Six on Saturday – 1/4/2023

Categories six on saturday, , , 65 Comments on Six on Saturday – 1/4/2023

Since my host post has to go out bright and early on a Saturday morning, it usually gets written on Friday. This time it’s Thursday, tomorrow sees me at the Cornwall Garden Society Show in the afternoon, followed by a talk to St Breward garden club in the evening. With a weather warning for gales and rain this evening, the pictures were taken this morning. It’s a named storm, Mathis, and it’s forecast to be rough here and worse in northern France.

The poor old garden is looking a bit battered already, I just hope it’s not too much worse by Saturday. Finding six things today wasn’t a problem, it’s been fairly mild and things are flowering. So here goes:

One.
Every time I go anywhere near Skimmia japonica ‘Rubella’ I catch a big waft of its fragrance. It’s getting quite big now and is covered in flowers, so it packs a fair olfactory punch. Doesn’t look at all bad either, though I don’t like the look of the section with yellowing leaves. That’ll be root disease probably.

Two.
Chaenomeles japonica. Probably not a named form but still very pretty in a good year. Small single orange flowers on a tangled mass of thorny, suckering stems. It does pretty well in a quite shady spot but would probably flower better given more sun.

Three.
I’m really pleased with how Cyclamen repandum is now increasing exponentially in this part of the garden. It self sows successfully and I collect and sow seed too so that I can spread it further afield. This particular clump is sharing space with Paesia scaberula, a fern that in a winter with very little frost, is almost evergreen. This year it was killed in December. I cut the dead fronds off but left them in situ to protect the rhizomes, then cleared it away as the Cyclamen appeared. The cyclamen will die away as the fern comes up through them, giving them shade as the weather warms. Cyclamen repandum can be planted deep, so they’re less at risk from disturbance than the surface species.


Four.
Euphorbia ‘Ascot Rainbow’ was the other variegated spurge I planted last year, along with ‘White Swan’. It is in a bed that gets plenty of sun in summer and almost none in winter, which is probably not ideal. As the flowers fade I shall cut both of them back hard and hope that they respond by making lots of new shoots. If they don’t it will be another failed experiment but I don’t think I’d have expected them to live a long life in any case. Perhaps I should try propagating them.


Five.
On the obelisk, Clematis alpina is in flower. There’s another Clematis on there with it that probably should have been pruned. Last summer there was Rhodochiton mixed in with them and I dug a couple of them up to see if I could keep them through the winter. They are now shooting and I have a tray of seedlings coming on too. The obelisk should be having a very flowery year.


Six.
Number six is always a problem. Either it’s a desperate barrel scraping exercise to find something or else there are several things jostling for the slot. At this time of year it is the latter, which is a good problem to have. Greenhouse space is keenly fought over at this time of year. Seeds are great until they need pricking off, then the space requirement goes through the roof. There’s veg and flowers here, suspended between the staging for lack of room.
Underneath the left hand staging are several dozen camellias, some from cuttings, some from seed. I bring them up into the light if they have flowers. They’ll be done by next weekend, it’s now or never.

  • Camellia x williamsii ‘Taylor’s Perfection’
  • Camellia x vernalis ‘Starman’
  • Camellia japonica ‘Dorothy Johnson’

A drier week to come, allegedly. Might get some of those seedlings pricked off. Need to sow more too, it being April ‘n all. Have a good week.

Published by Jim Stephens

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

65 thoughts on “Six on Saturday – 1/4/2023”

  1. A bit of an absence from me, the beginning of this year has left me a little drained, but hoping to post next week as more plants are coming up:) the cyclamen look lovely, if it self seeds I imagine you’re slowly developing patches and streams of the lovely pink through you’re garden? The Skimma Japanoica looks great too. I have a large white one outside my front door. Sadly I think I’ll need to remove it shortly, but hoping I might be able to propagate via cuttings. Thanks for sharing ~ Jean

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  2. Pingback: Six on Saturday: The Joys of April – Our Forest Garden
  3. Pingback: Six on Saturday; Delayed by Power Blips! | Cosmos and Cleome

  7. Appreciated the fourth on euphorbia. They’re something I’m looking into to fill a sunny spot. Also, I’m glad to have finally made the crossover from Six on Saturday at The Propagator. I’ve missed so much!

