my life from home

Summer Garden Plantings by www.whitecottagehomeandliving.com

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I'm Gillian, a Scotland based home & lifestyle blogger. Follow along as I navigate this new journey sharing my life from home.

Hello! I hope you all had a chance to visit my curb appeal reveal yesterday! It was a fun challenge and a great motivator to get my outside spaces looking good. Today, I'm excited to be a part of a garden tour blog hop today hosted by Tara from Lehman Lane. I was particularly looking forward to this hop because I don't often show you any aspects of my home except for the indoor decor and occasional outdoor decor. Today, I am going to show you our landscaping, flowers, and container vegetable garden. In keeping with being real with you, confession time…. the majority of the landscaping was installed several years ago by a local company. My husband and I are the first to admit when something is out of our realm of expertise and landscaping was definitely one of those things. With the help of the basic layout, design plan and plantings, we do add our own spin on the yard each year which is much more in our tool bag!

To get you started on this tour, I am going right to the front of the house.

This is our front porch which recently received a refresh. To see all the details on this makeover, you can visit this post.

You can see that I have several planters on the porch and a window box to the left of the front door. For these, I have used a mix of flowers and trailing vines. Each year, I choose a color scheme that goes with the color of the house, front door, and existing landscape. This year, I went with orange, yellow, and white.

The flowers I used were Lantana, Dahlinova, Marigolds, Zinnias, and Petunias. Then for trailing accents to each, I added Sweet Potato Vines, Superbells, and Bacopa. The Superbells are in a beautiful apricot color and the Bacopa have a tiny white flower which is in constant bloom. Both are great planted in the front of the boxes or pots so they can grow over the sides.

In facing the front of the house, on the left, we have a River Birch tree and Knock-Out Roses. I love the combination of the texture of the peeling bark and the pink blooms on the roses.

Under the bay window and flanking the sidewalk is Boxwood and several kinds of grasses. The mix of greens adds interest to the landscaping instead of it being all one solid color.

To the right of the front door, is our Japanese Maple. It may be the only thing that remained when we redid the beds. Accompanying that are Goldmound bushes which get a pretty pink color flower in the summer.

In front of the sidewalk, in its own bed is a Maple Tree, Boxwoods, Globe Blue Spruce, and Grasses. Several boulders were added to the landscaping as well to give it additional interest.

Moving along to the side of the house is a Jane Magnolia along with several Hydrangeas. Unfortunately, you are not getting to see them in full bloom. 🙁

Next stop on our outdoor tour is the back yard. Moving through the gate, you can see our Magnolia tree, another Hydrangea, and several plantings of Lavender. I requested the Lavender because while sitting on the screened-in porch, you can smell the beautiful scent.

Again, my Magnolia gets these big huge beautiful blooms, but it's not quite the right time of year yet.

I need to find out about these brown leaves. Anyone know why my tree might be shedding leaves?

As you round the corner, we have several fast growing Evergreens to act as a privacy fence shielding the neighbors driveway.

Ok. We are now officially in the back yard. This is where we have our patio and pergola.

I recently added a Peony to our yard and I already got one beautiful bloom. I am hoping to add several more because I just cannot resist the cut flowers.

To the right of the patio is a bed which has more Knock-Out Roses, Evergreens and another flowering bush (not sure its name?).

So now is our container vegetable garden. We have been planting in pots for several years and for us, it is working out much better than having an in- ground garden. I love that it's contained, easy to water and pick the weeds. Even better, the kids are able to help us maintain it.

In our first pot, is a Cucumber plant.