My Midsummer Perennial Garden

Oh, that bittersweet time of year when summer gardens have their last hurrah before shorter days and chillier temperatures arrive.  I know it's late summer (not quite fall yet for all you who love to rush the seasons 😉) but I am always late in posting gardening photos so this is what my perennial garden looks like in midsummer.  These photos were taken in mid-July through early-August which is when my garden looks best.  Wow! Can you say "Color".  I always love how the garden goes out with a big bang;  hot colors and plenty of blooms.   Let's take a walk through my garden, shall we?  As always, I will separate the photos by gardens.  I have five large garden areas:  The Septic Mound Garden, The Shed Garden, The Front Yard Gardens, The Sunroom Garden, and The Western Hill Garden.  We will begin with the Septic Mound Garden which really is my septic mound. 

The Septic Mound Garden

The Septic Mound Garden is my prettiest garden in mid to late summer for it's filled with day lilies, phlox, and Black Eyed Susans.  This is my septic mound, so other than the occasional weeding, I just let it go wild, and the wild orange day lilies do just that!

The history behind this garden is my husband didn't want to mow the grass on the septic mound because it was too steep; so he turned into a garden for me to tend 😕.  Well, I didn't exactly want to garden on a steep hill either, so I planted mostly wildflowers like the orange day lilies.  The garden is also very far from my house so I can hardly see it.  I tend to forget about it until it bursts into color like this.  I think my neighbor gets far more pleasure out of it than I do, although she did imply once that I had far too many Black Eyed Susans 😁.  Hey, if it grows, and it's happy, why not?  

The wild orange day lilies have definitely taken over the septic mound.  I just keep moving whatever gets in their way as they spread.  I could care less if the entire septic mound becomes nothing but orange day lilies...oh dear, what will my neighbor say then?

The deer love to eat phlox, but thankfully they don't eat it all so I get some blooms left by the end of summer.  Speaking of deer, I spent a small fortune on these solar animal repellents from Amazon because I had the worst deer/bunny problem ever this year.  I can honestly say, they really work!  They are annoying as heck as they flash lights and emit a high pitch sound every time I walk by, but that is better than having my entire garden ruined by ravenous animals.  I had to buy 12 of them to cover my entire yard, but I could use even more!  Hopefully they will still be working next spring. 

This is the view my neighbor sees from her yard.  Seriously, what is there to complain about? 😆

The Front Yard Gardens

I have multiple small gardens in the front of my house to greet guests as they arrive.  I also have a small pond that I can view from my kitchen window.

This garden is a mix of perennials and annuals so I have color in the front of the house all summer long. 

The front garden by the driveway is bordered with this beautiful purple coral bells which normally are destroyed by deer, but my solar animal deterrent devices have kept them away this year!

I love this cream colored day lily growing in this garden.

And this pale pink day lily ain't too bad either. 

I spent a lot of money on super petunias this year and they were worth every penny!  Of course, the deer  ate them down to nothing until I got my solar animal deterrents, but they came back!  I like to say the deer just pruned them for me.

These pretty Bachelor Buttons came back on their own from last year.

This is a light-lavender version of Bee Balm.

The birds are always so kind to plant sunflowers for me every year.

I purchased a new planter for my new deck that my husband built.  I filled it with Coleus, some pink flower whose name I can't remember 😂, and sweet potato vine.  I love the way it turned out, but the sweet potato vine has grown so much it's now laying on the deck!

The Sunroom Garden

The sunroom garden is mostly a shade garden so not much is in bloom all summer until the Black Eyed Susans bloom.  See, that's why I love Black Eyed Susans;  they are not picky! They will grow in sun or shade,

I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this harvest orange day lily.  It blooms in late summer, and just has the most gorgeous large, burnt orange blooms.

                            The Shed Garden

The Shed Garden is the oldest garden on my property and the most level.  All my other gardens are on hills.  It is filled with day lilies, Bee Balm, Asiatic Lilies, Black Eyed Susans, and more. 

