10 Readers Share Their Gorgeous Gardens

I live in a rental apartment with a backyard. My first spring here, I excitedly used an app to identify each new plant that emerged, only to find that highly invasive garlic mustard and black swallowwort dominated the yard. Since then, I’ve planted some things but mostly focused on controlling the spread of these two invasive plants. It’s SO satisfying, in my third spring here, to see that all my weeding has paid off: there is barely any garlic mustard and black swallow wort appearing, and there is space for the native and non-invasive plants to spread! I’m especially happy to be rid of black swallow-wort, which mimics milkweed and kills monarch caterpillars. If you live in the northeastern US – look out for it… it will become your sworn enemy too

Sprinkler under the trampoline is indeed a favourite cool off trick in Australia. I love that Bluey has brought Australian culture to the world. After years of being inundated with US culture it is wonderful for our kids to see their culture celebrated. I think especially for Christmas. A hot Christmas with a swim and barbie is a real thing.

Hannah, if that’s your front door, we’d love to see the house inside! I feel sure it’s charming!

Please make this a regular feature. It was so up lifting . Our gardens are as varied as our homes. I was thrilled to see two gardens in England featured, especially the one from my home town, Bristol. Thank you for this fun article.

Altadena! My heart. Jennifer, your photo and words brought tears. Such a wild mystery how nature finds a way to both destroy and uplift. Fellow SoCal girl here – you are not forgotten. Chin up.

HAHAHAA Sharon!!!! I caught someone taking a photo of my front boulevard garden last year (after I had spent the whole weekend working on it!) and I immediately texted all my friends to brag. I might have even posted an insta story about it. This year though, 1/3 of the perennials I planted in that spot didn’t grow back. Sob!

SHARON from Guilford — HI from Eva from Branford!!! I knew your house looked familiar!! I’ve driven past it many times and love the pink vibes :) :)

It is still a cool and damp spring in Maine, but friends who aren’t teachers engaged in end-of-year busy-ness are starting to garden, and I’m making plans! My family has a long-standing love for Arnold Lobel’s Toad and Frog books, and the one about the garden rings so, so, so true as Frog yells at his seeds to start growing in one day and Toad keeps reminding him that they take time! Support your local library and while your littles (or your grownup self) are waiting for sprouts, go read it and smile.

Post from Gabby please about how I can be exactly like her please thanks!!!

Oh my goodness, Hannah’s front door! <3 <3 <3 It looks like a real-life Secret Garden to my suburban American eyes. Now I want to plant rosemary by my front door.

This made my day, so so lovely. Please can it become a regular thing?!? Happy weekend. X

Who knew that a garden post would make me tear up! Altadena irises, a son on a blanket to be close to mom, postpartum planting, whimsy and wonder, grandfathers garden…I could go on as literally all of these touched my heart and made me smile. Thanks COJ community x

Can this be a recurring post like house tours? I love seeing the corners of our little worlds and learning that in that littleness there is so much bigness.

What a beautiful post, I love all these gardens. I am trying to garden with relatively low cost, on very hard clay soil in California. I converted the front from lawn over 6 years of “dead” to native and pollinator-friendly plants and bushes. It was hard work, and it’s not traditionally pretty but I love sitting on my door stoop on a warm sunny day and watch the bees and butterflies enjoying the flowers. We plant mostly in winter when the clay is softened by the rain, and my first stop at Lowes or Home Depot is always the clearance rack where I found most of my plants at reduced prices.

I love this post so much. I dream of my garden during the long winter months (I’m in Ontario, Canada), and some of my beloved perennials are finally starting to appear again. I love inspecting every tree and plant daily, as things change so quickly! One of my favourite things to do is take neighbourhood walks and admire the gardens 🌷

I live in a 4th floor flat. I get extreme garden envy, even though I’ve never really had a green thumb. I’ve been teaching my 2 year old the names of flowers in the park and he loves using the watering can at my in-laws’ house, so we just got some balcony baskets and Seedballs. It’s a UK brand where the seeds come with everything they need in a little clay ball that you can drop anywhere. We’ve put them in their pots and started watering them and I’m hopeful that we’ll get some flowers. I know he’ll enjoy watering the soil regardless, but it would be much more exciting if things started to grow.

I think this post looks like a garden, each reader being a curious and beautiful plant! I really like each story and their photo, all so well told. You make me feel like having a garden and feeling the green under my feet… all I have is two empty balconies, I should make them mini garden fairies! Love from Paris (haven’t bumped into Joanna yet).

