DeBorrah’s Garden Sanctuary – FineGardening

My name is DeBorrah Tibbs. I live in the hot Georgia Peach state in Smyrna. Gardening is my passion and is ever changing. I have gardened most of my life, growing up in a little town called Andover, Ohio, while living on a farm growing sustenance. As I got out on my own, flowers and shrubs became my main focus and passion. What I’d like to share is my before and after garden transformation. I took a bland backyard to what I now call my garden sanctuary. This has been a six-and-a-half-year journey that I think inspired me to started my own YouTube channel, Inspiring Garden Korner, in December 2022.

The finished garden sanctuary

Here’s the space as it looked before, just as work was started making the new garden. Not much to get excited about yet!

It took a lot of work getting everything leveled and ready for building and planting.

Sometimes things have to get ugly before they get pretty, but plants in containers and a few in the ground are already making it feel like a garden even as the construction process continues.

The project is all finished and planted up. Plantings include ‘Double Knockout’ roses (Rosa ‘Double Knockout’, Zones 5–9), woodland phlox (Phlox divaricata, Zones 3–8), ‘Little Limelight’ hydrangea (Hydrangea paniculata ‘Little Limelight’, Zones 3–8), and jasmine (Jasminum officinale, Zones 7–10) in a flower box, which didn’t survive a freeze blast we had.

These dianthus (Dianthus hybrids, Zones 5–9) are blooming their heads off.

We stained our fence in slate to make everything pop, and I believe that is accomplished.

Have a garden you’d like to share?

Have photos to share? We’d love to see your garden, a particular collection of plants you love, or a wonderful garden you had the chance to visit!

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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