Spring Video Tour: Front Yard Garden Edition
Spring is in the air, and the front yard garden is on fire! Flowers are blooming. Bees are buzzing. Hummingbirds are zipping. The summer seedlings are happily planted. The deciduous trees are flush with new tender growth. I love this time of year in the front yard!
Come cruise around the garden with me, as I wander and point out what is growin’ and goin’ on. Also, say hello to our hummingbird friends!
I used to go “live” on my Instagram occasionally, especially when the garden was demanding attention – as it was this fine evening! Unfortunately, the live feature hasn’t been working for me lately. It has been super blurry, which is a total bummer… However, I couldn’t resist sharing this gorgeous sight! So one evening last weekend I shot an impromptu tour to share on IGTV (and later, YouTube) instead! I hope you enjoy this little meander with me!
As you’ll see by watching along, we have a pretty diverse selection of plants in the front yard. But you’ll also notice a theme: tons of plants for pollinators! If you enjoy this video, you’ll probably also enjoy this post – The Top 23 Plants for Pollinators: Attract Bees, Butterflies, & Hummingbirds!
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Hint: If the video looks blurry to you for any reason, it may help to adjust the quality to the highest possible. To do this, click on the top 3 dots (on a mobile device) or the settings wheel on the bottom toolbar (desktop).
Thanks for watching! I hope you enjoyed the tour.
I will take a you along for a longer tour around the whole property very soon! In the meantime, if you’re curious to learn more about our gardens, see “Our Homestead”
Deanna Talerico
Deanna Talerico (aka DeannaCat) is a garden educator and writer with over 15 years experience in organic gardening. She is a retired Senior Environmental Health Specialist, and holds a M.A. in Environmental Studies and B.S. in Sustainability and Natural Resources.
7 Comments
Melissa
What a wonderful tour! Thanks so much!
I was wondering if you have areas of your garden that have mostly shade, and what you plant there? A large part of my yard is very shaded, and I’m having trouble coming up with what to plant that will have purpose for us and our birds and bees. (San Diego)
Thank you for all of your time and effort. You are the ONLY blog I keep up with and get so excited to read and learn all of your new stuff.
Much respect,
Melissa
Aaron (Mr. DeannaCat)
Hello Melissa, thank you so much for the support! We do have a portion of the front yard that is shady, even more so in the winter time. We would suggest planting humming bird sage (our personal favorite), it does spread but can be easily controlled by hand. We have also found success with rosemary, aloe vera, and nasturtium (annual flower) in shady areas, also look into different varieties of Penstemon that may be more shade tolerant. Hope that is enough to get you started and ask any other questions you may have. Good luck!
Mel
Thanks for getting back to me so fast. There are a few dwarf avocado trees available in Australia, I’m in WA and our quarantine won’t let the dwarf varieties through from other states unfortunately. The root restriction is a great idea though. 🙂 but thank you, your post definitely made me reconsider these two trees. 🙂
Mel
That was a great little tour, thank you. I noticed you have a few figs, a couple avocados and a dwarf mulberry near your fence. Are you worried about them getting too big and crowding everything else around them out. Or will you prune them to keep them small? I thought avos and mulberry’s in particular spread out quite a lot. I’m really interested, as I really want an avo and mulberry but don’t have a huge amount of space. I’m planning on putting a fig in cause I know you can prune them very hard and it doesn’t do them any harm. 🙂 and in from Australia by the way. I just watched your back garden tour and loved the reo mesh fencing. I’m so gonna adopt this idea for my place. All the best, awaiting your reply. 🙂
DeannaCat
Hey there! So your concerns are totally valid! The Mulberry is a dwarf. She won’t get more than a few feet taller than she is now, if that. The avocado variety in that corner is also a tad smaller, and slower growing, but yes will need pruning with time. We also have our fruit trees in large hardware cloth gopher baskets, which can restrict their growth just a tad – not a bad thing in a modest property like ours. There are many dwarf and semi-dwarf varieties of fruit trees out there, and some just naturally smaller ones than others – just read the descriptions and find something that suits you!
Kim
What a delight to see this spring tour. I thoroughly enjoyed every moment. Inspiring, educational, beautiful.
So thrilled you are blogging.
DeannaCat
Oh good! Thank you so much! It was definitely an impromptu wander, so I am glad you found it useful 🙂