Tingshu’s Back Garden in Late Summer

02.10.2024 - 04:07 / finegardening.com / GPOD Contributor

Hi GPODers!

Today we’re returning to the always beautiful garden of Tingshu Hu in Dunstable, Massachusetts. We’ve seen her garden through the seasons (Spring: Flowering Trees in Tingshu’s Garden, summer: Summer in Tingshu’s Front Garden and Back Garden, and fall: Tingshu’s Massachusetts Garden), and most recently saw her transform a dead patch of her lawn into a low-maintenance oasis (Tingshu’s Low Maintenance Garden in Massachusetts). Now we will be seeing all of the incredible plants and pairings that shine in her garden during the transitional period of late summer. Today is a focus on her back gardens and tomorrow we will back to tour the front garden, which will include an update on that incredible low-maintenance space she showed off earlier this year.

The center of the back garden is a Prairiefire crabapple (Malus x ‘Prairifire’, Zones 4–8). The picture shows some branches of the tree loaded with red berries. Below the crabapple tree are a few coleus plants, surrounded by creeping jenny (Lysimachia nummularia, Zones 4–8).Beside the crabapple tree are Japanese Barberry (Berberis thunbergii, Zones 5–8)and dwarf Colorado blue spruce.

Another focal point in the back garden is the fish pond. One yellow lotus (Nelumbo lutea, Zones 4–11)is blooming in the pond. Another lotus with pink flowergrows in a pot beside a pergola. There are many gold fish and bull frogs in the pond. A snake regularly visits the pond. Around the fish pond are low growing and low maintenance ground covers. A few annuals, Sallyfun™ Deep Ocean salvia (Salvia farinacea ‘Deep Ocean’, annual),floss flower (Ageratum houstonianum, annual)and zinnia, added long lasting colors. The yellow and orange flowers on the right side are black-eyed Susan and