Every year, I give you all a virtual tour of my garden. And 2025 is not different. I think it is nice to end the season with photos of your favorite spaces, and my garden is tops on my list, though I love to see every one else’s gardens too! Things in my own gardens are starting to mature (at least in my mind they are). And I hate weeds! 2025 was a great year for flowers in the garden, and I will show you some of my favorites. I have photos of my borders, cottage garden, daylily bed, the front, the meadow, the rose arbor, and some of the vegetable garden.
The Rose Arbor
When my wife first asked me for a certain rose that one of her homestead friends was promoting, I was not sure what to do about it. Of course, I wanted to get my wife the rose she wanted, but I soon found it was sold out and had sold out in minutes after the promotion. So hat to do? Of course, I work at a garden center, so I bought her an ‘Above & Beyond’ climbing rose. This rose has sweet, pale apricot or peach colored flowers which bloom from late June through mid August. And we had some repeat blooms in October.
The first 2 years I had a white lattice, homemade trellis. But at the beginning of 2025, I replaced the lattice with wire for a cleaner look and re-wove the rose vines through the wires. Last year I also planted a red rose on the opposite side of the trellis. For 2026, I am planning to build a solid, wood and metal arbor with a swing and some more roses on the south side of the house. I had wanted to get that done in 2025, but I did not make enough time for getting it done.
The Front Gardens
I realized too late in the season that I have neglected the front gardens too much this year. Even though the Rose Arbor is doing well, the other front gardens are getting too overgrown. The area right next to the porch was the area dug out for replacing the sewer lines 3 years ago. The soil there has not been amended as it needs, so I will begin adding manure and straw to it this winter, to be able to plant it as a rose & hibiscus garden next spring. I admit that it is not my favorite thing (roses) but my wife and daughter love them.
As the trees (silver maple, coffeetree, arborvitae) mature and provide more shade, I will need to start removing some sun perennials and replacing them with shade lovers. But I do not want to overdo it with hostas, coral bells, and other non-natives. Sure, I will have a few of these, but my main goal is to replace the sun perennials in this area with native ephemerals, groundcovers, and understory shrubs. I have some already, but there is always room for more.
The Monarch Waystation also needs overhauled (I have said this for 2 years in a row now). But it does. I need to remove the more aggressive goldenrods and asters, and add in more milkweeds. I would also like to put a path of wood slabs (cut from removed trees) through the garden from end to end.
Borders
The shrub border along the neighbor’s drive has not changed much, other than that the shrubs are maturing. I see that I may have to remove some trees to give them more sunlight though. Right now, the shrub border includes the following shrubs:
- Blackhaw viburnum
- Old fashioned lilac
- Forsythia
- Redbud
- Black chokeberry
- Pearlbush
- Eastern ninebark
- Fragrant sumac
- Arrowwood viburnum
- Baptisia
- Bridal veil spirea
- Saskatoon Serviceberry
And then there is the Shade Border along the east side of the property. This bed has larger trees (walnut, Osage orange) and young trees (sugar maple, coffeetree, American hornbeam, pecan). I started it for growing native shade plants, but found that I like a mixture of native and nonnative together. Now the bed boasts the following spectrum of plant material:
- Viburnum Spice Baby
- Blue wood phlox
- Wood poppy
- Louisiana iris
- Indian pink
- Hosta
- Nannyberry viburnum
- American bladdernut
- Snowball viburnum
- American hazelnut
- Garden phlox
- Dutchman’s breeches
- Shooting star
- Arborvitae
- Boxwood
- Abelia
- Northern sea oats
- Ornamental onion Milennium
- Daffodils
The Meadow Garden
This area keeps evolving and changing from season to season. This year, instead of burning it standing, I cut everything down and moved the debris to a brush pile before burning. I would not do this every year, but I wanted to see if it had an effect on the insect population. By leaving the cut stems where overwintering insects could still get out, I was happily rewarded with a new species of bee in my yard, the Curved Pebble Bee. I do not know if they overwintered in the stems, but I had more than 20 sightings of them in July and August, mainly feeding on the blooming cup plant.