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  9. I love your flowering Quince! There’s one outside our church that has an unusually long flowering season. I have taken cuttings on several occasions but have never managed to root them.

    I think I need to add some more Cyclamen varieties to extend flowering to different times of the year. Currently have Cyclamen hederifolium (late summer) and C. coum (late winter), so C. repandum looks like it would fit the bill nicely.

    It has been a while, but I finally managed to scrape together a Six on Saturday post: two in the greenhouse, four in the garden.

    Six on Saturday #73 (April 1, 2023)

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  10. Pingback: Six on Saturday #73 (April 1, 2023) – Sweetgum and Pines

  11. Happy Saturday! Last weekend, I was nursing a spring cold, the remaining cough nearly done, so I hadn’t the energy to even look at SOS. Now I am back, but with no more pictures than I would have had last weekend. Spring by the calendar is not the same as Spring on the ground in Wisconsin. The cyclamens are lovely, and I also love the clematis. Apparently those cyclamen are hardy even in Wisconsin. They remind me a bit of the native dodecatheon species. Have a great week everyone! https://wisconsingarden.wordpress.com/2023/04/01/april-1-2023-six-on-saturday/

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  12. Pingback: April 1, 2023 Six on Saturday – Gardening in the Prairie

  13. You keep me on my toes Jim with your link – I keep putting the zeros in the date and then find you don’t so my pingback never reaches you until I sort it out. I thought I’d done good this week, but then realised that there is no zero in the month either! Oh, well. That Mathis was a nightmare here – I really thought my roof would blow off and I swear I could feel the house shaking in the early hours of Friday. What with the wind and the rain I am so relieved to see the sun today! Luckily I took photos earlier in the week as things are looking a little battered now.

    Six on Saturday | No Fooling Around

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  14. Good morning, Jim. Very happy to see in the comments that the road cleared for you to get home. So much rain these past few months! We’re under wind warnings here today as the front that hit so hard in the central US passes over us and out to sea today. I’m grateful for the rain. I love how you planted the fern and Cyclamen together and hope you’ll show that same shot again once the fern is up. I’ve rooted the E. ‘Rainbow Ascot’ from stem cuttings, but you are correct that it is a short lived perennial. Mine lasted into the 3rd year in a sunny rock garden before it withered away. But it could have gotten too wet for too long over winter here. I love all of your shots this week. Your garden is coming along so beautifully! I’m showing a new project I’m in the midst of to plant evergreen native ferns in our woods, and explaining why, in my post this week: https://woodlandgnome.wordpress.com/2023/04/01/six-on-saturday-storm-mode/

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  15. Pingback: Six on Saturday | No Fooling Around – Cornwall in Colours
  16. Pingback: Six on Saturday: Storm Mode – Our Forest Garden

  17. Love those little cyclamen – we have loads of them running all through the shadiest parts of the garden. They’re the ones that flower later but have beautiful leaves now. And your camellia are also lovely.Weather not too bad here in east Devon on Friday, but oh the weed growth!!

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    1. Ah, weeds. I have to tackle my allotment but it’s just been too wet, at least the weeds protect the soil surface from the rain – ever the optimist, me. It’ll have been Killerton where I saw Cyclamen repandum in huge swathes years ago, that’ll be in your neck of the woods?

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  18. I had never thought of skimmias having a fragrance – need to check mine out…or is it just this variety? It has been a wet March here too, but never heavy, just light showers and a lot of them – we didn’t really need to turn the water on for the garden taps yet!! Thanks for making time amidst your busy life to host. My six are here: https://ramblinginthegarden.wordpress.com/2023/04/01/six-on-saturday-the-genie-is-out-of-the-bottle/

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  19. Pingback: Six on Saturday – the Genie is Out of the Bottle | Rambling in the Garden

  20. I have yellowing leaves on my Skimmia japonica ‘Rubella’ too, is there any way to treat the problem, Jim?
    Your Cyclamen are looking great. I’ve never had an ideal place to plant them, but now I have – they’re so rich in colour and so elegant.

