GARDEN DESIGN PLANS for 2024! Secret Book Nook, Hydrangea Allée, Expanded Hardscaping, MORE FLOWERS

In this January Garden tour I’m sharing my garden design plans for 2024! I have lots of garden updates and landscape makeover projects to share with you! I’m going to be adding a hydrangea allée which will be a formal garden room. I hope to create a secret book nook next to the garden library that will feature lots of climbing plants and create a hidden secret garden. I’ll be swapping out all my hardscaping for stone, enlarging the deck and filling the cracks with ladies’ mantle, adding more hellebores to the hydrangea room, and packing the main flower walk with more flowers – and more hydrangeas!

Books shown in this video:
Chasing Eden – https://amzn.to/3HoEh00
On Garden Style – https://amzn.to/3HmuZ4p

The Perennial Garden YouTube Channel – https://www.youtube.com/@perennial-garden

Good morning friends how’s everyone doing on this beautiful January day we have about 3 Ines of snow on the ground and I thought I would take this opportunity to share with you the garden design changes that I’d like to make in 2024 and probably 2025 also so the first

Garden design change that I decided to make was to paint the garage a dark charcoal color I was watching a video by one of my favorite YouTubers I’m going to link them below they’re called the perennial garden and they’re over in Denmark and they said one of the best

Things that they did for their Garden was paint one of their out buildings black and it really helped the building disappear into the landscape so I only have half the garage done at this point actually I need to go over it with another coat but I’m still going to

Paint the doors black and then I also bought some solar lighting that will add to the garage but it makes such a big difference as you’ll see once we get to the hydrange room I don’t have that side painted yet because it got really cold all of a sudden now there’s some changes

That are going to happen here in the main flower Walk we’re going to get the Alfresco Fountain from Henry studio and I think put it right where you see that cap mint I won’t be able to point it all today because I’m holding an umbrella over our head but it’ll be right there

And I think it’ll be really nice because the water falls from a great distance and I think we need a little bit of a louder Fountain here I really liked the ball Fountain but it was quite quiet so I think it would be really nice to have the Alfresco

Fountain now I want to make a lot of changes to the main flower walk that I didn’t get to make last year the first thing is that I ordered you guys are going to think I’m so crazy I ordered 35 new hydras 25 panicle hydrangeas and 10 smooth hydrangeas and right where we

Have this beastro set which we found at a consignment store last year I want to surround this area with smooth hydrangeas and what I want to do is remove anything from the main flower walk that doesn’t flower now that probably sounds crazy but at some point when I switched from growing cup flowers

In row to Growing cup flowers in the landscape I think I actually put too many shrubs in the main flower walk that provide for seasons of interest that don’t flour and what I mean is I have a lot of berry producing shrubs in this area so the winter

Berries and the coral berries in this area are going to come out the yellow twig dog Woods are going to come out and I think that will give us the opportunity to put in a lot more flowering shrubs and flowers I’ll put a picture on the screen of what this area

Of the garden looks like in late and that’s my favorite time in this Garden there goes Grace she loves the snow but I want to try to repeat that look every single month here’s something interesting do you see this evergreen tree here this is a golden hinoi Cyprus that was planted 7 years

Ago and over here we have the golden Japanese Cedar hey Grace and that is the same age as Grace in fact I think I might have some footage of Grace when she was a puppy and you can see this Japanese Cedar in the background so that’s a 5-year-old Japanese

Cedar versus a 7-year-old golden high noi Cyprus one thing I would also like to do is get rid of any plastic that’s in the garden so the chairs here I’m super thankful for but I think I’ll gift those to someone else and get some wood chairs hopefully from the side of the

Road or from a Simon store these plastic pots here on the stone rug once they bloom I would like to switch those out for stone or cement did Grace just open the garden Library door herself Gracie is that door open oh that’s not good okay she always wants to go into the

Library nothing really has happened in terms of the library since he last saw it what I want to do right here where the deck is oh my goodness she just opened the door went in by herself so we’re going to have a lock put on the door that definitely needs to happen do

You guys see the Cardinal in that tree right there how beautiful what a great day anyway I want to make the deck just a little bit bigger and I can put a picture of this on the screen for you I want to surround the deck with ladies

Mantle and also have it growing through the cracks so I saw that in a book called private Edens and I fell in love with it last year I just wasn’t able to get my hands on enough ladies mantle to make it happen I’m not sure how to fix this path

At the moment it needs to be wider but there are toolet bulbs in these four Central raised beds and I really cannot push these beds to the side at all because where we have these lounge chairs it’s full shade so the only way to remedy this situation is to have the

Central boxes be 3 ft wide and all the other boxes be 4T wide do you think that would look really strange so let me know if you can think of a solution to this issue that I might be missing but the really big thing that I

Want to do back here and I think this is going to be a 2-year process is to build a hide away that connects to the Garden library and I’ll put some pictures on the screen because I’m not sure exactly how to describe it but at my grandparents house they had trained what

