Hi GPODers!

We’re back in the garden of a frequent Garden Photo of the Day contributor, Kathy Schreurs in Sheldon, Iowa. She has shared so many great photos of her garden and the plant arrangements she has created over the years (check a handful of those out, here: Not Only Violets Are Blue, Iowa Spring, Bringing the Outdoors In, Vintage Wall Pockets Full of Flowers, and Kathy’s Iowa Garden), and today she’s back with a look at what was blooming in July.

Hello, my name is Kathy, and I garden with my husband in a small town in Iowa. I’ve enjoyed submitting photos in the past to GPOD.

Our property, an oversized city lot, is divided into sections by picket fences that were first built by a previous owner decades ago. One section separates the front yard from the back, and I can see it from a kitchen window.

A view out to Kathy’s various garden segments, with the white picket fence that delineates the different sections just barely in few behind the endless streams of gorgeous summer flowers.

As the mailman said recently, “I love the smell of your yard.” So do I. The scent of summer phlox (Phlox paniculata, Zones 4–8) and Orienpet lilies is amazing! They’re especially fragrant when the humidity is high and —this is Iowa in midsummer—it usually is!

Daisies pop up and peek through the phlox as the lilies begin to fade away.

A peek over the fence at the backyard in mid-July.

I hide some pots along the edges of the side yard garden. This Kong coleus (Solenostemon scutellarioides ‘King Kong’, Zones 10–11 or as an annual) and a pot of nicotiana are tucked up against the fence and visible when I come out of a side door.

A separate garden area is a little more orderly than the garden view from my kitchen window, and a path runs through it.

The entrance to this garden is bee and butterfly busy right now. Both love the alliums. If you look carefully, you can spot an Eastern tiger swallowtail. The goldenrod just beyond it will soon be a vivid yellow.

Around the 4th of July, Asiatic lilies add color and excitement. I love the Tango varieties.

A closer look at those lilies shows off their beautiful pink coloration. If you look close enough, you’ll notice little blushes of yellow as well… what a wonderful variety!

‘Truffula’ gomphrena (Gomphrena pulchella ‘PAST0517E’, annual) are reliable and hardy bloomers right up until frost. And they don’t mind that we’ve had very little rain in July.

By mid-July the hydrangeas are opening, and the ‘Sun King’ aralia (Aralia cordata ‘Sun King’, Zones 3–8) has reached its full growth for the summer.

On the other side of the path from the aralia, I have a cheerful group of annuals. This year the birds gifted me with a larkspur (Consolida ajacis, annual)—there is a patch of them in the backyard—and it adds a nice exclamation point, I think, to the low-lying annuals around it. July just might be my favorite season in the garden.

Thanks for the flower-filled update on your garden, Kathy! Always a pleasure to see the amazing plants you’re growing, and hope to see some of the amazing indoor arrangements you make with all these incredible blooms!

Have a garden you’d like to share?

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To submit, send 5-10 photos to [email protected] along with some information about the plants in the pictures and where you took the photos. We’d love to hear where you are located, how long you’ve been gardening, successes you are proud of, failures you learned from, hopes for the future, favorite plants, or funny stories from your garden.

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