Garden Glows and Woes in Closing Out 2025

Welcome, readers, to my Panoply blog. Before closing out the year 2025, I felt it necessary for my own journaling to capture results of my cottage garden for this fourth year in this Zone 7a cottage garden of mine. I made one post earlier in summer, here, which highlighted most of my flowering shrubs, new perennials and annuals. Perhaps this last week of December is a good time to see some garden photos, while you may be starting to dream and plan your 2026 garden beds.

One of my summer glow surprises was seeing the Summerific Summer Rose hibiscus bloom in its first year of planting. This was a new-to-me variety of Proven Winners hibiscus which grows more like a shrub than the Lord Baltimore, a leggier variety I planted more than 20 years ago in my former landscape.

I had stated in my earlier summer post that I didn't expect blooms in this first year, but the plant proved me wrong. The burgundy foliage against the summer rose blooms lasted into September. It was quite showy in the front bed near the garage as neighbors walked by.

My Bobo hydrangeas were in full bloom by mid July. I had one that survived the original garden purge of 2021 and multiple transplants over the following few years in this garden. I bought a second one two years ago, and planted them close to each other. They performed well enough in 2025, but got leggy by later in July after several storms. August was a month of drought for us so, by fall, they were more crispy than the desirable mauve tone.

I bought a Tiny Quick Fire hydrangea in late summer 2024. It is said to be a variety that blooms early; however, mine didn't start blooming until late July. It is a diminutive size in my front landscape. When it did bloom, it is exactly as I hoped it would be.

By October, it was showing some nice mauve tones.

My crepe myrtle continued to become more of a tree shaped form in 2025. This plant was started from a volunteer which sprouted from its tree that was taken out when we moved in in 2021. The blooms didn't start until July, but bloom and glow she did! By early August, the crepe myrtle was in her peak.

This is a comparative photo of how the crepe myrtle compared year over year, 2025 to 2024: I will continue pruning it into tree form, thinning out overlapping branches.

If you notice on either side of the crepe myrtle, I planted burgundy heuchera (coral bells) in 2025. These came from a neighbor's landscape as passalongs. The darker the variety, the more sun-tolerant it is supposed to be. I planted mine in early July and, as I said, August was a drought for us. Even though I tried babying them, one of the two seemed to wither. In fall, my neighbor gave me two more, and I replaced the one, and transplanted the puny one along with the extra one to another part of the garden.

When looking from the street into our landscape, I also have a dwarf butterfly (Pugster Blue) to the left of the heuchera and crepe myrtle. Filling in a small pocket to the left of the butterfly bush, I tucked a lemon coral sedum in for a bright spot in early August this year. It didn't mind the drought one bit, and was a nice addition to the landscape. You can see one of my Midnight Masquerade penstemons just behind the sedum.

Also in this main bed are three Pride and Joy "Rock 'N Round" sedums. They shaped up nicely in 2025 (planted in 2024), starting to turn their darker pink in early September.

In early September in my south bed, my Brilliant Sedum, which was a passalong from a friend in 2024, started to show some really beautiful, hot pink color. It looked especially nice against my Pinkerific dahlias. I will be repeating that dahlia in 2026. 

What became obvious to me by September was the colors I seemed to be gravitating toward overall - pinks, ranging from coral pink to hot pink and darker pinks. I love chartreuse and burgundy leaves in contrast with each other also.

It was August before I saw any butterfly and hummingbird activity, which was a bit disappointing. However, I am not feeding the birds with seed to attract them; rather, I am trying to plant to attract birds and bees . 

The zebra swallowtail was a visitor I was happy to see, but the real thrill came when the hummingbirds came to my scarlet bronze leaf cardinal flowers! 

The cardinal flowers are so striking, and I'm considering plant more of those en masse.

In my early summer post I mentioned planting silver mound artemisia in my front bed where I have coral drift roses. By September, the two plants I placed really shaped up nicely, and are SO soft to touch! I hope they do well in coming back in 2026. I only cut them back in December.