I have these tall, 7-9 foot wild Rudebekias growing in the back of this garden.  My husband refers to them as "weeds", but I think they are the perfect plant to grow in the back of a garden at the bottom of the yard.  

The Western Hill Garden

My Western Hill Garden is a steep slope filled with daffodils in the spring and hosta and Black Eyed Susans for the rest of the summer.  The photo above is the view standing in the middle of this garden and the photo below is the view standing on top of the hill looking down into the yard.

There is a grassy path on top of this garden that is bordered with bright red day lilies.

Since taking these photos, the lilies have all faded, but the Black Eyed Susans and Phlox are still going strong, so the garden does not look much different at the moment.  But the time will soon come when those blooms also will fade away and I will be back with my final Late Summer/Fall Perennial Garden post.

Have A Great Day!  Amy

Linking Up with these Fabulous Blogs HERE!

For more 2026 garden updates, see these posts:

My Early Summer Perennial Garden

My Early Spring Perennial Garden

My Mid to Late Spring Perennial Garden

My Spring Garden: Flowering Crab Apples, Vibernums, Phlox, Lilacs, and Ivy

Almost every Sunday, during the growing season, I love to share "What's Blooming In My Yard"!

This is what has been blooming the past two weeks:

For weeks, I've been watching all my favorite fashion bloggers pose in front of or under gorgeous flowering trees, and it was finally my turn!  The crab apple trees bloomed in Wisconsin this week!  We have four flowering crab apple trees in our yard:  two pink and two white.  Here is the white one with some white tulips in the foreground.

The white viburnums have also started to bloom;  see it in the background?

Here's is that viburnum bush as seen from the other side of the flowering crab apple trees.  See all the green stems of the daffodils on the hillside?  The few dots of yellow is what is left of these flowering bulbs.

And here is a closeup of the flowering blooms.

This pink flowering crab apple isn't as full as the other trees because it gets too much shade, but I love it nevertheless.

The ferns planted beneath the tree are growing extraordinarily well because of all the rain we have been getting.

I under planted the ferns with a beautiful ivy.  They have a lovely yellow flower each spring.

I also have a ivy with a purple flower growing right next to it.  These two ivy's though have really taken over this garden and I will have to dig it all up and toss it someday when I have the time.

The tulips surprised me and stayed in bloom a long time this year...almost two weeks!  Most have lost their blooms by now.  The chartreuse green you see in the foreground is a ground cover sedum.

The phlox is also finishing up.  It looked so beautiful until heavy rains washed all the pretty blooms away.

 I love how the flowering branches of both the pink and white crab apple trees frame a picture of the white flowering crab apple tree in the distance and the creeping phlox.

My old wooden garden steps are deteriorating, but I love the rustic look.  Eventually we will replace them with stone steps.

This crab apple tree we planted the year my father died in honor of his memory.  We always refer to it as "Grandpa Arnold's Tree"

The view of my yard from the front porch.

 Aren't these two tulips so pretty?  They are not perennial tulips so they get less, and less every year.  Next year, I will probably only have 1 pretty tulip left.  Time to replant!

The bleeding hearts are still going strong!

 The common purple lilac bush is always the first lilac bush to bloom.  I'm still waiting on the other three varieties of lilac bushes to bloom.

I love the smell of lilacs!  Have you ever met anyone who doesn't?  I cut a bouquet of lilacs and put them in my kitchen so I could have the scent as long as possible.

My flowering onions just started to bloom.  Hopefully I can get a better picture for you later in the week.  Most of them are not fully opened yet.

I had so many flowering onions this year!  This is just one small patch.  I did re-do this garden last year so I must have dug up and divided the bulbs (I don't remember) because I never had this many flowering onions before!

And the last picture I have is my pom-pom ball Viburnum bush.  I have two of these bushes.  They are just beginning to open up.  If it ever stops raining, I will get more pictures of these beauties when they are fully opened.

Have a Great Day!  Amy

Linking Up with these Fabulous Blogs HERE!