I could read this post every week. It’s so calming! More garden tours!

The irises in Altadena made tear up! A sign of hope AND resilience. I know the road is very long but wishing you more glimmers of hope and beauty this spring. Rooting for Altedena and its people. 🤍

Jennifer of Altadena, your irises growing after such devastation made me cry. We lost our home in a flood in 2012 during hurricane Sandy (Long island). It’s so hard. I wish you deep, enduring strength and a bright and happy future wherever you make your new home ❤️

Jennifer’s Altadena garden photo made me choke up. Hope, indeed. <3

I feel like the world is crashing and changing and burning outside this space. I come here for respite from the eye-watering headlines, mind boggling developments and numerous wars (India-Pakistan joining the list now unfortunately). While it is certainly nice to talk clothes and gardens and summer, I think it would be helpful to understand how folks are dealing with changes and preparing for economic changes (if any). I get this feeling that everyone is avoiding talking about the issues at hand – price changes, unemployment, jobs drying up and trying to pretend that it is business as usual. While Im glad that is the case for majority of people following this blog, there are a few of us who are unable to ignore the happenings because either it is affecting us directly or hitting close to home. It would help to have some discussions around what are families doing to prepare for economic hardships (should they happen?), how are you navigating your careers/higher education amidst the turmoil? How are you keeping calm? How are you raising children in this era of militant social media and keeping them away from bad news? While the content here has given me joy in the past, currently it seems a bit disconnected from reality and I want to urge this amazing community of women to talk about these issues, give practical tips and help us all get through.

Check out your local libraries to see if they have a seed catalog. Here in AZ, all locations seem to have one and you can typically get three packets at a time. (The ‘packets’ vary from having two to five seeds in them). I’ve gotten seeds ranging from petunia, sunflower, melons, carrots, kale, spinach, basil, wildflowers…so many different seeds. It’s such a great way to grow something you love, try something new and support your local library 🌻📚

This post made me laugh out loud and smile. What great joy! Thank you, Cup of Jo gardeners. for sharing and being an inspiration!

Beautiful gardens!! And so nice to see Naudia’s update from the previous garden post. :)

Great post! Just lovely.

I planted a little mango tree two years ago when we moved into our new house, and it flowered for the first time this year!! I currently have one little mango growing. Cross your fingers and send prayers that my first mango makes it to ripe this summer!

There’s almost nothing on earth I love more than looking at gardens, so thank you for this post! When my husband and I bought our house a few years ago, the smallish yard we inherited had 17 (!) blueberry bushes, a pie cherry tree, and the largest rhubarb plant I’ve ever seen. We’ve since planted raspberries, persimmons, mulberries, grapes, hops, Asian pears, figs, and kiwis. There will hopefully be some apple trees in the future. We’ve also planted about 150 native plants, and I’d encourage anyone who’s interested to look into what’s native in your area. Natives support the whole ecosystem, and once established require almost no care and watering because they’re adapted to your region. I still have my favorite non-natives, like peonies, but learning about and tending to the plants that have grown in my area for millennia, has made me feel more connected to the earth.

Sharon, I would 1000000% stop on my walk or even pull over my car to take in your home and garden! Whenever there is a garden I especially admire, I always hope the owners of the home will be outside so I can gush to them about it!

Last year we moved from the suburbs to a little city, Lancaster city, in PA. We have this beautiful Victorian and a big enough for the city backyard. Last summer, I was sick a lot and didn’t really do much, and the squirrels ate most of what I had planted, including my strawberry plants. This spring as I was cleaning up the yard and taking stock of things, I realized how many outdoor plant pots I brought from the burbs to here…lets just say it’s very clear that I tended to my mental health with gardening during Covid. Now it looks like I have a serious hoarding problem, but only plant pots.

OMG. the apple seed. dead. little factoid: Did you know the seed of an apple does not produce the same apple as its parent! The seed is a genetic combination of the flower tree and the pollinator. Apples are “extreme” heterozygotes. Their genetic makeup includes variations, that combine randomly and cause significant differences from each apple’s parents! Kinda like us! I learned this fact reading The Botany of Desire and bust it out on my family verrrrry often. It’s my emotional support fact.

