My Urban Summer Garden

An Urban Summer Garden tour with cozy seating areas, loads of flowers and a pretty vegetable garden! Lots of ideas for your own outdoor space.

Hello friends, I’m so happy that you are here!  I’m participating in the Seasonal Simplicity Summer blog hop series hosted by my friend Krista of Happy Housie, and today we’re sharing our outdoor spaces with you! In case you missed my other posts in this summer series, you can find my Summer Garden Mantel here, as well as my Summer Kitchen here, and my No Sew Outdoor Tablecloth/Picnic Blanket here.  And be sure to visit all of the pretty outdoor spaces in the links at the bottom of this post, there is SO much summer inspiration for you. xo

As part of this little tour, I’m actually going to show you two areas of our back garden, the patio and my little vegetable garden…I’ve packed quite a bit into our little city yard ha!

My Summer Patio

Last summer while we were on l*ockdown we decided to redo our deck…I mean we figured since we were at home why not do some renovation work!  We’ve been in our home for over 15 years and the deck was starting to show it’s age so it was time to replace it anyway. We didn’t want anything fancy, we just wanted a simple single tier deck off the back of the house that was big enough for all of our outdoor furniture.

And that’s what we got!  I love it so so much…our original deck was actually two tiers which didn’t make it easy to place any kind of furniture, but now it’s a dream!  I have all this space for our outdoor couches, chairs, planters, the umbrella and barbecue!  It seems like a lot, but we spend as much time as we can out here and I want it to be inviting and comfortable.

It looks like a lot of seating, but we’re a family of 5 and we’re also hoping to open our home to friends and family again this summer…I can’t wait!  There’s a place for errrrrrrbody.

I love the shadow the sun makes on the pillow on this chair!  It looks like a sun!

A space to dine and relax.

Whenever possible we eat every meal we can out on the deck…our summers are so fleeting where I live so we try to soak them in!

I actually really really love summer dining…for all of our meals I like to line all the food up on our kitchen counter, buffet-style, then let everyone help themselves and head out on to the deck to eat. It feels so relaxed and nice.

Just add flowers.

No summer patio is complete without flowers!  I used to pack our deck with flowers, but I don’t really like to do that anymore…with all the furniture and our dogs, it can start to feel pretty crowded. So I’ve kept the flower pots to a minimum here, and instead have most of them down in the garden part of our yard.

I just had to share this picture of my little shadow boy Blu…he is everywhere I am, and I mean everywhere. Either at my heels or somewhere staring at me…case in point, see below. Staring, smiling.  haha

A simple and pretty lighting idea.

While I was arranging my deck space I saw this wire tomato cage and thought how nice it would look wrapped in a string of fairy lights…it looks really pretty at night!

In the night garden.

I especially love our garden in the evening just as the sun is going down…everything is still, the twinkle lights are glowing and everything smells and looks so fresh. It’s my favourite.

A perfect spot to read a book.

Let there be shade!

This is actually what our deck looks like 95% of the time in summer…we almost always have the screened umbrella up for shade and it makes the most lovely little outdoor room.

Now that you’ve seen the patio let’s turn to the vegetable garden which is right off the bottom of our deck!

My Urban Vegetable Garden

My little urban vegetable garden is my absolute favourite space in my yard. Again, last spring at the start of everything, we put a lot of focus into making our yard a place we wanted to spend time, but also a space to engage the kids with gardening and growing food.

So we created our urban vegetable garden.  It’s amazing how much you can actually grow in a small space.  If you want to see how it looked last summer and all the veggies I was able to grow, you can see that in this post here.

A simple raised vegetable garden.

This summer I’m hoping to grow even more!  I’m growing beans, carrots, beets, onions, garlic chives, chives, lettuce, spinach, Swiss chard, celery, peppers, potatoes, strawberries, tomatoes, rhubarb, raspberries and herbs.  I also have several planters full of cut flowers for beautiful summer bouquets…sweet peas, 10 different types of dahlias, anemones, peonies, daisies, cosmos, lavender, and sunflowers. So fun.

Tiered Herb Garden

When we were having our deck done, the guy who built it for us also built this fantastic tiered herb garden!  I love it so much.  I’m growing 6 different herbs in here, plus two boxes of lettuce greens.  So many plants in one planter…this is a really great option for small yards and limited space.  I think I’m actually going to add another one and fill it with strawberries.

I can’t wait until it fills out!

Now it’s time to just sit back, watch everything grow and enjoy this space as much as we can…winter comes fast here.

Thank you so much for allowing me to share my little urban garden with you!  I hope you found some ideas for your own outdoor space.

Take a quick video tour!

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More Summer Outdoor Spaces!

For more outdoor inspiration, make sure to have a look at these beautiful spaces, there are ideas for everyone!

The Happy Housie // Joanna Anastasia // Cassie Bustamante // The Tattered Pew

Life is Better At Home // Tatertots and Jello // Finding Silver Pennies // Lemon Thistle

Me! A Pretty Life // Dans le Lakehouse // Clean & Scentsible // Willow Street Interiors

Inspiration for Moms // She Gave it a Go // Grace in My Space // Deeply Southern Home

Life is a Party // Nina Hendrick // Happy Happy Nester // Craftberry Bush

Maison de Cinq // Hallstrom Home // House by Hoff // My Sweet Savannah

Happy Summer!