Each season, I follow the same path through our Pacific Northwest garden to document how the landscape changes over time. What began as an overgrown and neglected property has slowly evolved into an ongoing study in gardening, landscape design, and learning through observation.

This video was filmed in summer 2026 during our fourth year living on the property in Washington State (Zone 9A). After four years of returning to the same walk each spring, I wanted to see what the garden looks like at a different point in the growing season, after the long days of summer have had time to reveal what is thriving, what is struggling, and what has yet to take shape.

This garden has always been a meeting point between inspiration and reality. Some ideas have worked better than expected, others have failed, and many simply require more time than I imagined. Deer, weather, money, time, and the sheer scale of the property all have a way of reshaping the plans. But slowly, almost imperceptibly, things do change.

More and more, this project feels less like an attempt to create a finished garden and more like an exercise in persistence: deciding what is worth continuing, accepting what reality changes, and learning when to keep going.

Filmed on an overcast summer morning with new handheld and aerial footage, this seasonal walk is another entry in the ongoing documentation of our house, garden, and life here in the Pacific Northwest.

In this video:
Summer 2026 garden walk in the Pacific Northwest
Year 4 garden transformation over time
Zone 9A summer garden
Evolving woodland and naturalistic planting
Garden successes, failures, and experiments
Working with deer, weather, and the realities of an evolving landscape
Reflective walk through an establishing garden
New handheld and aerial perspectives
A continuing study of inspiration, reality, and persistence

If you’d like to see how the garden has changed over time, the previous years’ walks are available on the channel as part of this ongoing series.