We’re never this busy around here. Anyway, um hi. We are hanging out in the backyard today and we’re going to do a backyard garden tour. I just finished up our front yard garden tour um because there’s not a ton going on, but I still enjoy breaking these videos up at least in half during the winter time because, you know, our time is important and it I hope that you’re doing things with your time that feel good and joyful and I don’t want to take up a ton of your time, but I do love showing off my garden and I do love having a moment with you all and just taking a peaceful walk through the garden and seeing what’s going on, what could be going on, and um what we’d like to be doing differently in the future. Today, we’re just going to take a walk. This is the lower part of our backyard, and then we’ll go up to the upper part of our backyard and see what’s going on up there. Everything’s going dormant. Everything’s kind of going to sleep. And it is it’s December if I haven’t said that already. Um if you missed the front yard garden tour, I posted it last week. And yeah, let’s just see what’s going on down here. So, directly in front of me, I have a nine bark that it’s losing its leaves. And then we we have some um other bushes right here that have lost their leaves. We’ve got this magnificent, glorious, unbelievable huckleberry that is just like it just won’t stop. It’s so beautiful and it is so wild and I really want to manicure it and I really love that it’s wild and just growing naturally in the understory of these evergreens. So, I leave it alone, but it it’s it’s feeling a little wild. Anyway, panning over into the garden. Uh, we’ve cut down our gunra. It was time to say good night. Pretty much everything in here is deciduous. So, um, you know, the plants are losing their leaves. The hostas have all gone to sleep. I do need to come in here and clean up all of this alder leaf foliage because my hookeras are actually evergreen. And while some people can leave leaves in the ground on the ground um and they’ll just decompose, my leaves won’t there’s not enough heat or dryness in my garden, so they’ll just turn into black slime and they’ll smother everything that they’re laying on, including some of these baby hooka that we just planted out a couple of months ago. So, I don’t want to do that. I want this whole bed Um, let’s back up a little bit. I want this whole bed to be a just a sea of hooker in multiple different colors. Um, and so I need to make sure that they’re protected and the leaves aren’t smothering them. Same with this bed over here. I have variegated saxophraga carpeting this bed, but they’re they’re babies. And so I need to get all the leaves out of there so that they don’t get completely smothered. You can see um they’re trying to be totally smothered. As it is, the pine needles do a pretty good job and covering these anyway. So um anything I could do to help them out, I need to do that. So um a couple of things. We’ve planted all this carrot grass along the edge. And we did that I think in maybe in August. And you can see this one has completely died. It’s like but it feels strong. So I just need to come in here and cut all the dead stuff out. And you can still see some green. So I just need to be a little bit more uh diligent about pulling those things out. And then you can see these ones are a lot more green. Let’s keep moving along here. We recently have been working in this area, redeveloping it after we took down our giant Escalonia shrub. And um man, does it look different back here. Uh, but it’s also really exciting cuz we have a lot of new ideas of how to use this space that we’re um kind of dreaming about and implementing. We picked up some retaining wall blocks to put up there and we have some ideas for the staircase and what to plant and all those things. So, it’s going to come together and be beautiful. I’m sure the uh limelight hydrangeas have turned their bright bright fall color, but this is what happens to my hydrangeas when I leave the blooms on. They just turn to this like translucent brown and the next stage is black moldy slime which is super gross. So, um especially at this stage while they’re still um creating their network of structure, I will come in and selectively prune some of this back um to create a really good structural branch and uh encourage blooming next year. I don’t want to sacrifice blooms, but I do want strong shrubs more than I want blooms. So, um, we have a yellow twig dogwood here that we pulled out of the medicine or out of the poison garden, and we planted one right there. And I want to plant this one, uh, somewhere. I just haven’t decided where we need to come in and clear some of this out. This is all Gulf area, salmonberry, and Himalayan blackberry. So, we need to kind of address this. But uh we were really focused on taking care of the Escalonia first. So now that that’s done, we can just keep moving forward and caring for the sort of the outskirts of the land. Um as you can see, we have a big compost pile here that’s just like a slow compost debris pile. And then we’re going to move up through here. We’ve got beltheria on this side and sword ferns on this side. There’s a little mix of