My garden was on a local garden walk this past weekend. Being one of the host gardens was a blast because I love showing and explaining what is going on in the garden. Plus, it motivated me to spruce up the garden as much as possible during the week before the walk. I had lots of help from my husband and from a dear friend, and now we get to enjoy the results. I’m going to share those results—how the garden looked on garden walk day—and I’ll also answer the questions that visitors asked as they toured it.
Video Tour
First, here’s the nickel tour that I filmed at the start of the garden walk. (And here is the YouTube link, in case the video below does not play on your device.) This video gives you a peek at all of my gardens: the Shakespeare Street Garden (front yard perennial garden), the vegetable container garden along the driveway, the Midsummer Night’s Dream Fairy Garden, the kitchen garden (plus, to the east of it, the new hugel kulter bed, the apple trees, and the beginning of the Wishy Washy Edible Container Garden), the cottage garden, the asparagus bed, the ornamental container garden (a.k.a. my “flower bestrewn deck”), and the Mackinac Island Garden (courtyard garden in the side yard). My husband likes to call that the “award winning Mackinac Island Garden” because I received an award from our village government last year for creating this special themed garden.
For edible gardening fans, here is a 4-minute video tour of just the kitchen garden.
The day of the garden walk was wonderful. We had cloudy skies but no rain—perfect for taking photos! A few sunflowers by the kitchen garden entrance and the passion flowers on the cottage garden trellis had started to bloom the day before. And hummingbirds were very active. We filmed them in the cottage bed (shown in photo section below), plus on the flower bestrewn deck, and in the Mackinac Island Garden.
Questions and Answers
Here are the answers to the most commonly asked questions I got on garden walk day. If you have any other questions, write them in the reply section below this post.
Q: What is that pink flower in the cottage garden bed?
A: Queen of the Prairie, Filipendula rubra—a native plant
Q: What do I do with the cherry rootstock you gave away?
A: Get scions of the variety of cherry tree you want to grow, and graft them onto the rootstock with the budding technique. Here is a master gardener publication on grafting techniques. You could also search online for videos on how to do it. I recommend joining the Midwest Fruit Explorers to anyone interested in grafting fruit trees. They offer helpful workshops, and members share scion wood freely.
Q: What is the purpose of those red disks under your tomato plants?
A: Their main purpose is to prevent soil-borne fungal diseases by not allowing water to splash soil up onto the plant. They also suppress weeds and prevent cutworm attacks. In addition, they direct water down to the root zone of the plants. The ones like mine have been discontinued, but there are similar products available now which should work even better, called Tomato Automators and Tomato Halos.
Garden Walk Photos
Shakespeare Street Garden – front yard
Container Vegetable Garden – along the driveway
Kitchen Garden – south end of the backyard
Midsummer Night’s Dream Fairy Garden – south end of the cottage garden
Stratford Cottage Garden – in backyard along east side of the garage
Flower Bestrewn Deck – ornamental container garden
Mackinac Island Garden – in side yard
Mackinac Cottage Fairy Garden – on south side of Mackinac Island Garden
The best part of the garden walk was seeing and talking to my newsletter readers, social media followers, and garden club friends. If you came through my garden or just now enjoyed the walk vicariously through these videos and pictures, please drop a note in the reply section below to let me know what you think and/or to ask any questions you have.
Now that the walk is over and I’m taking some time off from grad school, I plan to resume writing my newsletter. If you haven’t already subscribed to it, I invite you to sign up for it here. Subscribing to my newsletter is not the same thing as subscribing to this blog or following me on social media. There may be some overlap in subject matter, but I usually write different types of content for the different platforms. If you already are a newsletter subscriber, thank you for patiently waiting for the next issue. I hope to write to you again soon! And thank you to everyone who came out on the garden walk!
The Gardener Wife 
I love your themed gardens! I find that I can’t pick just one style of garden to go with so thank you for the inspiration to try them all ! 🙂
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