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    1. Yellow leaves over the whole bush is likely because it’s getting too much sun or is in poor or dry soil. Mine is yellow on just one branch,, which suggests a different problem and I have history with honey fungus in that area. Honey fungus is untreatable.

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      1. I can probably eliminate too much sun and dry soil – in Scotland we have heaps of rain, and not an over-abundance of sun either. It’s also in light shade by afternoon.

        That leaves poor soil, so I should start there and give it a good heavy mulch this week and a good feed.

        Thanks again for your help. I hope your problem isn’t Honey fungus.

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    1. I’m very used to my Euphorbia mellifera which gets no attention beyond a brutal chop every couple of years. I’m not sure there’s much I could do to help a less robust type, even if I were minded to.

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  24. Pingback: Six On Saturday: Flowers in the rain | n20gardener

  25. We had a deluge of rain but I didn’t know it was named storm. Perhaps the storm didn’t land on my side of the country. Some sunshine would be very welcome now. Another very lovely six from you, the Chaenomeles japonica is a beautiful colour and the spreading cyclamen is a joy that I must investigate. No sign of flowers on my clematis alpina yet. Here’s what I do have in this slow Spring https://n20gardener.com/2023/04/01/six-on-saturday-flowers-in-the-rain-2/

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    1. I’m not having a good day today, couldn’t find your comment box either but did enjoy your post. You remind me that I must move some time out of the shadow of a large sage bush.

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  28. Pingback: Six on Saturday: 1st April 2023 – My Tiny Welsh Garden

    1. N20 here, couldn’t find your comment box this week, so I am using this link. Just to say that your Actea are weeks ahead of mine! And I am now very envious!! Not a fan of spiders in sheds or greenhouses so you have my sympathies there, but at least you got the job done!

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    1. And that in a country which has a town called Clematis. It’s a widespread genus in the wild, I’d have thought there might be varieties that would grow in your climate, not that I know much about clematis.

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    1. If you can collect and sow cyclamen seed as soon as the pods open in summer, they’re usually very easy. Another 2 or 3 months and it gets much harder. If I remember, and get a decent amount, I’ll offer to send fresh seed later in the year.

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  34. Hello all, I’m making a return to Six on Saturday after a considerable absence, not due to apathy, but a series of unfortunate incidents. All is well now, the garden is still there, and I’m happy to be back blogging again. 😀
    My post is here:

    Glorious Spring

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    1. We got off fairly lightly, just loads of rain. I came back across Bodmin Moor in the dark yesterday along a road that had been blocked by floods earlier in the day. No problems, it clears quickly on high ground.

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  39. Six on Saturday: No EMail


    I almost did not make it. I could not get my pictures! The pictures I used are older than yours.
    Are flowering quincy typically thorny? I am not overly familiar with it, since it is rare here. The only common old fashioned sort is not thorny, but gets big and annoyingly twiggy. Many of the others are somewhat modern cultivars. The only one in my garden is one of the Proven Winners cultivars ‘Double Take Orange Storm’.

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      1. A few of those is worse than none. The primary old fashioned flowering quince that I prefer lacks thorns. It would be unpleasant to work with otherwise. Thorns are less bothersome among the smaller sorts that do not whip about and slap me unexpectedly.

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    2. Yes, most (older and species) Japanese flowering quince have thorns because Chaenomeles are members of the rose family (like thorny native plums and hawthorns). The modern C. ‘Storm’ series bred the thorns out of their cultivars, just like they bred out the ability to set fruit.

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      1. The old classic cultivar here is also thornless, but I get the impression that it is not so typical. I do not know what it is, but I see it in old landscapes, or where old homes had been. It is my favorite because it is the most familiar. I typically dislike modern cultivars, but have been pleased with ‘Double Take Orange Storm’.

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