Mid-August is such an interesting time in the garden.
Some plants are hitting their peak, others are starting to look a little tired, and the hydrangeas are beginning those beautiful color changes that tell us fall isn’t all that far away.
Today we’re taking you through our Zone 6A garden in Upstate New York to share what’s looking especially good right now, a few combinations we’re loving, and some experiments that didn’t work quite as well as we’d hoped.
It wouldn’t be a Grow For Me Gardening garden tour without plenty of hydrangeas.
Our Invincibelle Sublime® smooth hydrangea hedge is still looking incredible. Unlike many smooth hydrangeas that fade to a bisque or antique color as the flowers age, these blooms stay green and seem to deepen in color as the season progresses.
We’ve also been impressed with how well they’ve stayed upright through some pretty intense summer storms.
Elsewhere in the garden, the panicle hydrangeas are beginning their late-summer transformation.
Quick Fire Fab® is starting to flush pink from the bottom of its large panicles, while Quick Fire® and Pinky Winky® are bringing even more pink into the garden. Pinky Winky continues to be one of our favorites. It can be a little slow to establish, but we think it’s worth the wait.
We’re also loving a trio of very different panicle hydrangeas in another part of the garden: Puffer Fish®, Powerball™, and Little Lime Punch®. Repeating hydrangeas while varying their bloom shapes and sizes has created a really nice rhythm through this bed.
Use our free Hydrangea Identification Chart to figure out which type of hydrangea you have and get a better understanding of how to care for it.
Apparently, pink is having a moment in our garden this August.
The James L. Austin rose is bigger than ever after getting a little more sunlight this year, and our Oso Easy Peasy® rose is putting on another vivid pink flush.
We’re also seeing great late-summer color from Luminary® ‘Pink Lightning’ phlox, Summerific® ‘Candy Crush’ hibiscus, and the bright pink flowers of Double Play® Big Bang® spirea.
But one of our most reliable August perennial continues to be Serendipity allium.
It has so much going for it: clean foliage, great color, deer and rabbit resistance, tons of pollinator activity, and it’s incredibly easy to divide. It’s one of those plants that earns its place in the garden year after year.
August is also when Verbena bonariensis really starts putting on a show.
It isn’t technically hardy in our zone, but it reseeds so readily that it returns throughout the garden every year. We let it weave through beds and around the pondless waterfall, where its tall, airy purple flowers add color without visually taking over the space.
And the butterflies absolutely love it.
We’ve had monarchs all over the garden, along with plenty of activity around our native bee balm, ironweed, allium, agastache, phlox, and other late-summer bloomers.
One of our favorite things about this point in the season is seeing just how alive the garden becomes.
One of our favorite corners this year combines a little bit of everything.
There’s the huge flower panicles of Quick Fire Fab hydrangea, purple Augusta® Lavender heliotrope, tall Verbena bonariensis, Rockin’® Blue Suede Shoes® salvia, Reminiscent® Ginger rose, and the bold foliage of a red Abyssinian banana.
We weren’t completely sold on adding the banana at first, but it turned out to be exactly what the space needed.
So many of the plants in this area have light, airy textures that the banana’s large, dramatic foliage gives the entire combination some visual weight.
It’s a good reminder that sometimes a garden combination needs more than another flower. Contrasting foliage, texture, shape, and scale can make everything around it look better.
Garden tours aren’t only about showing what’s working. This is also when we start noticing what we’d change.
Our Lavender Queen butterfly pea vine is finally flowering and it’s beautiful, but it simply bloomed too late for our Zone 6 garden. By the time it started putting on a show, the annuals around it were already approaching the end of their season.
We also tried a bright chartreuse sweet potato vine around our pondless waterfall this year, and the color combination isn’t quite working for us. We preferred the darker foliage we used in that area last year and may return to cooler tones around the water.
Then there are plants that surprised us in the opposite direction.
Supertunia Mini Vista® Indigo has performed incredibly well in a hot, south-facing island bed with only overhead sprinkler irrigation, creating a carpet of color that has us thinking about how we might use it there again.
That’s one of the reasons we love doing these garden tours. Seeing the garden at different points throughout the season helps us make better decisions for the following year.
By August, containers can start looking a little weary, especially after months of heat, storms, watering, and fertilizing.
But our front containers are finally having their moment.
The centerpiece is a Kordes rose standard, surrounded by Verbena bonariensis, Superbena® Peachy Keen, Supertunia® Bordeaux™, Jazz Hands® Loropetalum, and Aromance® Mulberry™ nemesia.
They’re planted in full southern sun and watered with drip irrigation, and after quite the journey this season, everything has finally grown together the way we hoped.
And that’s gardening in August: some things are fading, some are just getting started, and others suddenly come together after months of waiting.
With so many hydrangeas throughout our garden, we’ve learned that choosing the right type for your space and understanding how it grows makes a huge difference.
If you want more help growing hydrangeas, our Hydrangea Handbook walks you through hydrangea types, pruning, troubleshooting, care, and more so you can spend less time guessing and more time enjoying your plants.
We’ll keep sharing the garden as it changes through the end of summer and into fall. It’s always amazing how different the same space can look in just a few weeks.
Until next time, thanks for growing with us!
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