My goal this weekend is to get a gate up at the side of the house. How difficult could that possibly be? I’ll tell you next week, if I’ve finished it by then. I have avoidance strategies lined up, like visiting the garden centre and going to Lanhydrock. I have peas to plant, seedlings to prick off and find space for.
In the meantime, I have flowers to share, of six sorts, that being the premise on which six on Saturday rests.
One.
I bought 10 Multiflora Hyacinth Blue Pearl from Mr Nyssen and planted them in the garden. I seem to have about seven up and flowering, with evidence that the slimy ones set about them as they reached the soil surface. I presume the other three have been eaten as fast as they emerged but since I don’t remember where I put them, I can’t check. I didn’t expect this intense blue colour, which is not in any way a complaint.
Two.
I don’t know how many forms of Anemone nemorosa I have, possibly four “proper” forms and several seedlings. This is the deepest blue and I’m fairly sure it’s ‘Mart’s Blue’. It isn’t as free flowering as the other blue I have, which I think is ‘Robinsoniana’, and the flowers are smaller, but it’s still lovely.
Three.
Also from Mr Nyssen I purchased 30 Tulipa sylvestris, it being billed as a shade loving tulip. I don’t have all 30 but most are flowering, a bright cheerful yellow that really stands out. The question now is whether they will establish and prove reliably perennial.
Four.
Primroses like my garden and both grow and proliferate happily. I seem to have a near 50:50 split between primrose yellow and the rest, the rest being mostly quite subdued pinks, purples and blues that all blend together quite happily. I don’t dislike the really vivid colours that fill the garden centres but they don’t look right amongst the natural looking types.
Five.
I have Erythroniums in flower and more in bud to follow. They seem to do well for me if I can avoid disturbing them when they’re dormant. Bought from a local nursery called Illand Nursery, as ‘Illand Pink’, I think they’re a selected form of E. revolutum.
Six.
Caltha polypetala is the name I acquired this as; it seems now to be a subspecies of the marsh marigold, Caltha palustris. Basically a giant form of marsh marigold, happy in wet soil or shallow water and not really a plant of any great refinement. I like buttercup flowers well enough but they usually spell trouble, as in creeping buttercup or celandines; this is comparatively benign and easily pulled out if it gets ideas.
Another cloudless sky, beautiful from the inside but still chilly from a cold but not freezing night. The clocks go forward tonight and we lose an hour of sleep, an adjustment my circadian clock has pretty much made already. Right now it feels later than it is, feels like I should be out there doing something useful.
The Prop has posted, that was the link.
garden ruminations 
Beautiful tulips, erythroniums and anemone nemorosas. I only just got round to adding erthroniums here, after five years. They are in a very cold shady part of the garden and are just coming through. Now I must get going and add some of those tulips and a.nemorosas. I hope you have got the gate hung. A pergola is arriving here this week and then I will be full steam ahead on the drive project.
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I think, working from the Cristopher Lloyd principle of starting with your main display, in summer probably, then working out how to fit other things in to lift the other seasons, that Erythroniums have a lot of potential. I see Anemone nemorosa in the same bracket. Best of luck with pergola and drive, I shall be following your fortunes with both.
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Erythroniums are new to me, but what interesting leaves as well as pretty, pink flowers. We look forward to seeing the gate up and running, or rather swinging, soon.
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The gate, I’m pleased to say, is finished, completing this years construction projects, to my profound relief. Erythroniums are perfect for filling bare spaces early then dying off quickly as other things fill in.
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T. sylvestris looks like a cheerful addition; I hope it does establish. As far as I can see, there doesn’t seem to be much rhyme or reason: a Tulip someone insists is a good repeat flowerer never does, then a Tulip bought as a one hit wonder carries on for years!
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I’m glad it’s not just me. The T. sylvestris are supposedly happy in shade but only open fully in sun it seems. Fortunately they’re mainly shade by a deciduous tree that is not yet in leaf.