I’ve planted a flower garden that blooms for ages in my front yard–from crocuses & forsythia that herald the spring to tulips and daffodils and hyacinths to (right now) alliums and irises, which will give way to peonies and native baptisia, which will give way to cosmos (planted because they’re my sister’s favorites) and geums and lavenders and roses. I love seeing people out on their walks admiring them, including the attractive man I’ve inwardly deemed “grumpy guy with a cute dog” who shyly told me he liked my flowers when our paths crossed recently. In my backyard, I have a small pond with a waterfall filled with goldfish with long, flowy tails, a coop with chickens where I can read surrounded by shade trees, and that little sanctuary is just for me. The color I offer the world, and the stillness for myself!

More Sharon content 🤣!

@Helen – The trampoline + sprinkler combo is a well loved summer tradition at our house, also inspired by the inimitable Heeler fam. Unfortunately (or fortunately) both our front and back yards have trees on trees on trees so growing a vegetable garden is almost impossible (well, that and the heat of a Texas summer makes any living thing wilt within minutes). I’ve made do with shade and heat hardy plants but am so envious of everyone growing their own tomatoes and cucumbers. Ah well, at least the trees give my kids space to climb and our dog squirrels to harass.

Sharon made me laugh out loud. You’re my kind of people! Merrill’s sweet photo with her son warmed my (mother of a 13-year-old) heart.

My dear friend sometimes struggles with her mental health this time of year. Something about the light, long days and her bipolar disorder. She’s a person of immense curiosity and intelligence, one of the billion things I so love about her. This year her extra energy and drive to find positive, healthy and safe outlets for that energy have led her to gardening. She started hundreds of tomatoes, peppers, cukes, melons, squashed. And she’s grafting trees too! Learning about exotic and heirloom varieties. Writing to universities and home extension programs for more info. And gifting all of her lucky friends so many starts. I have a tray full waiting to go into my garden. They may look like tiny tomato plants but they are really little green shoots of hope and healing and a friendship that has lasted decades. Those tomatoes are gonna taste so good come August. And she gonna be ok. I’m making sure.

Exactly what I needed today, thank you! This year I will be gardening in my yard and my neighbor’s beautiful backyard garden beds. She had a stroke last year and lives alone in the house her grandparents (!!!) built. She doesn’t garden, so I will grow things for both of us!

Sharon, you are woman after my own heart. I totally understand … I love ever single compliment my husband and I get when it comes to the well-pampered ferns on our front porch, or flowers blooming on the side yard, etc.

Gardening for the “ love the fame and glory” has to be the best reason to garden I’ve heard.

Love love love this post! And I love love love gardening! I’m currently reading “Nature’s Best Hope” and learning about the Homegrown National Parks organization. Considering becoming obsessed with native plants. Anyone out there read this book??? Any other garden book recs? I can’t get enough! I love all kinds! (Most influential of all time for me is “Food Not Lawns.”)

a tip I learned from Birnam Wood ( a great book but a bit negative of a portrayal of enthusiastic gardening iykyk ) is to put vaseline under your finger nails to help keep dirt out. getting dirt under my nails and seeming to never ever totally get them clean was a reason I was never a very committed gardener

I want to see the rest of Hannah’s house. It looks magical!

My garden is truly my happy place. It’s small but fruitful. We have been feasting on lettuce, kale, radishes and chives all spring. Can’t wait for the tomatoes to start flowering. Or the zucchini, delicata squash, fairy tale eggplant, peas, potatoes, beans, carrots, herbs, etc! The potatoes were sent from Canada by a stranger from an online message board. Last year I dedicated some space to a perennial flower garden. I have irises sent by another online stranger, peonies given to me from a friend’s cuttings, coneflowers, lavender, dahlias, tulips, daffodils, butterfly bushes, SAFFRON!!!, and many others. I spend at least an hour after work each day out there tending to my babies and weeding. I cannot get enough.

As a fellow Helen, I am OBSESSED with the Bluey sprinkler trampoline garden. We’re redoing our deck in the back garden and I needed some inspiration for what we could do with planting/pots around our graveled area.

My community garden plot is going strong – rosemary, rhubarb, California poppies, radishes, cilantro and other herbs, snap peas, and beans. We’re tucked into the middle of a housing complex and if you didn’t know there was a garden there, you’d never know. It is the urban adult’s version of the Secret Garden!

