Six on Saturday – 18/2/2023

Categories six on saturday, , 44 Comments on Six on Saturday – 18/2/2023

The upward curve continues, I have sown my first veg seeds and things are shooting out all over the place. The things I put into a six a week or two back with one half open flower are now in full flow. I have options. Six things happening on a drizzly Saturday, no worries.

One.
I’m kind of hoping that it is possible to dip ones toe into the addiction known as Galanthophilia without becoming addicted. I bought three flavours; saying to myself that I was introducing some fresh blood, picking a few vigorous varieties that might gradually displace the rather ordinary ones I have now. Here is the one whose flower survived postage and planting with a flower intact. It’s called ‘Sally Pasmore’. The other two are ‘S. Arnott’ and ‘Magnet’.


Two.
To be honest, spending a not inconsiderable sum on named snowdrops and getting what I did, made me think that perhaps some of the ones I already had weren’t too bad either. I have a double form, the common double form? and it seeds about and the seedlings are quite variable. This flower was big and confused and not at all like any of the varieties in the bulb catalogue. Perhaps I’m already the owner of a £100 a bulb variety and didn’t realise it. The halo is because I took the picture via a mirror.


Three.
Seed sowing has to start at some point and the temptation to go too early hasn’t been as strong this year as some. Lettuce ‘Lollo Rosso’ and ‘Oakleaf Navara’, spring onion ‘Lilia’, leek ‘Aurora’ and radish ‘Diana’ are done, broad beans will follow today. I’ll germinate them in the house, then move them to the glasshouse.


Four.
My taste in Camellias is broad, so I have space for big bold flowers like ‘Bob Hope’ and ‘Mystique’, but also for species with small white flowers like Camellia transnokoensis. Tiny leaves, slender graceful stems and abundant small white flowers opening from red tipped buds. It should grow quite tall, which I want it to do to screen us from neighbours, but the effect is light and airy.


Five.
Very similar in appearance is Camellia lutchuensis, but this is the species that is being used to produce winter and spring flowering scented hybrids. Typically, I bought it without having ever seen it outside of a book. So far I have no regrets whatever.


Six.
I’m on a roll here, white flowers all the way down. Camellia grijsii is a plant I’ve had for a few years and it is now about seven feet tall and beginning to flower a bit more freely. As far as I’m aware, it hasn’t been used in any hybrids, probably because it is not closely related to anything very useful and won’t breed successfully. It has a beautiful perfume that carries a good distance from the plant and like the previous two, will eventually make quite a large plant. I envisage it getting to ten feet or so but with the lower branches removed so things will grow under it. Again, it has small leaves and a somewhat sparse branch system so will create only moderate shade. There is one at Mount Edgcumbe which is 12-15 feet tall, roughly the look I’m after, though I may not live to see it.

I had pink and red flowered Camellias to go in, bright new growth on Geranium, vivid lime green moss. I’m not sure what just happened. They’ll all keep, but other things may muscle them aside as the pace picks up. There are worse problems to have.

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Published by Jim Stephens

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

44 thoughts on “Six on Saturday – 18/2/2023”

  1. Pingback: Six on Saturday 18 February 2023 – Alpenfalten

  2. It’s lovely to see our gardens showing signs of life again, I assume due to the weather warming up this week, though in my part of Cornwall it has been dull and misty the past three days. Still that hasn’t stopped the crocuses, snowdrops and dwarf irises from opening up. Talking about snowdrops, I only have a few single and double common ones, but they are pretty enough and much tougher than the crocuses which are already going over.

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  3. £100 per bulb is an extravagant sum! The snowdrops you feature look wonderful. Bulbs are slowly showing here, that with the increasing daylight leaves a nice hopeful feeling for the spring. I actually think we have been pretty lucky here winter-weather-wise

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    1. Camelliaphile seems to have been suggested but scarcely trips from the tongue. I wondered about theophile, Camellias being in Theaceae, but Google reveals that to be a word already coined, and not in a good way. We are so few in number we perhaps can manage without.

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  18. Where is the fun in gardening without our abiding passions for the plants we grow? I just enjoyed the beautiful little piece about snowdrops in Gardens Illustrated, and see a beautiful little double, unlike anything I’ve seen before, on your site. What other treasures are tucked away in your winter garden? Here are my six for the week https://woodlandgnome.wordpress.com/2023/02/18/six-on-saturday-taking-the-long-view/, all signs of spring, and a bit of a rant, I’m afraid. Be forwarned if you click to have a peek at my spring flowers.

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    1. So very sorry to hear about your Mam’s passing in January. That turns things upside down quite a bit, doesn’t it? It takes as long as it takes to get ‘stuck in’ once again. It has been more than six months of grieving here, but work in the garden always helps. Take good care of yourself.

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  22. Snowdrops have become dreadfully expensive, yet I have added half a dozen or so new ones to the garden this season and will, most likely, add a few more through exchanges with friends. Having said that, the last two snowdrop gardens I visited were remarkable not for having an extensive collection of snowdrops but for very large swathes of common varieties which grow well. The double form of the common snowdrop – which you already grow – is an outstanding performer in the garden as are ‘Magnet’ and ‘S. Arnott’.especially so. ‘Sally Pasmore’ has less vigour. Camellia ‘Buttermilk’ is in flower here and I like it very much, creamy white small flowers.

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    2. One side of my brain would happily spend hours scouring the drifts of snowdrops in the lanes around here for interesting variants (I did spot one with a green smudge on the outside the other day) while the other side watched on with derision and horror. Since I don’t want to go wholly with either side, I remain galantho-conflicted.

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  23. That is one of three primary reasons that I have not yet grown snowdrops. Those who grow them become obsessed with them. Besides, the allure escapes me, which is another of the three primary reasons. The third reason is that so much blooms through winter here that there is no need for something that blooms so reliably during winter. Besides, I am already too obsessed with Canna. Anyway, these are my Six:

    Six on Saturday: Narcissism

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    1. The first ceremonial planting of the Mt Edgcumbe camellia collection was unknowingly planted on about the only outcrop of limestone in the whole of Cornwall. They’re still alive, mostly, after 47 years. Their roots are probably mostly in the organic rich surface layer though. We planted 60 odd in a garden next to the nursery which had been limed for veg and they were miserable, with the exception of ‘Laura Boscawen’. It would have been interesting to do a proper experiment to see if it really was particularly tolerant or whether someone had dumped a bale of peat where it was planted. So neutral soil won’t kill them, acidic organic matter will help and regular applications of sequestrene would probably make for a fairly happy plant.

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    1. You’ve put a link to Jim’s rather than your post…ha you are not the first I have done that and Fred was kind enough to point it out. We don’t want to miss your post. x

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