Six on Saturday – 27/4/2024

Categories six on saturday42 Comments on Six on Saturday – 27/4/2024

It rained most of today, somewhat dampening my enthusiasm for searching the garden for the six nuggets required for a six on saturday post. I pulled on my coat, tucked my camera under it, and sallied forth. Five shutter clicks and less than five minutes later I was back inside. I bagged a final shot from an upstairs window. I’m really getting soft, it wasn’t even raining very much.

One.
The big gardens of Cornwall are usually dominated by Rhododendrons, Camellias and Magnolias. They’re great plants when you have a lot of space to fill, not so suitable for smaller spaces like ours. Of the three groups, Camellias are the easiest to restrict in size and are what I have the most of. Rhododendron ‘Ramapo’ is a dwarf variety and shouldn’t outgrow its space for a good few years. I was admiring Rhododendron augustinii in another garden earlier this week, a medium sized species with exquisite soft mauve flowers; ‘Ramapo’ lacks that level of sophistication but is still a good blue to have.


Two.
Context is everything. On its own in the garden, the rhododendron above looks quite blue. Set against the pink of Clematis montana ‘Elizabeth’, these Camassias appear a much clearer blue than they really are. The clematis is on a fence between us and a neighbour and the side facing us is the south side. It’s working well for us; we never see those neighbours so I don’t know how it is for them.


Three.
I think it was Gill who beat me to it by a couple of weeks with Gladiolus tristis, but mine has a couple of flower spikes and smells lovely when I’m out on my evening slug forays, so it’s going in. I’ve only known about this since a self sown one came up among some Agapanthus about three years ago and like many of the things I’ve discovered recently, I’m wishing I’d known about it many years earlier.


Four.
Fern of the week is Dryopteris prolifera. It’s pretty much a standard fern except that it does it exceptionally well. Darker than average fronds give it gravitas and being evergreen, set off the new fronds particularly well. Then it produces a plantlet at the tip of each frond, which slowly sink until they touch the ground and root, so you get a supply but not an avalanche of new plants.


Five.
What’s going on here? All self sown wild primroses but one is smothered in flowers and the rest have hardly any. Did they flower earlier and I missed them? I don’t think so. Is it under attack and responding with a last ditch flower burst to pass on its genes? Have the flowerless plants been ravaged by slugs or weevils? If I divide the flowery plant and spread the pieces around will I be rewarded with a better display next year? Would seed saved from the flowery plant produce more flowery plants?


Six.
This is the one I took from indoors. Euphorbia mellifera at peak but underwhelming flowering. It was my intention to put the camera on a tripod and do a before and after of me taking the whole thing down to an inch above the soil. Not when it’s raining, I’m waterproof but my camera isn’t. One for next week perhaps. It’s as big now as space allows, too big if anything. I don’t want it any bigger, I don’t want seedlings and left another year it would lose the dense dome shape it currently has. If I chop it now it should have greened up again for our first opening in late June. It’ll go through the shredder and mulch my blueberries.

Next week we’ll be into May, which feels like it should be full on nearly summer, except that’s not what it feels like at all. Another unsettled week is forecast; the compensation that it saves watering rings increasingly hollow. It is what it is and there’s nowt we can do about it; there’ll be winners as well as losers, same as always.

Published by Jim Stephens

Gardener, no-dig allotmenteer, camellia enthusiast. I love colour, it cheers me up. Retired nurseryman.

42 thoughts on “Six on Saturday – 27/4/2024”

  1. Iā€™m very late this week. Not because it has been the weather for gardening! I sometimes think that West Penwith has a totally different climate to not only the rest of the UK but also the rest of Cornwall. My Camassias are only just beginning to form flower spikes! Gladiolus tristis looks interesting. My Whistling Jacks are just about to flower now, but some other glads would be welcome.

    https://cornwallincolours.blog/2024/04/27/six-on-saturday-farewell-april

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  2. Yes, it is at is, and it has certainly made for some interesting timings (as well as quantity of bloom) – I was gobsmacked to see R Rambling Rector covered in buds this week! At least it wa s dry here today, despite promised showers! The gladiolus is indeed interesting – is it growing in the ground, and is it hardy? Always lovely to see your ferns – sadly the names don’t trip off my tongue because the labels on mine are all hidden under years of growth! Thanks for hosting, as always https://ramblinginthegarden.wordpress.com/2024/04/27/six-on-saturday-a-burning-bush-and-the-three-as/

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  7. A well designed garden can be even more lovely in the rain.ā€‚The wetness seems to magnify the colors and you don’t have the glare of sunny days.ā€‚Your six are stunning, despite the weather, and the combination of the Clematis with the Camassias is especially lovely.ā€ƒBoth have certainly benefited from your wet spring!ā€‚But my favorite photo this week is your Dryopteris, especially staged so beautifully with the Hellebore and other plants around.ā€‚It is a stunner.ā€‚Our Azaleas/Rhodies are nearly finished.ā€‚Yours looks like it is still in its prime.ā€‚Interesting how things come and go on their own timing.ā€‚Your garden is ahead of ours here in Virginia in some ways, and right in sync in others.ā€‚Here are my six for the week, including the American natural hybrid D. x Australis, which resembles yours a bit but doesn’t offer the baby plants from the tips of its fronds.ā€‚

    Enjoy the week, and may the sun find you soon.ā€‚

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    1. I’m a poor judge of fragrance, having a poor sense of smell so tending to like things that other people find overpowering. However, to me Gladiolus tristis has a really good scent. I’ve been enjoying Lunaria ‘Corfu Blue’ at night too, when it seems to be much more noticeable than during the day.

