A Trip Through Our Ever-Evolving Yard & Garden

While a lot has changed over the past few years, my love of gardening still holds strong! We’ve made some additions to both our garden area and our yard that have brought more color, more produce, and more joy to our summers. I’ve also finally gotten a better handle on the proper mix of fruits, vegetables, flowers, and perennials that make for a little less upkeep day in and day out in the summertime, helping me feel less overwhelmed with pruning, harvesting, and weeding come August! Although truthfully, it still usually ends up feeling like a jungle out there by the end of summer, and I’d be lying if I said that I’m not feeling a bit of relief that the harvests are winding down and it’s about time to transition to some lower maintenance autumn plants!

So, let’s take a little tour through our backyard over the past few years and catch you up to speed on what’s changed!

First up, peaches! The unity ceremony of our wedding consisted of us watering a tiny start of a peach tree, which we planted in the middle of our backyard after we returned from our honeymoon in late October. We each wrote notes filled with wishes for our future together that we placed in the ground before the tree went in, and crossed our fingers that it would survive the winter. And it did! In its first season last year, we got a few beautiful fruits from it, which we didn’t expect until a few years in. This year, there were several more that came on, but sadly, a slew of massive storms took most of them down. It’s continuing to grow, though, and we’re hoping for a stronger tree and more fruitful year next year.

Back in 2021, I haphazardly planted some very tiny lavender starts along our sidewalk since I knew they were pretty hardy, though figured I’d have to find something even more resilient for that area. That soil along that small strip of ground is nearly impossible to dig into, it’s very clay-like, holds water, and gets uneven amounts of sunlight being half-blocked by the garage. Despite the growing conditions, though, they filled in very quickly, and I’ve only had to replace one that didn’t come back this spring! Being able to walk to and from the garden and catch their scent along the way is my favorite (and Rosie’s, too… she’s forever weaving her way in and out of it)!

I’ve always dreamed of having hydrangeas and finally got around to planting some that were just little springs under a foot tall last spring. By the fall, they didn’t look like much of anything and I wrote them off as goners. But then, this spring, they shot up so fast I couldn’t believe my eyes. One is already up to my shoulders! And they produced the biggest, fluffiest white blooms that dried down to a light green. I can’t wait to see how they continue to fill out next year.

We also got a wooden, trellised arbor for the garden last summer, which was very easy to put together and has held up well. This is the one, if you’re interested! Though I wasn’t sure at the time exactly what I wanted to grow on it, I knew that anything would look beautiful. I chewed on the idea of some kind of climbing flower, but didn’t want to commit to a perennial in that space.

While I think climbing roses could be gorgeous, I haven’t had the best luck with roses of any kind (advice welcome)! With it being later in the season and just wanting to test out my luck, I grabbed a pouch of climbing green beans and hoped for the best. And within a month, they were climbing what seemed like several inches a day and thriving! I planted more this year and we’ve thoroughly enjoyed harvesting buckets of them each week. I spent last weekend canning ten quarts of them to enjoy until next year!

We planted hops in 2020 along our back fence, and while one kind of slowly seemed to be taking off, we figured the placement or the soil jus wasn’t ideal for them. Well. Then came the spring of 2021. In fact, it was the week of Saint Patrick’s Day, only just the tail end of Midwest winter—grass dead, branches bare, plants dead and brown—that I recall looking out our kitchen window and seeing bright green leaves trailing halfway up our fence. Thinking my eyes were playing tricks, I walked straight out to see what this magical hint of spring was and low and behold, the hops were already hard at work growing, months ahead of anything else coming back to life. And they’ve continued to come back bigger and stronger over the next two summers. Actually, they’re kind of taking over our main garden bed, and I have to pull up several roots and cut back vines along the fence almost weekly!

We ended up having to replace our wooden raised beds as they were falling apart after several years of wear and tear. While I love the look of the wooden beds, especially after they age a bit, I made the call to replace them with a galvanized steel option (you can find them here) that will hopefully hold up much longer. They were lovely as they were, but I decided to tone them down a bit by spraying them with an antique copper spray paint and a coat of clear protectant to give them a more muted look!

I’ve also been trying crop rotation—changing up where I plant certain vegetables or going a year or two in between growing certain plants—as squash bugs were coming on stronger and earlier each year, completely demolishing our zucchini and moving onto other plants by mid-summer. Knock on wood, I haven’t spotted any this summer, so I’m really hoping it did the trick! Though our newest pests have been Japanese beetles. I’m not sure there’s a single leaf in our garden that doesn’t have at least a hole or three chewed through it by those strange, shiny creatures!

This year, I’ve been harvesting loads of tomatoes, peppers, cauliflower, broccoli, and green beans. I’ve had quite a few cucumbers, but sadly, that plant seems to have caught some kind of infection and died off a bit early. In the last few weeks of August, actually, I noticed quite a few of our plants started looking a bit sad almost overnight—some a little crispy and brown, some a tad wilted and yellow—I’m hoping it’s just a matter of the intense heat this summer and nothing too serious spreading through our space. Any other Midwest gardeners notice the same?

Anyway! The last couple things I can think to update you on are less about plants and more about cozying up this space a bit more. We carved out a little lounging area just off our our patio in 2020, with a hammock perfect for winding down in, in the evenings. If you don’t own a hammock, I highly, highly recommend you invest in one. It’s one of my favorite places to be. I only wish we used it more often! This is the hammock and stand combo we purchased and it’s held up so well (we do put it away in the winter)!

And finally, last year, we got around to doing a major bucket-list item for me: hanging string lights hung above our backyard! I can’t even describe how excited I was when these finally went up last summer, and how often I turn them on just because. They’re even beautiful in the wintertime. They pack quite a punch of light, but cast a very warm glow, so it’s not at all overwhelming. Here are the ones we used!