2025 was our first year in our new house. When we first saw the house in January, the yard was snow-covered. We fell in love with it. By the time we moved in around March, the snow had melted, but it was still hard to tell what would spring out of this incredible new-to-us land.
I set out making garden beds, and we installed a composter in the far reaches of the yard. While the organizing the inside of the house was our priority, I took breaks occasionally to tend to the growing garden beds and planters around the house.
Looking back on my camera roll for my cooking post, I realized I grew so many beautiful things that I wanted to live somewhere other than on my phone.
Here’s what I ended up growing in 2025.
Flowers
2025 was a prolific year for my flowers. I grew ranunculus as per usual. These are a seasonal depression beater for me — since they need to be started in about February where I am in zone 6b, they get me out and touching soil during a time of the year when I normally wouldn’t.
I only grew white ranunculus this year, and I didn’t get many since we got married in their prime blooming season and I didn’t have much time to tend to them! But here’s one on the right in a little pasta jar arrangement I made.
Which leads me to the star of the season…
One day on Facebook someone in the local Buy Nothing group said they had dug up two David Austin roses and were going to trash them if no one wanted them by the end of the day. I commented, they sent their address, and I ended up picking up two rose bushes. I had no idea what would come of them, but I figured I’d take a chance — I’d always wanted to try one of these roses.
They completely blew my mind. These came out of that bare root ball that were slated for the trash. I’m so grateful!
They also smell like perfume, you can smell them from across the room. I absolutely cannot wait to see what happens when this plant is even more established this year.
I couldn’t stop making arrangements with them, but can you blame me???
Also in early spring, these little guys sprung up along the side of our house. No one could really see them so I cut them and brought them in.
Zinnias took off for me this year! I liked them a lot and they were so easy to grow. Will be planting more next year — I harvested the seeds from some of these so we’ll see if those grow, too.
Vegetables
I got a very late start on vegetable growing because of the wedding and all the travel we did early this year. So, I didn’t get much in the beds until later in June or early july.
However, that meant that we got a ton of jalapenos. We got our first ones in August and they kept coming until October.
Later, we got some green bell peppers too, and the zucchinis peaked in September!
I forgot about this one over Labor Day weekend and found it like this afterwards.
It was absolutely a productive first year in my garden, and I’m so excited to see what I can do next year with this magical land I get to live on.
(Note: I didn’t include my fruit bushes that I planted in June! I planted blueberry, blackberry and raspberry bushes, but I’m playing the long game with them. I pruned off flowers before they could fruit, hoping that they’ll take more time to build up their roots. Maybe in 2026!)