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  11. Primroses are everywhere in my garden, when moving them I always make sure that I have one pin eyed primrose to about a dozen thrum eyed. You need two different sorts if you want them to seed about, don’t know if this would affect your flowering though? I usually just cut back the stems of my Euphorbia melliferra which have flowered and leave the others to flower the following year, but then, all your stems seem to be flowering, much better than mine!

    My six are here………………………………….https://www.leadupthegardenpath.com

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    1. My Euphorbia grows and flowers on a two year cycle, there’ll be no flowers next year if it’s cut now. I don’t want it any bigger than it is, so even the non-flowering shoots will get cut down. I’ve never paid any attention to pin and thrum eyed primulas, just assumed I must have a good mix since they seed profusely. I must check them out while there are a few flowers still left.

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  12. Pingback: Six on Saturday. 27.4.2024 | Lead up the Garden Path

  14. I always learn something from your SoS Jim. The gladiolus is lovely and the clematis/camassia combo is fabulous. No Six from me this week as I’ll be busy fixing up water butts!

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    1. Ah water butts. I have several, 15 in fact. And a couple of IBC’s. And a 1500L tank. All full, all seeming pretty unnecessary with the rain coming down like stair rods.

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    1. I sneaked a periscope style picture of that neighbour’s garden last year with my camera on a monopod. I could do a six of neighbour’s gardens but theirs is the only one with anything to see in it. And I don’t mean that in a good way.

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  20. There are some gorgeous colour combos in your selection – the pink clematis and blue camissia really sing together, and that lemon yellow gladiolus with pale blue forget-me-nots in the background looks wonderful. This week we’ve gotā€‚the garden lights up, planted an olive tree into a fancy pot, and enjoyed the bees enjoying the warminster broom.ā€‚

    https://doingtheplan.com/2024/04/27/pot-broom-border-bench-lights-and-rue-six-on-saturday-late-april-24/

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  23. I think that several of us are hoping to source Gladiolus Tristis, which would suit my ‘Mediterranean Garden’, I had not a dissimilar thing with my wild primroses.ā€‚Was the ground under those that flowered less too rich maybe?ā€‚I look forward to your findings on your experiments.ā€‚However I’m not sure I would want a bank of such floriferous primroses, I like them to a little discreet and shy rather than rumbustious. Here are my six this week: https://noellemace.blogspot.com/2024/04/scilla-hughii-tops-bill-for-six-on.html

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    1. I have been picking clay coloured weevils (Otiorhynchus singularis) off several primulas, and other plants, sometimes in considerable numbers. They are the prime suspect, as in their larvae.

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      1. Very interesting Jim, I shall look out for those, but I haven’t seen them here yet.ā€‚Which of your primroses are they on, they one which is flowering now, or the ones that did not flower, if so are the eating the flowers, or roots?

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      2. The greatest number were on those with fewer flowers, just nibbling notches around the edges of the leaves, but they will have hatched from pupating grubs down in the roots, which is where the real damage will be done. I think the very flowery one may have been severely stressed by larvae in the root system. I’ll did and split it when it’s done flowering.

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  24. You must tell us what decision you come to with your wild primroses, so many questions and actions to take. The size of a dwarf Rhododendron is one that my garden could cope with. I like the Rhododendron ā€˜Ramapoā€™Ā  but I’m reluctant to put in any variety seeing the bud damage to the one that I have. I still haven’t found the hungry critter that’s eaten the buds. Here’s mine for this week:
    https://notesfrommygarden.co.uk/2024/04/27/five-in-a-row/

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    1. It can be an uphill struggle, this gardening business. My two Rhododendrons both only have buds/flowers on part of them so I must look to see whether there were buds on the rest that have been munched, or no buds to begin with.

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  27. It seems to me that the primrose that is blooming more prolifically is doing so because it is a bit distressed, which is why the foliage is not quite as vigorous.

    ‘Ramapo’ is quite compact. It was not an easy cultivar for us. Augustinii rhododendrons were quite rare. We grew only a few of four cultivar or so, and one of them may have been the simple species. I do not remember their names, but one was ‘Electra’ and another was ‘Marine’. I like the name ‘Electra’ because that was my Buick, but it was the least popular.

    These are my Six on Saturday:

    https://tonytomeo.com/2024/04/27/six-on-saturday-are-we-there-yet/

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      1. It seemed to me that ‘Electra’ was more similar to the species that the other cultivars, but I do not remember for certain, and I do not remember what the species was like. ‘Marine’ was likely the most popular, with richer blue bloom and more compact growth. There was a cultivar that blooms pink or lavender pink, but I do not remember its name.

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