Six on Saturday – 14/1/2023

Categories six on saturday, 35 Comments on Six on Saturday – 14/1/2023

Not a lot happens in an English garden in January. What was happening a week ago is still happening, and it wasn’t much. I could do with a short run of weeks without Saturdays, just skip from Friday to Sunday, but it’s not going to happen. It’s only six things, how difficult could it possibly be?

One.
Chrysoplenium macrophyllum. I waited until February to include this last year. It grows unseen under and behind Astilbes and Impatiens until they die and get cut down around the turn of the year. It gets the shade it wants in summer, I get the greenery and flowers in winter.


Two.
Begonia U614. Some of my borderline hardy begonias were lifted and brought under cover, some left in the ground. When we had the pre christmas freeze I piled leaves over them and used large upturned pots to hold them in place. When the weather warmed I took the pots off and earlier this week I cleared some of the leaves on this one to find that not only had it survived, it was even putting up new leaves. It will need protecting again from tomorrow for a few days. I’m encouraged though. I wish someone would give it a proper name.


Three.
Camellia ‘Koto-no-kaori’ is, like ‘Minato-no-akebono’ that I mentioned last week, a lutchuensis hybrid. That means it has scent. It is free flowering with small pink flowers for a couple of months early in the year.


Four.
The last of my stored apples, picked back in October and left under the greenhouse bench in small freezer bags, very loosely tied. Almost none went mouldy and while they eventually became a bit woolly they were still juicy and flavoursome. Holstein is the variety.


Earlier this week I rehomed most of the Camellias I had still growing on my allotment, plus some in pots that I had no room for. They have gone to a retirement village where they will have space and be appreciated. In return I have two new Begonias, a cut leaf form of B. sutherlandii and one called ‘Cool Breeze Emerald’. There’s a Cool Breeze series, from the same breeders as the Garden Angel series, Terra Nova Nurseries. ‘Garden Angel Blush’ was a star turn last year. I also got given a Salvia because it was too yellow, and a Morina, from someone else. Not much to see but I’d better cobble together a picture. The more plants you’ve got the more you get given.


Six.
Sue is in Rotorua. Crazy place, who builds a town on top of a caldera? The Kiwi’s do, that’s who. On the edge of town is a plantation of redwoods, Sequoia sempervirens, planted 117 years ago. Most of the plantings of alien conifers have been removed but a couple of redwood plantations have been kept because they are so visually stunning. They’ve put an aerial walkway in, 700m long and up to 20m off the ground. The native tree ferns, Cyathea medullaris, have grown back up amongst the trees. She sent me pictures.

Well, you can’t complain about a lack of variety. Looks like we are now due 12 hours straight of heavy rain. So glad I don’t live in a river valley or flood plain. It’s bad enough being left with nothing to do but jigsaws, at this rate I’ll be putting six of them in here. Roll on spring.

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Published by Jim Stephens

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

35 thoughts on “Six on Saturday – 14/1/2023”

  1. I enjoyed the aerial walkway at Kew Gardens but that is about as exotic as it will get for me! The Chrysoplenium you showed looks interesting , and I shall investigate in my quest to add even more plants of winter interest in the garden – what does it have to recommend it apart from flowering in Jan/Feb? Thanks for hosting – I am pleased to say that most of my six this week are actually flowers https://ramblinginthegarden.wordpress.com/2023/01/14/six-on-saturday-best-exotic/

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    1. In purely visual terms the Chrysoplenium is about as understated as they come, for me it’s the fact that it puts up with being completely hidden all summer and is there when everything else has died for the winter. It’s evergreen without being a shrub, grass or fern. That’s not much but it’s something.

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  2. Pingback: Six on Saturday: Best Exotic | Rambling in the Garden

  5. Another lovely camellia. Sue’s tree ferns could have come from Trengwainton Gardens, but without the Redwoods! I have done an aerial tree walkway in Western Australia, it is rather wonderful to be up in the tree canopy.

