Spring Garden Tour

2024 Spring Garden Tour & My Favorite Plants

I’m excited to welcome you to my late spring garden tour as I share some of my favorite plants and plant combinations. As well as a few designer garden tips.

Let’s start our tour at the entrance gate to our cutting garden. We live on five acres with beautiful old trees, but due to the 20 to 30 deer that visit our property every morning and evening because of the two creeks, all flowering plants need to be protected behind a fence.

We built this cut garden about a year and a half ago, and last season was the first year with all the plants. This year is the second season for many of the perennials and shrubs, and so far, there’s been only one breach from a deer.

Let’s enter the garden, and I’ll show you the layout. We have garden beds on each side of our outdoor covered patio, each featuring different flowering plants.

Let’s start with the cedar raised garden beds we built when we installed the garden. These beds are equipped with drip irrigation to help maintain plants in our hot and humid climate.

We also stained the raised garden beds, perimeter fence, and trellis with the same color stain as our home shutters for a cohesive look.

In this raised beds, I have viburnum plants that have grown quite large. I may need to be moved in the future. Underneath the viburnum, there are zinnias started from seed.

This is my first time starting plants from seed. It was a learning experience, but the zinnias are growing well. We also have euphorbia ‘Breathless’ planted along the exterior of the beds, adding a delicate touch.

Moving further into the garden, there are salvia, zinnias, and celosia planted in the second raised bed. The color scheme this year is pinks, purples, and whites, with variations within those color families to create a cohesive, cool palette.

At the back of the garden, we have a bed dedicated to dahlias grown from seed. Last year, we grew dahlias from tubers.

This year, I added seeds from Floret, which resulted in about 95% germination. A few cosmos and zinnias are also planted in this area. I love the formality that the holly topiaries bring to the bed.

The garden layout includes various raised beds with plants like viburnum, salvia, zinnias, and dahlias. Oakleaf hydrangeas, limelight hydrangeas, and boxwoods are also in the perimeter beds, creating a beautiful, structured backdrop.

On the other side of the garden, we have raised beds with sun-loving plants like roses and dahlias from tubers. I also experiment with container plantings here, as I can’t use flowering plants on our front porch due to deer.

In the rose-raised bed, there are David Austin English roses, including my favorite, Princess Alexandra of Kent. These roses are beautiful and have a delightful fragrance. Underneath the roses, there is gaura, which adds delicate white flowers throughout the season.

In the Dalia bed, we grow them from tubers, and this year, we’ve added varieties like ‘Peaches and Cream,’ ‘Bloomquist Allen Black Touch,’ and ‘Holly Hill Black Beauty.’ This bed will be bursting with color in a few months.

Behind the garden area is the woods, where one of the streams runs through our property, providing a natural habitat for ferns.

The last bed features spiraea and peonies. Behind that, the most productive rose bed contains Emily Brontë and Belinda’s Dream roses, which bloom profusely and offer a lovely scent.

I hope you enjoy this spring garden tour, and I’m excited to share how the garden progresses throughout the summer.

We’ve put together a great Mother’s Day gift guide! You can also shop our Mother’s Day Collection Here and a few items below.

Let me know if you have any questions about my garden, and follow us on Instagram and Pinterest for more design inspiration.

Remember, good design is for everyone, so create a home and a garden that inspires you. Have fun planting all of your beautiful flowers this season, and fall in love with where you live, one room at a time.

XO, Ashley