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I too like the Erythroniums, both the beautiful flowers and the lovely foliage. It is lovely to see all the spring colour in the six’s gardens. The primroses are beautiful!
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Primroses are probably my favourite native plant, abundantly garden worthy.
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by ‘proliferate’, do you mean that the primrose have naturalized? That would be cool. I sort of get it about the common sorts. I know that many people like them, but to me, they look like something that Mickey Mouse would pick for Minnie Mouse. They are a bit too cartoonish.
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Yes, the primroses have well and truly naturalised, along with bluebells. Cartoonish is the perfect description of the gaudy primrose cultivars, based on but nothing like the original species, be it mouse or plant.
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The only primrose that I ever see here are fancy garden varieties, and those English primrose are the most cartoonish. The other species are not so brightly colored.
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Are the American species grown over there as garden plants? I think I have grown P. parryi in the distant past but looking at the species you have, none of the other names is familiar.
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The only species and hybrids of Primula that I am aware of in the nursery industry are exotic. Primula parryi is the only North American species that I have met, and only as an oddity in a colleague’s collection.
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All are lovely, but I was intrigued by your Erythroniums . We have white and yellow varieties native here and I’ve never seen a pink one before.
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Yet E. revolutum is an American species, as they all are except E. dens-canis.
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Such vibrant blooms, Jim! The colors really boost our spirits. I’m unfamiliar with the caltha and glad to read it’s benign — I have a over-abundance of creeping buttercup. Enjoy your week.
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I’d be off to Lanhydrock in a flash and the gate could hang itself! A beautiful garden which we visited a few years ago and would love to see again. I have that big Marsh marigold and like it. It gives a wonderful splash of colour. Nice Erythronium – I had an hour’s work this afternoon. I planted them among snowdrops imagining they would be a good follow-on but the snowdrop foliage swamped them so I moved dozens of erythroniums today.
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It would take several lifetimes to get a real grasp of which plants will play happily together. Were you moving the Erythroniums in growth or are yours later than mine? I’d get nervous about doing that, but maybe you’re going to tell me it’s the best time to move them. Mine are in too much sun, they need moving. Lanhydrock was looking great, peak Magnolia and daffodils. They’d lost several trees in the recent storms it seems, but all in the park or windbreaks as far as we could tell.
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I moved the erythroniums in full growth, some finished flowering and some coming into flower. I didn’t go to any effort of separating clumps so as not to disturb them too much. I added leafmould to the new planting area and watered well after replanting. They were out of the ground less than ten minutes.
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I shall follow your example with at least some of mine, when I’ve found somewhere better for them.
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I agree with you on the primrose comment. Nice Erythroniums there Jim.
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I meant to move the Erythroniums somewhere shadier but forgot. Try again this year I guess.
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A great six Jim, the Tulip is beautiful. Good luck with the new gate. We are making one, it is in the painting stages.
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I was going to make a gate then our local builders merchants put a catalogue through the door and new to their range was a range of gates. I gave in without a fight.
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Tulipa sylvestris is a favourite of mine, I shall give them a go here I think. Love the anemones, I’ve got robinsoniana that is barely showing a leaf yet, hope it is OK ……
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I have robinsoniana starting to flower one place, leafy but flowers in another. The tulips are new to me and I’m delighted with them so far. I will try to collect seed, having got Tulip sprengeri germinating well, just the encouragement I need.
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Very pretty flowers but also leaves of your Erythroniums. The colour of these anemones nemerosa is really interesting too.
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That Anemone has taken many years to get going so I’m a bit reluctant to start digging it up but I’d love to have more in other places.
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I planted some Tulipa sylvestris back in the Autumn of 2020 and they all seem to have come up again. Fingers crossed they continue to do so. I didn’t know they liked more shady conditions. I may have to get some more. The Anemone nemorosa are lovely.
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I’m not sure if Tulipa sylvestris prefers shade or merely tolerates it, the species name would suggest it is a woodland plant.
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