I lay awake on Wednesday evening listening to two hedgehogs mating just outside. Yes, I’m happy to have hedgehogs and very glad they are breeding. I wish I knew where she was going to have her babies so I could keep well clear. They were at it for at least 45 minutes. Shameless.
One.
Primula japonica ‘Apple Blossom’. Well, I say that, but it was one I picked out of a mixed batch at a nursery so I guess they’d collected seed from a mixed planting. It’s pretty much what you’d expect ‘Apple Blossom’ to look like. It’s just starting, I’m hoping for 5 or six whorls of flowers, which might mean it needs watering.
Two.
Iris ‘Pacific Hybrid’. I’m making that up too. I bought this at Greenway many years ago because it had a particularly good Hesperantha growing and flowering in the pot with it. Hesperantha was still Schizostylis then. It’s long dead but the iris keeps on. This is by far and away the best flower display it’s ever produced, up till now five flowers would have been a good year for it.
Three.
Sue’s cactus house. I took this from the door, which is generally as close as I get.
Four.
Astilbe x arendsii ‘Color Flash Lime’. As a gold foliage plant this is really rather good but like most of the yellow leaved Spiraea’s it does itself no favours by flowering pink.
Five.
Fuchsia ‘Cornish Pixie’. I was in trouble earlier for saying I could see no difference between this and what we grow as F. microphylla or F. bacillaris. I said I thought they were all the same thing, even if we had obtained them under different names. It matters not; we planted a row of these to separate our front garden from next door’s and they have sailed through the winter without ever stopping blooming and now have more flowers than ever.
Six.
Camassia. My Camassia leichtlinii flowered weeks ago, I’ve cut off the finished spikes. I put them on the 20/4 six. Camassia quamash made it for the 27/4 and are all over now. They’re the ones at the front of this picture. So what are this lot? Same height as C. quamash, lighter colour, three weeks later. I don’t remember planting them and I can’t find a label. Look a bit random, as if they might be seedlings. Any ideas?
Our garden club has its annual plant sale today, a far from grand affair but if I can get rid of a few more plants I shall be happy. It’s chaos here, so much stuff waiting to get planted on the allotment, Fuchsias needing the benches that I will move out of the glasshouse, cucumbers needing the space that moving the benches makes, and so on. All too familiar to many of you. From above the area outside the back door looks almost orderly; I washed pots while waiting for a phone call that never came. By next week the whole area will be CLEAR!
garden ruminations 
I’m impressed by Sue’s cacti collection 🙂 My OH also gives mine a wide birth as they usually attack him.
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The risk if I venture into Sue’s greenhouse comes not from the cacti but from Sue. Except for heavy lifting and weeding behind the staging, I’m persona non grata.
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OH, says us women are like cacti – prickly and unpredictable
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Two thing i do not expect to see there are cacti and Pacific Coast iris. Cactus just seem weird; but they seem to be more popular there than they are here! As much as I like Pacific Coast iris, it does not seem like it would be popular outside of the native range. I mean, there are so many better ‘garden variety’ iris to grow. Pacific Coast iris are no good as cut flowers. At work, we happen to have the colorful hybrids like yours, as well as a patch of what seems to be the wild form. I do not know if they were planted or just came up on the their own. They look the the San Francisco iris is used to pick on the Montara Peaks just South of San Francisco. I would pick them now if I had the chance, even though they shrivel before I get home.
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A lot of Iris have quite specific cultural requirements and most are not well suited to the climate where I am. Pacific Coast iris is a case in point, it’s flowering well because of last years hot summer, which it doesn’t usually get. I saw several different forms in a couple of gardens we visited yesterday with beautifully veined flowers in a wide range of colours, made mine look quite ordinary. I could probably succeed with others if I made more of an effort.
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I suppose they are pretty, but I still prefer the ordinary sorts. They look more like what grows wild here. Someday, I would like to get the San Francisco Iris that I remember from the hills above Montara and San Bruno.
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Oh wow! Your garden is just gorgeous, So colorful! I’m dying of jealousy over your greenhouse, all of those cacti, such fun! Hope your plant fair day was great!
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Yep, I grow all these weird and wonderful and worthy plants and at the end of the day it’s flowery Cactus and Dahlias that put a smile on my face.
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Always interesting to see what you have in bloom. I love your primulas. The iris is looking amazing. I grew some from seed I collected and they came out in a range of lovely colours.
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This is the first year, in 20 odd, when the iris has unequivocally been worth having. It’s lucky to have survived this long, half a dozen flowers a year hasn’t paid the ground rent.
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Your primula is a stunner! Also that beautiful Pacific Iris.
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I’ll have to look out for that apple blossom primula. It’ll look good near our tiny pond. I didn’t realise hedgehogs were noisy while at it. 45 minutes too. Impressive!
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I’ll post the primula again when it has more whorls. What pleases me most re hedgehogs is that we’re in the middle of a housing estate and have had hedgehogs in the garden, seemingly a stable breeding population, for many years. I’m always worried that they are an isolated tiny gene pool that won’t be sustainable. Maybe the males come in from the surrounding farmland, it’s not quite as sterile as most is these days. How do they do it at all with all those prickles?