Sharon, I just died laughing at “‘Thank you! I’m just having fun and experimenting!’ Meanwhile, I’m researching the best soil in a book called Soil, haha.” I did the same thing–took out books from the library, purchased some, dogeared them, made a plan, etc. We finally hired a landscaper to do a few bigger projects that I couldn’t handle myself. I was like “We don’t know what we’re doing, we trust you, do whatever you think is best” and my husband was like “Sweetie, do you want to show her your spreadsheet?” Busted.

I love this post so, so much! Lauren, how wonderful that you are following in your grandfather’s footsteps. Naudia, the Cinderella pumpkin story is so magical. Sharon, your flowers must give so much joy to people who walk by. You deserve all the praise. Hannah (USA), the tiny little shoot sprouting, I can imagine how exciting that must have been. Hannah (England), wonderful idea, I am so tempted to do the same with rosemary at my door. Gabby, I love how mindful you are about giving back. Helen, so much joy in that photo. Jessica, you have inspired me to create a small pollinator garden. Jennifer, a beautiful sign of hope. Merrill, I love how your son is close by while you garden.

Not to be a downer, but this blog and this post are keeping me going right now. My mom is dying and the grief is unbearable. Thank you so so much for these pockets of joy 💛

Soo beautiful!! I would love to grow herbs but I don’t have a yard. I do have small patch of dirt by our front door so I’m going to try to plant a little grocery store rosemary plant. Any advice on how to grow cilantro and basil? I’ve tried keeping the basil plant in a pot by our sunny front door. I’ve also tried keeping an herb plant in our kitchen that doesn’t have a ton of natural light and have had no luck growing it there. I’m open to all suggestions! Thank you!

Pro gardening tip (for the not-so pro gardener) that I learned from my mom: Lowe’s and Home Depot both have great return policies (1year) for plants that have died; just save your receipt and the pot, no explanation of your shortcomings required. Knowing this has allowed me to take a few more risks even though plants have gotten so expensive!

Sharon is my new inspiration. We also live on a busy street with a giant front yard that fell into some disrepair but that I’m working hard to bring back. I will know I’ve made it when I can sit on the front patio fielding compliments, and I will be keeping “Thank you, I’m just having fun and experimenting!” in my back pocket for that moment.

Gardens are a sign of hope and resilience. I spend my day working for native plants, for pollinators, and to support the environment, while my own garden is an overgrown, messy jumble of native plants, herbs, and food crops. It makes me so happy to sit on the small porch and watch butterflies and birds, to pick a salad from my front yard. When things are hard, our gardens are there for us.

I’m obsessed with an older show on Max about a flower / seed farm – Growing Floret. It’s so calming and inspiring!

This post’s time is perfect! My daughter has a track meet tonight and her two races are four hours apart. My neighbor agreed to meet me at the garden center nearby to help me shop for my garden this year. I can’t wait to get everything planted this weekend! <3

I live in Edmonton Alberta, and in our climate you have to wait until May long weekend to start planting your garden and flowers. But I’ve gotten more into perennials over the years and so they’ve been sprouting up quickly as it’s been a hot dry spring for us so far. I’m most excited about the hydrangeas I planted in the front of the house- I’m hoping they get huge and at the end of the season I cut the stems and dry them and they’re gorgeous in a vase all year long!

My small “garden” is doing well! I moved recently from a house with a large garden I tended for many years to one with zero yard and only a back deck. Was sad to leave my beautiful garden behind but have now embraced potted plant life. I now have a blueberry bush, a small fig, a loquat tree, a cherry tomato plant, a pepper plant and a few pots of flowers. Does anyone have recommendations for plants that do especially well in pots? Or trees that do well?? I live in DC so have a long growing season ahead and am looking forward to experimenting with different things

Three things – – radishes! They are SO eager to pop out of the ground so perfect for early satisfaction. I volunteer with first graders at their school garden and when I saw how fast they sprouted, I immediately went to the garden store to get my own. We are gonna be French and eat ’em with baguettes and butter. – when I was a novice, I put an ask out to our community garden group and a master gardener kindly gave me a tour and sent me home with “volunteer” sprouts of her native perennials. So check with the community and you may get free plants! 3 years later and they are thriving – next week I’m delivering volunteers from my yard to the school’s butterfly space. – my kindergartener LOVED collecting sticks from the local woods to make our own cucumber trellis. It was such a fun activity to do together – sticks, rope, dirt – all up his alley. And then we watched Youtube videos on managing suckers on your cucumber plants and he really got into it.

Jennifer from Altadena’s post broke my heart yet made my day. Just amazing.

