Six on Saturday – 13/7/2019

Categories six on saturday33 Comments on Six on Saturday – 13/7/2019

It’s a few weeks since we last had significant rain so the garden is caught between full summer flowery blowsiness and dusty tiredness. Watering accounts for the lion’s share of gardening activity, though I need to pick blackcurrants and that will eat up a few hours.

One.
Habranthus brachyandrus. I bought a little pot of flowering bulbs a few years back and they’ve proved easy to grow, thriving on neglect as they do. They’re in a bigger pot than when I bought them, but stay in the conservatory. They’re supposed to flower late summer after a good soaking but if that’s what they got it was more by luck than judgement. I collected seed from them last year and sowed them mid March, they’ve grown well, hopefully they won’t take too many years to flower. Originates from South America.

Two.
Fuchsia of the week slot goes to F. ‘Shuna Lyndsay’. Raised by James Travis in the UK, with more than a little F. denticulata in its parentage from the look of it.

Three.
Hydrangea serrata ‘Fuji-no-taki’. As hydrangeas go this one is tiny, about two feet high and wide after several years. It has masses of heads of double flowers, opening white with a yellow-green centre which fades to white as the outer petals turn pink. Close up pictures do it a disservice, showing up spots and browned edges in a way that passes unnoticed in the garden.

Four.
Hydrangea serrata ‘Shojo’. I find it slightly extraordinary that this plant has never made it into a six. I did move it a few years ago and it’s happier where it is now, in part shade. Even so, it has taken four or five years to really get into its stride and produce a proper display rather than a few flowers here and there. The leaves are heavily infused with red pigment this year, so densely as to appear nearly black. I have two other serratas and a serrata hybrid doing the same thing.

Five.
Astilbe ‘Visions’. Step out the back door and right in front of you is our filled in pond, now a boggy area. I left the liner in place when I filled in the pond and all the vegetable washing water gets thrown in there. Right now it’s a mass of flower, mostly pink, some white and red, mostly Astilbes plus last weeks Filipendula. A couple of the Astilbes are later flowering; it might have been better if they’d all flowered together. This one is almost purple, very upright and quite short.

Six.
This is experimental. It doesn’t help that nothing shows up in the editor, so I’m not even certain it’s there. I have a camera that will do high quality video but needs a gimball to be much use handheld. I used my iPad, which is better, though my sailor’s gait still intrudes but then I had the problem of getting the video onto my Windows computer. I’m painfully aware that the generation behind me do all this stuff effortlessly on their phones. I’m computer literate but in decades out of date technology.

Another week over. Yesterday evening I was judge of the flower and veg sections of the Liskeard Show which is on today. Not too onerous. Will I go today? Well I might but it’s mostly farm animals and horses and burgers and booze, not really my thing. Pottering about the garden, reading a few blogs, watch a bit of Wimbledon, drink lots of tea; that’s more my style. The blogs to read are the ones at The Propagator, but you know that already.

Published by Jim Stephens

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

33 thoughts on “Six on Saturday – 13/7/2019”

  3. I think my favorite was not even in your six, but in the picture at the top, which shows that white on white fuchsia. That is rad! I have not seen one like it before.

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  4. Your video is a success! So lovely to walk through your garden with you, crunching on the gravel, spotting that gorgeous dark red daylily… Shojo is fabulous, not sure if I like it for the amazing sky blue flowers or the amazing almost black leaves!

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    1. For some reason I never listened to the video soundtrack, still havenā€™t. Good thing I didnā€™t stub my toe when I was doing it. I havenā€™t anywhere near mastered the medium but I think Iā€™ll be doing it again.

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  5. Your astilbe sparkles do you know why some of them do & some of them don’t? My former neighbour had one similar in colour to yours but w/blue flecks. Really eye catching. Love that blue hydrangea. I lived w/one once, same type flower. It’d been left to its own devices & was well up to the 1st floor of the house. I don’t remember the leaves being dark like yours, but I did think it was the most beautiful hydrangea I’d ever seen & much too big for anywhere I’ve lived since. And thank you so much for the video tour. I do love close ups of flowers but seeing the bigger picture is always so satisfying. You’ve enough technology for that.

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    1. That sounds like one mighty hydrangea. I don’t think mine will do that but who knows? I’ll have a close look at the Astlibes tomorrow, maybe a close up photo will reveal what’s going on. More tech stuff. I’ve spent much of today picking and shelling peas and broad beans and picking and sorting blackcurrants, then I move on to saving videos to the cloud and downloading them again, one foot in the 21st century, the other in the 19th.

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  10. I love that hydrangea serrata! What a colour. I have been looking for a new hydrangea as I have room. It will have to wait until the Autumn but itā€™s beautiful. Your garden is looking stunning.

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    1. Perhaps I should repeat that walk every fourth week. Lots flowering but very dry, you would notice the changes more than me, Iā€™m out there every day, preening and primping.

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  13. I enjoyed that wander through your garden. Wishing I’d heard of Fuji-no-taki before getting Miss Belgium now (which was bought for its compact nature).

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    1. Fuji-no-taki would be a lot less tolerant of full sun and Iā€™m not sure how available it is but you could keep it in a pot for a few years then give Miss Belgium away and plant Fuji-no-take instead.

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  15. Thanks for the walk round your garden…and being able to see where plants are and how they relate to each other. To be proud of, naturally. What causes this red tint in hydrangeas…I noticed my ordinary ones have this…I am new to hydrangea growing, they are not really suitable for my garden! I have a little question regarding a geranium on my post this week, and your help would be much appreciated. Enjoy the week https://noellemace.blogspot.com/2019/07/six-on-saturday-13-july-2019.html

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  16. I really enjoyed your video (we hear even the seagulls at first). Your garden is so beautiful and so dense with flowers and shrubs! About the video itself, I make them on my iphone, and I add them directly from the iphone on the WP app, rather than using the PC and Windows. It’s easier and maybe that’s what you did. (and if I want to have a video less “big”, I reduce the quality with iMovie, I record the video and I add it to WP)
    Otherwise the hydrangea ‘Shojo’ and the astilbe are eye-catching !

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    1. Much experimentation lies ahead with video, Iā€™m not as quick a learner as I once was, and a much quicker forgetter. I need to record a dawn chorus so I can overwrite the seagull/rook choir.

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