I love following floral photographers and florist to see what amazing works of art they can create. They talk about how some of the flowers have come from their gardens but they never actually show their gardens. I’m always wondering, “How do their gardens look?”. I also love following gardeners and watching how they transform areas into beautiful scenes with trees, shrubs, and flowers. One of my favorite videos they put out are their monthly or seasonally garden tours. I love getting to see how the gardens look as a complete scene and learning about different plants as they walk around.

This gave me the idea to put them together … a floral photographer sharing a monthly/seasonally garden tour!

So today is the inaugural garden tour!

This is our second season of working this garden. We moved in July 2020 and had a backyard full of very tall weeds. The big things were already done like the retaining walls and the deck but it was just dirt and the weeds completely took over. We had to get the weeds out, put drainage management in, add irrigation, compost the soil, add rock, plants, and mulch. Let’s go back to what it looked like before.

That first top left photo cracks me up! All those weeds and my little pots on the deck. It was overwhelming but we just started and kept going to the next step. When it came time for planting I just began. I have had a general idea of what I want to go for but I really just watch others, research, and pick things out at the garden centers.

I’m a floral photographer so one of my goals is to have flowers that I can, yes you guessed it, photograph. I’ve added roses, peonies, hydrangea, baptisia, tulips, daffodils, iris, daisies, allium, and pincushion so far. I’m also trying to add other textures like grass, evergreen, sedum, and so forth. Plus tucking in a few annuals and pots in the garden. Being able to go out into my garden and get inspired sounds like pure happiness to me so that is what I am striving for.

We also love to grow food so we have a few peppers, zucchini, pumpkins, cucumber, tomatoes, chive, lettuce, carrots, peas, chamomile, green beans, and edamame tucked into various spots plus the new stock tank raised bed I just installed this week. I think that this will expand a bit next year but for right now I am seeing what works and does not. Our dirt is heavy, compact clay and even though we tilled in compost last year I’m still experimenting with what is going to do well and what is not.

I can not wait to see how this garden grows over this summer and to see what blooms there will be. Since some of these plants are new I’m not expecting a spectacular show of blooms this year but fingers crossed there will be some. I am planning (hoping) to share another tour of how things look in July. Plus I share almost everything I am doing in the garden and the studio over on Instagram and Facebook.

Thanks for checking out what this photographer’s garden looks like currently!