The beautiful uniqueness of each garden shines!

I live on a busy street and I have a small urban garden. It’s such a challenge. Steep slope. Sandy soil. Pollution. Exposure to salt in the winter. Dog pee all year long. Direct hot sun. Some neighbours gently told me to let it be—gardening is these conditions is near impossible. I didn’t listen. My heart sang a different song. I decided to spoil the land with compost, water and llci g attention instead. I am happy to say that my yard is thriving. My kids love looking for bugs and climbing the magnolia tree. Pedestrians get to enjoy it when it’s in bloom. In the summer, with all the sedums, succulents and blooming lambs ears, it feels it looks a bit like a coral reef—bring me back to my days of being a scuba diver. Bumble bees go nuts for my wild rose bush. It’s so fun watching them gorge on nectar and then pass out into middle of a flower. Every year a robin will build a nest and I get to watch a baby bird come into its own. I feel like the air is just a tad little clearer from my porch. People my age are going out to restaurants, seeing concerts and shows and parties and bars. I still do those things too. But there is equal joy to relish when you build a relationship with nature. Nature does not care that you forget to put on dependant. It gives back so much more than it gives. It feels like a long lost extension of my spirit, something I lost long ago and am slowly returning to. I cannot recommend it enough.

Let’s have a post on readers’ front doors. There is something so specifically beautiful and personal about that first moment when we open our doors to come home or welcome guests.

Jennifer: EB White wrote essays at the end of WWII that are collected in the book The Wild Flag. The title references a little parable he writes about how, after the world ends, a few people are left from each continent and when they meet to discuss the future, someone proposes that the iris be the flag for a united world because it grows and adapts everywhere. Merrill: Hello and many good wishes from a fellow PNWer gardening through life transitions. The picture of you and your kiddo is beautiful. There’s something really inspiringly resilient about your overalls and bucket of weeds. :)

I am Hannah with the apple seed and wood chip!! I can’t believe all these amazing gardens filling up the neighborhoods. My renewed attempt this year at gardening came after my mom’s difficult diagnosis and the realization that i had the privilege to carry on her epic gardening legacy. I started with reading “Braiding Sweetgrass” to learn how to approach gardening with less perfection and more joy. I am learning right alongside my kids while asking my mom questions every minute I get with her. Sooooo, there is a story behind the tears over an apple seed! Love the dahlias so much…could we get a cup of Jo article on how to grow those luscious blooms??

I love this post so much. Thank you to everyone for sharing. I’m inspired to put pots of rosemary on my gorgeous, roomy balcony! And geraniums – I need geraniums in old olive oil tins; to remind me of my father, who always had pots of red geraniums on the go during the summer.

Love this post! One of my favorite picture books is MISS RUMPHIUS . All you gardeners will enjoy it

This post! It brightened my day in sorts of ways! It’s a much needed break while Israel continues to annihilate Palestine and now India, following suit, started a war against Pakistan while running an ongoing ethnic cleansing. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/nijjar-killing-arrests-made-1.7192807

oh this is very timely because i just decided to take over planting the tree beds on my manhattan block. i’m just going to dive in and see what takes. we’ve already planted some seeds and next will be the tulip bulb giveaway on park ave this weekend. i figure, why not transplant them over to my neighborhood? free bulbs!!

Jennifer, your iris are such a sign of hope! I named my daughter Iris because they grow tall and proud, they are lovely in so many varied ways, and they are survivors! At least in my climate, you can’t hardly kill ‘em! Cheers to hope and survival!

I very recently moved and bought a house with dirt and sand for a front yard. Our new neighbors were in the middle of a major garden renovation by their own hands. They did a totally xeriscape yard with full native and pollinator plants. Stunning, right? After talking to our neighbor she revealed that she is a master gardener with years of experience. She and her husband received gold medal recognition from the local extension for the beauty and eco friendliness of their garden. I decided to “copy” their design in my much smaller yard and called a landscaper and had the work done. I did nothing but make a call. My yard is now stunning and other neighbors will stop and drop compliments. I am like, I did nothing but copy my neighbor. NOW my neighbor wants to recommend me for recognition!! WHAT? NO! I did absolutely nothing but make a call. I might become a local celebrity as a “master gardener”!!!!! hahaha

All unique! All beautiful! Thank you for sharing! 🌞🌱🌿🪴🌸🌼👩‍🌾🦋