Hi, I'm Beth with 50 plus Beauty and I'm excited that you're here with me this morning for an unusual video. I'm going to be showing you my front yard. Actually, I was going to show you my front and my back yard. However, I've had a rose disease in my back yard and I lost a lot of rose bushes last year and I lost a tree amazingly enough. So my back yard garden is not perfect right now. However, if you'd like to see it, leave me a comment below and I would be glad to show you that. Plus, just today we are getting our lower deck screened in in the back yard. So that should be interesting. So if you'd like to see all that, let me know. But basically, I'll give you a little bit of history on me as a gardener. I started gardening when Alan and I first got married 35 years ago. I think I threw out some zine seeds and that was my first attempt at gardening. And it actually turned out very beautifully. The zine really came up and we didn't live in the best neighborhood then. And so it really brightened our yard to have those flowers. And I started from there and kind of kept on going. At different points, I've been kind of addicted to gardening. You can see behind me. There is some of my garden. I'll show you that in just a few minutes. But the point of this video is to tell you how to do easy gardens which after 35 years of ordering things from plant catalogs and all of that. I realize that most of the plant catalog plants are very finicky. And I realize that I don't want to spend my whole life out in the garden. I just really want easy care gardens. So I will show you my front yard and give you some tips on how to do that. I was in the master gardener program. In fact, this is my little t-shirt that I had. That's a great program for people who love gardening. But you have to give a lot of volunteer hours to your community. And I did that for two years, maybe about five years ago. And I worked full time and I have a very full life. I think it's more designed for people that are retired. Certainly when I started my YouTube channel a year ago, there was no way that I could do that anymore. If you're not a subscriber, I hope you'll subscribe and click that little bell. That will notify you of my future videos. Mostly they're about anti-aging. But sometimes I do videos about other parts of my life. Like I've showed you my home and my Christmas decor and some things that I enjoy with regard to my house, I guess. Okay, well, let me go ahead and I'll show you my front yard and give you some tips. This is the outside of my house. This is actually the next warning because I realized that the intense sun yesterday afternoon when I started the video was knowing out the colors. It was making them look a lot more blurred out. This is the front bed. And I added this bed since we moved into the house. When we moved into the house nine years ago, the house was three years old and already had these two maple trees in the front yard. And they're absolutely glorious. I'll try to find a picture of them in the fall. They're beautiful. But in this front planting bed, which is water by just the sprinkler. It doesn't have a separate watering system. So it has a challenge keeping things alive. I have some single knockout red roses here. Really love the knockout roses. And here are some Stella de Orde lilies, which grow like weeds here in Kansas. They're wonderful in Midwest. They're great variety. And there is some purple cat mint. I can't believe I'm going to be a little bit more beautiful. I cannot remember the variety. And we did a little creek bed look here because we have a stone house. And so we wanted to tie in the stone. And there's a look at the front of the house. I love a lot of color up near the front door. There are two simple steps to creating a really easy flower garden. And the first is to use perennials because perennials come back every single year. You plant once and they come back mostly every single year. Some of them die after a few years. But mostly they keep coming back and you do need to divide them, which makes them a little bit challenging. In fact, my de Orde lilies here need to be divided this year. But they really grow like weeds. The second tip is to use plants that are very native to your area that grow well in your area. Case state, which I'm in Kansas, they do a wonderful horticulture program where they test perennials and annuals to find the best living, most blooming type perennials that we can plant. That we can grow here in Kansas that require the least amount of care. I have been a gardener for many, many years and I used to order a lot of things from catalogs. But I really no longer do that anymore because I don't want to garden 24 seven. I want my garden to be pretty and bright and have long lasting blooms. So I don't go for the fancy varieties anymore. To learn the best plants for your area, usually it's great to go to a big box store, go to a loge or a home depot because they guarantee their plants for a year. So they generally have plants that do well in each zone. That's the way I want my garden to look is like a cottage garden. Alam and I went to London and saw a lot of gardens and they're usually overflowing with flowers, which I think is absolutely beautiful. So there's walking up to the front door and I've combined a border of Stella de Orde lilies with purple. I like the contrast of the purple. This