some other fun things in here like this uh deciduous huckleberry and um this one. And then at the top of the hill, we have our golden rain tree, which tends to hold on to its leaves for a very long time, but it will eventually be fully def defoliated um before it leaves out again in the spring. We’ve been working on uh working through this compost and clearing some things out around here. As you know, we cleared out our shed. We’ve got our daffodils wintering over underneath the shed so that they don’t drown. Look at all those all those bulbs sprouting. Uh we start getting daffodils early January, so it doesn’t surprise me that we’re a month away from January. We’ve got some action happening already. Um, and once most of most of the green has started showing, because you could see like this is like a little bit of green here, but I know this whole container is full. So once I start seeing more green all the way around all of the containers, I will start bringing these out to the front yard so that we can enjoy the spring bloom um or late winter bloom, whichever it whichever the case may be. All right, let’s go into the backyard. And this is a little bit more of our curated, domesticated area of the garden. Um, as far as the backyard goes, but of course it’s winter time, so there’s not a ton going on. Uh, we’ve cut back a lot of things, but uh, you can see there’s still so much green foliage everywhere. The Himalayan or the Himalayan, what is this? The honeysuckle is still going so strong. And I need to do a little a little uh coraling here. Um it’s kind of using this rosemary as a support system, which I don’t really want it to do. Um and we even have some leftover blooms just kind of chilling and hanging out there. Of course, all the roodendrrons are just waiting until spring and then we still have so much chard. I don’t know. This plant is so happy. Um, this has all been cleared out. We’ve added new mulch and we just keep eating off of this chard and it just keeps growing. Then um the raspberries we have tied back and um they are slowly losing their leaves. The evergreen comedus is evergreen, which is kind of a nice little uh interest this time of year when the maple has lost all of its leaves and you know the raised beds, all the flowers have gone to sleep. And so it’s kind of nice to have this evergreen interest starting to take off. Um eventually I hope it’ll cover this whole cattle panel, but um we just got these planted this year. So we’re just letting them do their thing at their own rate. Of course, we’ve got the lamb’s ear growing all along here. And we’ve got haores all on the um underneath this maple tree as well as cyclammen. I don’t see any blooms yet, even though um the hellaors will start blooming here soon. And the raised beds, the containers, they’re all empty. We’ll take a look and see what’s in the greenhouse. Um little sneak peek. I did do a little um banking of videos. So, there’s some it might look a little bit of a little bit out of sequence this month. Um because I wanted to be very present for the holidays and I didn’t want to have to be worried about creating content for YouTube and yet I did want to share, you know, the journey in the garden. So, we did um clean our greenhouse and that video will be coming out here in December. Uh but you just haven’t seen it yet. And so, uh so some things like the beds getting emptied and adding compost and stuff like that, they just um I will be sharing with you all how and why I did certain things. Um they’re just going to be slowly coming out over the month. So, make sure that you have liked the Gardens and Graveyard channel, that you are subscribed so that you get notified every time a new video gets posted so that you can follow along on our garden journey. So, as I said, a little sneak peek on how the inside of the greenhouse is looking because it looks a lot different than it did a month ago. We did some rearranging and some cleaning and I’m really loving how it looks in there. Uh, but we are keeping the door closed because it is getting to be about 40ish 41 42° at night and it raises up to maybe like 52 to 55° in the daytime. So, uh, we’ve just been keeping it closed and then it’s all tucked away and we don’t have to worry about it. So, I recently cut back a bunch of things in here. I think you’ve already seen that video. Yes. Uh, and I left the this stack of or I left some of the snapdragons here and I just cut them back. I did not cut back this one because it was um, budding. And look, it’s blooming. She’s so happy. Isn’t that so fun to have these beautiful white blooms in December? Oh, it’s just such a blessing. And let’s see. I did move this rose. So, we’re keeping the rose. And so, we just put it in a pot. It was in one of those containers. I really want those containers to match. So, I took the rose out. I don’t know what to do with it yet, but she’s there. And not a whole lot has changed back here. Uh, as far as like blooms go, these are all done. I had left them in hopes that they might bloom, but it just got too cold. So, at this point, I’m just waiting for the foliage to um photosynthesize as much as possible. You could see that they’re starting to turn brown. When I