A Look Back at Beth’s Early Summer Garden

Hi GPODers!

After my call for submissions last week, I was thrilled to see so many familiar names flooding the GPOD inbox with pictures from their gardens. Yesterday, we saw Jay’s North Carolina garden filled with fabulous fall foliage, and today we head to the garden of another long-time GPODer in North Carolina. Beth Tucker in Waxhaw, NC has shared her garden several times in the past (Beth’s Poolside Garden, Winter Favorites, Memories of Spring), but you may be more familiar with the glowing comments she writes for just about every garden featured on the blog as btucker9675. I hope everyone shows the same enthusiasm for Beth’s garden and leaves some encouraging comments below (I know they can be tricky to find, scroll past the “Recommended Products” but don’t go past “Related Articles”. Between the two you should find the “View Comments” button.

These photos are from early this summer – before the incredibly hot, miserable weather moved into our area. I would share photos of the garden this fall except it looks pretty raggedy because it was too hot for me to keep up with it like I usually do! Now that it’s cooling down, I’m working on moving things around, getting rid of plants that can’t take the heat, and generally trying to make the borders easier to care for. Most of these photos are the garden borders around our pool. The oakleaf hydrangea (Hydrangea quercifolia, Zones 4–8) is in the wooded area at the back of our property. It started out as a scrawny little thing but has settled in nicely. Looking at the photos submitted by all of you wonderful gardeners is always a high point of my day!

Beth a a multitude of lovely hydrangeas in her garden. Here is a close up of the always lovely ‘Limelight’ panicle hydrangea (Hydrangea quercifolia, Zones 4–8).

A busy little bee visits the hydrangea to enjoy the nectar from its many blooms. As you’ll see in the rest of Beth’s photos below, she grows lots of different flowers in the summertime that are loved by her local bee populations.

The oakleaf hydrangea that Beth mentioned in her intro. While it’s easy to explain to non-gardeners how interesting plants can be for their beauty and function, it’s can be a little harder to express the pure wonder in seeing a plant grow and evolve. If you grow anything from seed or very small starters, you know it’s one of the most magical things you can do in the garden.

More flowers getting a bee visitor. This time spires of lavender flowers draw in bees with their intoxicating scent just as well as they draw in humans!

Another classic pollinator-favorite, purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea, Zones 3–9) is a treasure trove of nectar for this little bee. Looks like the flowers are also getting enjoyed by Japanese beetles. While this is no doubt a huge frustration to Beth, the damage is typically just cosmetic and won’t stop the flowers from continuing to support pollinators or from coming back next year.

Beth also has a lovely collection of colorful daylilies. This one looks like the hardy variety ‘Bonanza’ (Hemerocallis ‘Bonanza’, Zones 3–9). Though daylilies are admittedly hard to ID as there are so many varieties and hybrids that have evolved over the decades.

Another potential daylily classic is the ‘Red Volunteer’ (Hemerocallis ‘Red Volunteer’, Zones 3–9). This bright red beauty has won several awards for its ease of growing and vibrant, reliable blooms.

Of course, you can’t go wrong with a simple, bright yellow option. Pairing perfectly with other red and orange varieties, yellow daylilies illuminate in the garden like few other flowers can.

Lastly, Beth shared a little vignette of one last peach-colored daylily with potted pink geraniums in front of her ‘Little Gem’ magnolia (Magnolia grandiflora ‘Little Gem’, Zones 7–9).

Thank you for sharing your flower-filled garden with us again, Beth! And thank you for always being an involved member of Garden Photo of the Day.

Have a garden you’d like to share?

Have photos to share? We’d love to see your garden, a particular collection of plants you love, or a wonderful garden you had the chance to visit!

To submit, send 5-10 photos to [email protected] along with some information about the plants in the pictures and where you took the photos. We’d love to hear where you are located, how long you’ve been gardening, successes you are proud of, failures you learned from, hopes for the future, favorite plants, or funny stories from your garden.

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