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  7. Happy Saturday! A very brief internet search indicates that one John Boggan believes your begonia to be an “Unidentified species from Arunachal Pradesh, India. Originally introduced as Begonia “sikkimensis” by Cally Gardens, Scotland.”, but that it is not sikkimensis, because U614 is rhizomatous. Maybe the poor thing has no name!

    I found shades of red and grey this week. Dreaming of spring!

    https://wisconsingarden.wordpress.com/2023/01/14/january-14-2023-six-on-saturday/

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    1. There seem to be several Begonias with U numbers in the International Database of the Begoniaceae, meaning unknown I believe. I got U614 as B. sikkimensis originally, but later learned that someone had decided it couldn’t be that, but hadn’t decided what it in fact is. Maybe a new species. It’s still a very good plant.

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  8. Interesting re the geraniums. I’ve always left mine to crack on without support….I may have lost track of those that didn’t make it. My garden is still mostly sleeping, and about to go deeper, given the forecast for the next few days (snow showers back tomorrow, apparently). Here’s my blog: http://www.balmerino.net/geekygarden

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  10. Pingback: Six On Saturday: Mid January, I’m looking for the positives | n20gardener
  11. Pingback: Six on Saturday: 14 January 2023 – My Tiny Welsh Garden

  17. Those late apples still look marvellous, like the ones depicted in old Dutch paintings. I’m sure their flavour surpassed any of those bland ones you can buy in supermarkets. Luckily we have a great supply of locally grown russet types at the market, but how much longer they will last. You’ve given me an idea I shall get some to store in the shed! Here is my contribution this week: https://noellemace.blogspot.com/2023/01/six-on-saturday-14-january-2023.html

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    1. The RHS had a brief spell of recommending storing apples in plastic bags rather than wrapped in paper, they don’t shrivel. Then they went off plastic so I don’t know what they say now.

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      1. I noticed the ones I kept in a basket to mature for Christmas did shrivel, and the ones in the fridge in a plastic bag were fine, but I only have a small fridge. I’ll keep old plastic bags which are few and far between for this year, wrap them in paper, and then put the whole container in a large plastic bag. My Darcy Spice were just the ticket to have over Christmas, but we didn’t have sufficient to last till now. It is still a young tree and not a high yielder in any case.

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  18. Six on Saturday: Service Interruption (I have nothing to share here this week.)


    I am very sorry that I can not post this week. I started writing about six pictures from my other blog, but only to realize that I already recycled them on Christmas Eve. It is a long story, but to be brief, telephone service that I now use to send my pictures to myself has been out of service, so I could not send the pictures. Otherwise, I would have shared a picture of a redwood almost as interesting as yours. It fell because of all the rain and wind, and uplifted a portion of its root system that is about thirty feet wide. Perhaps I will catch up with that next week.

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      1. Outsiders do not realize that we get weather either.
        The redwood tree fell into a canyon, so the dimensions of the root system are difficult to see with it in its upside down position. The width from front to back seems to be about two thirds of the width from side to side, so about twenty feet. It is pressed into the bank though. I can not determine the height from top to bottom. So much rock and soil fell on top of the underside. I should have pictures next week, although the pictures are not very clear.

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      3. Drought is a bunch of hooey here. This is a Mediterranean climate, so is naturally dry for a long time between spring and summer. It is normal. A drought is an abnormal weather pattern of minimal precipitation. Droughts sometimes happen here, but not annually as some believe. Actually, it is difficult to know when a drought happens because of all the publicity every summer gets in that regard. If droughts were such a problem here, there should not be so many of the most populous cities in America here, demanding more water. People migrate here for the pleasant weather, but then complain about it. Well, enough of that rant. Floods, mudslides and all that come with them are more of a problem because they actually are uncommon. The amount of rain we are not getting here may not be any more excessive than it is within other climates, but it is excessive by our standards. My former neighborhood got about a foot of rain annually. It does not take much more than that to become excessive.

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