would say like 50% of these leaves look like that, I’ll cut these stacks these stocks down. I don’t need to wait for them to completely die back um and look terrible. But right now, they look okay. They’re giving us a little bit of interest and so I’m fine with leaving it there. Um getting ready to do some Christmas things. So, we’ve got ladders out and we have this vermillionaire is still going so strong. We see uh hummingbirds on it every single day. It’s so happy here. The birds love it. It is just an absolute best addition to this butterfly garden space. And we broke open some of our uh fall pumpkins and just to see if the birds or the wildlife would like it. And they have been really digging it. We almost have no no seeds left anywhere. Uh mostly the chipmunks, but I have seen a couple little blue jays and a couple little sparrows like kind of pecking at them. So, that was a fun idea. Something to do with your old rotting pumpkins. I have a couple more in the front yard that I’ll probably uh break open here soon. And then we’ll pop over into the moon garden uh because it’s still looking really beautiful. I am just so impressed with the plant choices in this garden this year. We have the double up white beonas. Still have a few little flowers here and there. We planted the aneommy for our November um garden tour. I have some white cyclmen that I will be planting along here. I just need to get them and do that. And then um the some patients are finally looking a little bit tired, but really this is just because it’s been raining and when it rains this is what happens to the flowers. The plant itself doesn’t look that bad and there’s still buds all over it. So I don’t I don’t know what to expect. I’m just letting it go. And uh hopefully I don’t know, maybe she’ll just keep blooming for 12 months out of the year. I don’t know. We planted it in March and she has blooms on. It’s December. I don’t know. It’s pretty amazing. Things are pretty much dormant over here. We do have uh this random pink cashmere verbena that was an accidental leftover from this pot. It barely did anything all summer long and now here it is trying to bloom in December. That’s kind of strange. Um then we just have kind of a repeat on the some patient here looking a little you know worse for wear this time of year. Um I mean after the the rain anyway but uh you know we’ll see what happens as as the cold takes on the this is definitely ready to come out. It’s definitely more than tired now. And I think I showed you this in a recent tour, but the shamrocks are actually pretty happy with this cool weather. Um although I’m seeing a little bit more of this discoloration now that it’s gotten colder at night and the hostas have all gone away. The halaore is hanging in here. I’m expecting to see some fresh haore um bits coming up just because it’s that time of year where I expect to see some fresh. It’s right there. And uh we planted that last January or February. And then everything else is just kind of looking a little bit tired cuz it’s, you know, the end of the year. But for the most part, um, still a lot of greenery, still a lot of bloom action going on, which is fun. Last thing that we will look at out here because uh, the porch has all been emptied. The raised bed on the other side of the deck has been emptied. But real quick, We’ve got roses. We This little This sweet little rose blooms all year long. And so you could see there’s buds all up there. Now it will, you know, have damage in the rain like this. But if we have a couple of days of sun, they pop open and have these sweet little blush pink flowers. I just love them. And then we’ve got this chameleia, which doesn’t usually bloom until March or April and does have uh buds on it, but no color cracking yet. And same with all these roies. Lots of buds. We won’t start to see color on these until probably March or April. All right. Well, that is going to be it for today’s video. I am recovering from a cold. I will have been like I’m doing great. I just can still feel like a little bit of a nasly thing going on. So, if my voice was weird through this video, I apologize. Um, this video will come out a in a couple of weeks because we’ll show our front yard garden video first and then we’ll show this one because I show all of our garden tour videos on Sundays. So, if you like the just chill walk around the garden and see what’s going on in a zone 9A on the Oregon coast, join us on Sunday mornings and um, walk around the garden with me. Make sure that you have liked and subscribed so that you are notified every time we post a new video. And then um but that I’m just letting you know that um this cold that I’m feeling today by the time you see this I’ll have been over it for a couple of weeks. So I’m fine. Um but yeah, just if my voice is weird that’s why. Anyway, we’re getting really close to the true winter and I’m feeling um I’m feeling the calmness and the sweetness of the empty serenity of the deep winter days coming. And wherever you are, if you’re under a blanket of snow or a blanket of ice, I hope that you’re celebrating your life and I’ll see you soon in the next video. Bye.
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