is Salvia. It's a variety called Maynight, which is one of the K-State favorites. I think it's called the Prairie Bloom Program that they have. A week ago, these looked absolutely glorious, but as you can see, the seed heads are now coming up. The blooms have gone off the plants and I need to cut those back. To keep your perennials and your annuals blooming, it's important to cut off the spent heads. These are single knockout red roses. Love those. In the backyard though, I've lost a lot of my roses and they were the single knockouts or the double knockouts due to a z-called rose razzette. For a great hedge in the Midwest, I like Manhattan uanomas. I love the shiny nature of those leaves. I think they're just gorgeous. And this plant grows like a weed, which I love. Boxwoods in the back. There's a blue globe spruce, which I do try to keep cut back. It was one of the few things that was here when we moved in. I'll show you the front porch in just a minute. Well, there's a look at the front porch. But here's a look at the other side of the border. And it has the Stella's, the Stella de Orde lilies. And de orde lilies are called de orde because each of them only lasts for one day. And then here is a lovely pink double knockout rose. And you can tell it's a double knockout because it has two rows of petals, not just one as the reds over there just had one. So it looks a little more splashy in terms of color. And then behind that is the cat mint, which does grow wonderfully. And here I wish you could see this in a month because these are beautiful white daisies with yellow centers. They're called chastodaisies and they are very native to this part of the country. They grow like weeds and they get very tall like a foot tall. They're beautiful. This is a Patriot Haasda. Actually, I believe it's three Patriots, which I planted about three years ago in front of a white rose bush. I think that's a seafoam rose, not sure. But the Patriot Haasda was voted Haasda of the year by the American Haasda Association a few years back. And it is absolutely beautiful. It's one of the best Haasda's for sunny locations. It can do well and shade, but it really thrives in the sun. And as you can see, it's gotten very large, which I love. Here is a different variety of daisy. It's not the chastodaisie. It's a smaller, more compact variety. And it is about to bloom, which will be really exciting. Have some more boxwoods. And then I also have a few lawn ornaments. I love lawn jewelry. I've got the blue ball there. And back over here, I have a wonderful little deer. And this may be old lady. I don't know that I love lawn ornaments. I feel like it's fun to decorate the outside of your house in addition to the inside. Normally you can see a little bit of the coral color on his ear there. Normally when I have more time, I will go in every few years and do a color wash. Take a little bit of latex paint that's in a coral color, mix it with a little water, make a glaze, and just take five minutes to color him a little more coral color instead of the cement color. And here is my front window box. I love this box because it is very easy in terms of watering. It has a reservoir underneath. The bottom probably third of it is actually a reservoir. So I water it very well once a week. And the water goes down into the reservoir. And so I don't have to water it every day, which is lovely. And I have geraniums in this box. And I have cascading purple and pink petunias. And I cannot remember the name of the cascading green leaves that are coming down. I cannot remember what those are called, but I use them a lot each year because they do trail over the side of the box. And here is the front porch. And I have some really nice pots. And I didn't use to use pots on my front porch because I felt like pots should be up near the door. And obviously I have shade back there. But this year, a friend of mine gave me one of these geraniums. And I just plunted out there to see and I really liked it. So I started adding pots kind of narrowing the front stairway. But I got those at Walmart. Just those were pre-planted pots in the front and the geraniums in the back. And the the reef is interesting. It's from Hobby Lobby. And I bought it in about five days later. Took it down for some reason. And noticed that I had a bird's nest in it with robins eggs. And at first I thought, gosh, it's so interesting that Hobby Lobby added that little extra decor piece onto the reef. But then my husband made me realize that it was really a robins nest. So I put the reef back up and was not using the front porch. And within five days, those eggs hatched in the little birdies flew away. So that was really kind of a neat thing. Love the birds. And I have several bird feeders in my yard. Here is one. And the birds really do love to come. I use black oil sunflower seeds. There's a look at where I live. As you can hear, the birds are really going wild. It's about 7.30 in the morning. So that's a look at the front. I've got an S up there. When we bought this house, it was very, very plain on the outside. Not very attractive. So the flowers and the lawn jewelry and really, really help things. Well, that was a look at my easy care front yard. If you'd like to see my backyard, please leave a comment in the link below. And as always, I hope you subscribe. Take care. Have a wonderful summer day.