Some of the newer natives I have added are beginning to spread around. These include prairie phlox, meadow rue, purple coneflower, and rattlesnake master. But I do need to weed down some of the cup plant before it consumes the garden. There are at least 40 species of plants in the Meadow Garden.
The Sunny Cottage Garden
I wish I had more room to expand this bed! But I built it in a narrow place and it is limited to the constraints thereof. However, there is quite a bit of work needed in it. I had it all weeded and ready to be mulched this spring and then ran out of mulch. After trying different kinds of mulch in my garden, I typically choose the free spoiled hay from the goat yard. It has manure in it, but it breaks down quickly, even with a cardboard underlayment.
However, despite the lack of mulch on both the walk through and the beds, the flowers were just as gorgeous as ever. In spring the daffodils crown center stage, and I am glad I planted them throughout. Plants which gave really matured include the various Baptisia, irises, ornamental onions, and rose. There are at least 47 Genera of plants in this garden, including:
- Allium
- Asclepias
- Grindelia
- Liatris
- Monarda
- Salvia
- Geranium
- Dianthus
- Stachys
- Solidago
- Symphyotrichum
- Pycnanthemum
- Agastache
- Veronicatrum
- Vernonia
- Knipfofia
- And many more!
One are in the garden that needs re-done is the southwest corner. I planted Blunt Mountain mint back there, but there is a space between it and the walk which has no balance, it is always getting weedy. Maybe a good spot for a bench? I will try to make one over the winter for it.
The Daylily Bed
This is the bed which has matured the most in the last season and consequentially, needs the least work. It started out kidney-bean shaped, and morphed into an oval with the addition of the large galvanized water trough turned planter. The addition of a Corneliancherry Dogwood last spring also has helped balance the bed. Calling it a Daylily Bed is misleading, because there is so many plants besides daylilies in it. Large shrubs (ninebark Summer Wine, hydrangea Vanilla Strawberry & Incrediball, sandcherry Jade Parade, and baptisia Pink Lemonade) anchor the middle of the island bed. Trees include apple Arkansas Black, apple Cortland, and the aforementioned dogwood Saffron Sentinel.
I call it the Daylily Bed because of the abundance of daylily varieties I have planted around the inside of the border of Milennium ornamental onion. Varieties of daylilies include:
- Storm Shelter
- Kansas Kitten
- Ruby Spider
- Blood Sweat & Tears
- King of the Ages
- Inkheart
- Persian Ruby
- Lake of Fire
- Prairie Wildfire
- Strawberry Candy
- Wineberry Candy
- Woodside Amethyst
Other plants include:
- Siberian iris
- Bearded iris
- Agastache
- Clematis
- Sedum
- Rudbeckia
- Echinacea
- Wild quinine
- Skullcap
- Yarrow
Vegetable Garden
My time in the vegetable garden really lacked this year. I spent too much time looking for bugs and not enough time growing food crops. I did plant 6 tubs of tomatoes, which did very well and never needed watering after June 1st, thanks mainly to the rain. Otherwise, the garden was neglected. But I still had peppers (hot) spread around the gardens, plus lots of herbs. My wife and I developed our own line of herbal blends, teas, and straight packages for sale at the farmer’s market. Our biggest seller was mullein for tea, which I harvest from our garden.
The orchard continues to produce, and we harvested our first grape crop in 3 years, with enough for both juice and jelly. I planted new trees this fall, including a Meteor Cherry, Saturn Peach, Snow Sweet Apple, and Sweet Sixteen Apple. And I found something crazy in the orchard! When I was mowing down tall grass, I came across the seedling of a persimmon. Now, I am not overly fond of persimmon, but I will leave one tree for sure because my son likes them and I can always feed the extra fruits to the pigs.
Conclusion
2025 was a great year for flowers, but I have high hopes for 2026. I am planning a lot of new changes to the gardens at home next season, but I doubt I will get many of them done. But I hope you all have a great gardening year in 2026.
Happy planting!
