Brenda Landrum

My how the garden has grown in only one month! If you are curious about the progress, go check out the June Garden Tour. The difference between the photos in June and now have me so proud of these plants and flowers that I care for each and every day. This is a space that I truly enjoy being in. I don’t mind pulling a few weeds or hand-watering a couple days pr week. I like to get out there as early as I can in the morning when the neighborhood is still quiet, the birds are singing and of course it’s cooler out.

I’ve shared this many times but this unconventional backyard is probably pretty close to a dream space for us. No view of the neighbor behind us. We love the terraced hill because it feels so private back there and on the main level in the house. There is no big expanse of grass to mow and water, plus grass is total pain in the butt in our dry climate at 6400ft elevation in Colorado. We live right on the Palmer Divide and I’m convinced it’s cursed because rain always goes around us on both sides. It’s hard enough to keep the small patch of grass in the front yard doing well.

Everything but one plant that I added to the garden this year is doing so well. The Fire Light Hydrangea I bought in Nebraska was doing great and almost had a bud on it and then all of a sudden it just died. My guess is that I overwatered it, thinking it needed more since it was out in direct sun. We shall see if I try again for the same spot or maybe I’ll try a hydrangea in the front garden where it receives shade part of the day.

One of my goals for this garden is to have flowers that I can cut, photograph, and enjoy in our home. I’m a long way off from having a cut flower garden but last week I was able to cut many different things and photograph them in my studio. That was a very very happy day for me.

The veggie garden is doing ok. Everything seems to be really slow in growing but there is produce so I’m thankful for that. One little tomato, cayenne peppers, banana pepper is huge, the sugar snap peas are growing along with the carrots and the bell pepper has blooms. Oh and this morning I noticed the green beans have little blooms! So there are edibles, just on small plants.

I’m so happy with how everything is coming together on the first tier that I am starting to change how I want the top tier to look. I was going to leave it with the Spartan Juniper trees but now I think more plants need to be up there so we first made a little swoop and planted Russian Sage, Forsythia, and a Miss Kim Lilac. We now have plans to take the rock out from the junipers down to the wall and make it a full garden bed to plant in. There will still be some rock up there but this will make the planting area wider for me.

Thanks for checking out how the July Garden looks and I hope you go back to the first post to see how much everything has grown. Be sure to join me on Instagram and Facebook as I share almost everything I am doing in the garden and the studio.