If I remember correctly was burning bushes into this Hideaway for me and my cousin to have a little table in and I adored that and what I would like to do is to create some kind of almost pergola with privacy screens on the back and the side that would connect to the Garden

Library and then would have lots of plants surrounding it so it would kind of be this hidden Book Nook connected to the Garden Library so I think that might be a little hard for me to explain and I think it might take two years mainly because I’m not sure I can afford it

This year and I also want to take that space where the compost pile was and I think I want to grow out my personal stock of Saving Grace for the purpose of saving as much seed as I can from her so whether or not that book Nook happens

This year or in 2025 is a little bit up in the air but a plan that I’m really excited about that is definite I already have all the pl plants ordered for it and I think I talked briefly about this last summer is that I want to create

Another room back here and it’s going to be a slightly formal hydrangea Alle so where we have this hedge here of emerald green Arbor vites I’m going to make a room out of that so I’m going to use Thin Man Arbor and basically have a wall right

Here and right here of thin man so as you look straight ahead from the left gate you’ll have two rows of thin man stepping down from that we’re going to have a panicle hydrangea called very berry hydrangea and that’s it we’ll have some kind of statue Straight Ahead

Something simple not too fancy maybe a su dial or something and I got this idea from hortulus Farm when we visited there maybe 15 years ago they had a pine and Dogwood alley which was underplanted with I believe tardiva hydrangeas and I just fell in

Love with it so I want to create this walled room right here that’s definitely happening and also by creating a walled off room here it will prevent people eventually from seeing the library as they walk by the property so I am really really excited to get started on that

And we’re going to do that all no dig Style so let’s head over to the Hy Ranger room now I’m not sure what Grace is getting around to Grace what you doing honey what’s in there so I’m pretty happy with how the hydrangea room is shaping up and I love

How it looks with the addition of the garden Library I finally have all my bulb successions in this Garden so I have non-stop bulbs to enjoy I have all the shrubs that I want in this Garden we do need to finish painting the garage back here you can see the difference

Between the white paint on the dark charcoal but what I want to focus on this year is I’ve been saving up my money for a lot of helbor I want to bring in a lot of helor and use them as ground cover in this garden and I think

Once I have that done this Garden is basically going to completely take care of itself and I think that’s my goal for every single garden with the exception of the main flower walk and the raised beds is that all these other Garden rooms really start to come into their

Own and take care of themselves I just need to maintain them rather than make lots of changes uh oh Grace oh dear what’s happening cut okay I think we’re good now I think Grace had won too many treats last night we were all eating our feeling ings after watching the Steelers and the

Eagles lose but that’s the main plan for the hydrange room just add lots more hbor and see how these bulb successions play out because we’ve never had daffodils in this area and I did all white tulips in this Garden I think Grace is feeling better

Now one other thing we may do is go ahead and stain the raised beds and the chairs to match the garden Library please let me know what you think about that I was going to do that the other day and then I thought maybe it’s nice to have the

Contrast I’m really not very good at making those decisions but now let’s head over to the driveway Garden I’m going to take all the shrubs the berry producing shrubs that are in the main flower walk and I’m going to put them in the driveway Garden

So I believe I did a lot of moving in this garden and I don’t think I filmed it in the fall I divided all of my cint I moved it all throughout this Garden it was originally a hedge over on the right hand side now lahy lines the entire

Garden so I really want this area to be a lot more symmetrical this is where all of our berry producing shrubs are going to go we’ll move the coral berries over here we’ll move I think we have maybe five winter berries that will move over

In this area you can actually see the U head now that all the leaves have fallen in front of that Invincible spirit and in front of that a butterfly bush hedge so what I want to do I’ll put a picture on the screen here I had that roll out

Bamboo walkway here for probably 3 years and I love it it’s so wonderful but I want to start to use the same hardscaping in every single Garden so the stones that I have over in the hydrange room are now going to line the path to this lion bird bath and I think

I’m just going to have the path go straight ahead because what kept happening is and I think this is my fault people kept parking along the side of the property here and then walking through this entire Garden which would not really be a big deal if it was just

Shrubs but there’s so many bulbs and then I was putting a lot of cut flowers in here that a lot of my things are getting trampled on you can see the flowers down there in the distance I’m hoping to open for Valentine’s Day I have about 100 high asense going right

Now but I guess we’ll have to see what the weather does let me walk us up to the front because I’m going to try an experiment up there so what I want to do is there was a mix up with my bulb order and I ended up with a th000 white

Anemones so I’m actually going to mass plant white anemones in this front garden and I’m going to leave them in the ground and see if they’ll come back I haven’t had luck with that in the past they’ve all rotted because of how wet we

Are but I’ll give it one more try and I didn’t have to pay for those anemones since it was an accident well friends thanks so much for spending some time out here in the garden with myself and Grace today we’ll be sure to include you in all of these new garden design

Projects I think I’m most excited about the book Nook maybe we should call that the hydrangea Book Nook I’m not sure and of course we’ll have the interior of the garden Library done by I believe the beginning of March so so much to look forward to I want to wish you all a

Wonderful day out there in your Gardens and I’ll see you sometime soon bye