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I organised the first plant sale at my gardening club……everyone thought it was an event worth having! Seeing your pot collection has reminded me to sort mine out during the week!
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Our plant sale was reasonably successful, there is obviously an appetite for buying cheap plants without having to go far. We had too few people producing stuff for it and not enough customers buying because of limited publicity. I’d be really interested in your experience of doing one.
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I’m very impressed by the orderly look to your holding area and shamed by yr pot washing. I’ve not been so good this year. The irises are great and of course now I think I must have more of them.
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What was odd about the shot from upstairs was how it looked organised when at ground level all was chaos. Why does it take twice as long to clear up chaos as it does to create it?
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That is a lovely Primula Jim. Saw several of them last week when I was up at Branklyn Gardens. My favourite has to be the ever reliable Inverewe
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I thought for a moment you meant Inverewe garden, but you mean the primula variety, which I haven’t seen in a while. The huge drifts of candelabra primulas at Inverewe and other Scottish gardens are etched into memory. I wonder if I’ll ever get back up there. They’re a bit like Meconopsis down here, inclined to be short lived because the summers are relatively hot and dry. Not as bad as Meconopsis though.
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You need to look at this. I went to Branklyn The Meconopsis were unbelievable. So were the primulas. https://wordpress.com/post/sedumsdahliasandhayfever.com/1578. I am planning on going to Inverwere in June but don not know if I can face the midgies
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Thanks you need to read my Blog about Branklyn Gardens I posted on Friday. The Meconopsis were unbelievable. I was planning on going up to Invewere in June but don’t know if I can face the midgies.
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You sometimes get away with it right on the coast but Scottish midgies are not to be trifled with. Just had a glance at your Branklyn blog, need to read that more carefully; it looks amazing.
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I had some primula like that grown from seed, but they like it wetter than I was able to easily provide. I dug them up in the end. Shame. Did you get shot of some plants? Despite bring home 3 new plants i had a net reduction of over 30. Win!
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I probably got rid of a similar number and brought home nothing new, little short of miraculous. The primula is mostly in shade and beside a paving slab path laid on the soil and providing a reservoir of moisture. It’s worked well, I have a couple more to go in the same place.
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I do like the top view of your terrace. Despite the mess, there is a certain organization .
About camassias, do you always cut the faded shoots? Don’t you think that new shoots could have grown close to those you cut( small bulbs)?
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The view down was weirdly much more organised looking than it was at ground level. I do usually cut the camassia stems, they spread as much as I want by division, without having seeds as well. The ones in the picture are definitely different, they are darker, shorter and later.
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That is a fabulous photo from above! It also will make quite a few of us as green as the gardens with envy. Beautiful. I just long to walk along to the right!
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I just added a wider view picture to the blog so you can see the context of the earlier picture.
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Oh, that cactus house! Wonderful!!!
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Unlike your orchids, the flowers are the epitome of ephemeral, 48hrs is good going for many of them. Good while it lasts though.
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Your ‘Apple Blossom’ looks like my candelabra primula which I featured in last week’s SOS. I should take another photo of it now as one of them has three tiers. I’m not a huge cacti fan, but Sue’s glasshouse looks amazing – all those flowers!
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The japonica forms seem to roughly fit into two or three colour forms, often sold as Postford White, Apple Blossom, Millers Crimson; not an unbroken spectrum. Mine wasn’t bought as a named form, just a mixed batch from which I selected a couple of good ones. I pricked off 20 seedlings from the putative ‘Apple Blossom’ today, it’ll be interesting to see how they turn out.
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Okay- I looked it up. Here you go, hedgehog p*rn..though actually, it’s got David Attenborough, so it is classy er0tica.
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Youtube? Really? Is there anything that isn’t on Youtube?
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The primula is lovely! is it fragrant?
Also, what noise do hedgehogs make when they are at it? I am so curious now!
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PS. I meant to say those cacti are jaw-dropping!! Really beautiful colours.
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Now I’m mystified as I’ve just bought three P. Apple Blossom but the photo shows flowers sitting on the foliage rather than on sticks and the flowering time is supposedly autumn into winter. I suppose I’ll have to wait a while. No Camassia flowers here yet and Iris some way from flowering. Surprising what a difference there is between South Wales and South Wales! 😉
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Perhaps someone has used the name ‘Apple Blossom’ for a variety in one of the other Primula sections. I only know P. japonica ‘Apple Blossom’, which is definitely a candelabra type and should end up 2ft or more tall with up to six whorls of flowers. Autumn into winter is more puzzling; I thought all primulas were spring flowering except for the hybrids grown under cover for winter sales,
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I don’t know where my Primula Japonica is this year. I had forgotten about it until I saw yours – probably under some forget-me-nots! I am surprised your fuschia flowers all winter too. I prune mine each autumn because I haven’t the space to let it spread. Nice colourful Six-on-Saturday.
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I lost several candelabra primula between last year and this; too hot, too dry, vine weevils, old age, shaded out? We mostly cut fuchsias down late winter, but I couldn’t chop that one with all those flowers.
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