Another plant I secured in my landscape that I wrote about in the early summer post was Fothergilla (bottle brush plant). I planted a very small one in 2024, and bought a larger size to plant next to the smaller one in April of this year. Besides the pretty and fragrant namesake blooms in spring, they have brilliant fall foliage. This is how the two looked in early October. Note, the smaller plant was still greener at this point, and didn't turn more autumn-like colors until several weeks later. I feel pretty certain that it was attributable to the lesser mature age of the plant. I look forward to seeing these plants mature.

Here's another view of the Fothergilla in the landscape in early November (the bright orange in the foreground). At this point, I had cut down the baptisia (to the left, where you see the small fence piece as a marker). Other plants of note are the volunteer celosia (bright red), the reblooming PJM rhododendron in the bed next to the house stone, and fall pansies.

The beautyberry variety I have is not the American one, rather the Asian variety. The jury is still out as to whether I will keep it, but it did put on some nice color and berries in fall. 

By late October, I had cut back most of my perennials, planted my pansies, and had the landscape mulched. It was a pleasing appearance.

Now that I've discussed the glows of my garden for the latter half of 2025, let's talk about the woes. Let's start with a really disappointing woe - my Jackmanii clematis.

Remember me writing about its beautiful blooms in May? Well, lo and behold, I came outside one July day and the entire plant was a crispy critter! I ended up cutting the entire thing back, Luckily, by October I could see new growth. We'll see what 2026 brings. I sure hope it survives and comes back.

Then there's that big a$$ tree across the street that scares the bejeebers out of me every time the wind blows in gusts, or in summer storms. It is the twin to the one we removed from our landscape when we moved in 2021. I try being a good neighbor, and helped the owner reposition her hose sprinkler when she watered it in summer. No good deed goes unpunished, and I got poison ivy - between my toes and on my arm - which apparently was hidden among the liriope grasses beneath the tree.

Speaking of tree, where we removed ours and planted grass in 2021......it has been a yearly struggle to get the ground just right for a lawn. 2025 was NOT the year. After many bags of soil, new seed and watering, it still looked like crap to me in fall.  My plans for 2026 include tilling it, amending with more soil, and planting sod in this section where the tree was.

What DID seem to grow prolifically in this section of the grass in 2025 was fungus. Oh my gosh, y'all. I dug out more fungus from this section than you can even imagine. I even contacted our extension office to try to get some advice. The professor there told me my best bet was to dig it out so the spores would not spread. It's the type of fungus that grows from dead wood (tree), very hard. Even though we had the stump ground out with the tree removal, the roots of our tree ran far and deep (note the big a$$ tree in previous collage for size). At one point I had what looked like a head of cauliflower in the grass. 

I just hope I'm not throwing money away next year with my plans of tilling and planting sod after more dirt amendments.

And my last woe of this gardening year was sNOw. As a matter of fact, we had four snow events before December ended, one of them a surprise event just yesterday.

Even though it looks pretty, that white stuff can wreak havoc on shrubs, especially boxwoods. I am still babying my boxwoods from winter storm Blair in January of 2025 (ice beneath snow). December 8th ended with about 6" of snow, and I was out there brushing snow off the boxwoods twice before it ended.

That's pretty much a summary of the rest of my gardening journal for 2025. For the last two years I pre-ordered annuals, perennials and shrubs from Proven Winners in early December at 20% off, with delivery timed for my Zone 7a. I didn't do that this year, so I hope I'll still be able to get the plants I want and cannot find locally.

Are you dreaming of your garden plans for 2026 already? January is definitely a good time to do that. What garden glows and woes did you have in 2025? Let me know with a comment. Oh, one woe we didn't have were the locusts, did you? 

Our new year's eve will be quiet, but I wish you all a safe, happy and healthy new year in 2026!

Rita C. at Panoply

Parties I Share With: Pieced Pastimes, Love Your Creativity, BNOTP, My Wee Abode, French Ethereal SYS, Follow the Yellow Brick Home, County Road 407 Farmhouse Friday