Six on Saturday – 27/5/2023

Categories six on saturday47 Comments on Six on Saturday – 27/5/2023

The switch from wanting it all to happen quicker to wishing you could slam the brakes on and slow it down seems to have been particularly abrupt this year. There is no happy medium because even now I’m both wanting some things to crack on a bit as well as lamenting how quickly other things are going over. The things that miss the SoS cut one week are more likely to have to wait another year than another week for their moment in the spotlight.

One.
Tulipa sprengeri ‘Trotter’s Form’. I bought a single bulb of this from Bob Brown a few years back and it is clear I am going to have a long wait for it to self sow into a large colony. Having said which, it is a small flower that undoubtedly punches above its weight, so much so that I am using it as the excuse to include a view shot of it in context.*

Two.
Clematis montana ‘Marjorie’. When I built the length of fence in the top corner a couple of years back I wanted a couple of Clematis montana varieties to cover it quickly but to be a bit less thuggish than the most vigorous like ‘Rubens’ and ‘Elizabeth’. I showed you ‘Warwickshire Rose’ three weeks ago, this is the other one that I chose, the double flowered ‘Marjorie’. So far they are doing exactly what I wanted them to do.

Three.
Geranium magnificum. I think someone put this in a six last week and wanted an ID on it. I wasn’t sure, so kept quiet, but it’s a fairly widely grown variety. It flowers only once, for a few weeks, and has somewhat coarse foliage, but is lovely when it’s doing its thing.

Four.
Corydalis ochroleuca or as it should now be known, Pseudofumaria alba. Very possibly my favourite self seeder; never invasive but has persisted for many years at the level of between one and three plants at a time. Abundant seedlings frequently appear, but only one or two ever seem to make it to flowering size. Not just well behaved, it is exceptionally prolific with its flowering, which goes on for months. This plant is very happy in very dry soil at the foot of our big Taxus ‘Standishii’.

Five.
I have rarely featured individual plants from Sue’s glasshouse but there are two plants of Aeonium ‘Pomegranate’ in there flowering and ignoring them, or passing them over for some dull green thing, didn’t seem right. The taller one is about six feet. They’re hardly any less impressive when just in leaf, with huge rosettes of dark leaves.

Six.
The cacti have a bad habit of mass flowering two days before we have the garden open, so when people arrive it is to see numerous collapsed flowers draped over the plants. That though is just one lot of which there are a lot of varieties. The rest flower at different times, mainly through the spring, and while they do not last long, they are around for longer than the Echinocactus varieties which last about 24 hours, perhaps three or four days. They come in an extraordinary range of colours, like this one; Echinocereus sheerii.

That’s it for another week. See you next time.
PS. Tregrehan Plant Fair is on 4th June from 10.00 am. It is a very good reason indeed to take a trip down to Cornwall, should you be looking for an excuse, as a glance at the nursery list will attest.

*

Published by Jim Stephens

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

47 thoughts on “Six on Saturday – 27/5/2023”

  1. Pingback: Six on Saturday: Sharing the Love – Our Forest Garden

    1. Sue’s greenhouse is the only one that gets sun all day, mine gets shade paint in summer for protection from the few hours sun it does get, the other one gets a good bit of sun but still not quite enough for tomatoes.

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  6. Pingback: Six on Saturday: Summer’s Unofficial Start | Cosmos and Cleome
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  10. The pace of growth in the garden is awe inspiring. Something new to catch my eye every day or every hour as the case may be. The weeds are a problem but it is the price of admission for a thriving cultivated garden. Weeding keeps me busy and perhaps busier than I want to be.
    The cactus flowers are beautiful and they can be such a contrast to the coarseness of the rest of the plant.
    It is Memorial Day weekend here in the US. It is time to pause before the heat of the summer.
    Here is my Six for this week.

    It feels more like summer 26 May 2023

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  13. What a lovely garden view. I am all about the views this week. And the cactus flower is a beauty. Does Sue keep her Aeoniums inside all year? I have 5 pots now plus three cuttings that need potting on and I usually put them outside in the summer, but last year when I brought a couple of pots back into the conservatory in October the roots had rotted (hence the three cuttings). Trying to keep on top of the weeds and pulling out the forget-me-nots has kept me busy this week. A slow process as my right hand is still numb. (I am ignoring your plant fair notice – there’s barely a bare spot in my garden now!)

    Six on Saturday | (Chelsea) Garden Views

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      3. All of them, it doesn’t seem to make a lot of difference. In the main they are in plastic pots when small, then a heavier pot when they are bigger, for stability and aesthetics rather than growing conditions.

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  14. Your SoS does encourage one to get out there and enjoy what there is to enjoy while it is still photographable! That is the beauty of this forum that encourages one to appreciate in the moment, before it fades or gets overtaken by something growing nearby. The T. sprengeri may be a little slow to get started, but they are tenacious. I inherited a patch from a previous gardener who planted them in one of the beds I tended at the local botanical garden. They totally clashed with my scheme, but they were too charming to remove, and I was amazed at how they multiplied themselves each year. I ended up spreading them out a bit and finding a way to work them into looking like they belonged, rather than appearing as a rogue patch on one wing of the raised bed. Like everyone else who’s left a comment this morning, it has been a busy week in the garden here. it seems like we are all tidying and editing while we are still planting. But what a pleasure to spend time each day out in the beauty of it all! Here are my six for the week: https://woodlandgnome.wordpress.com/2023/05/27/six-on-saturday-taking-the-cue/

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    1. That’s encouraging about Tulipa sprengeri. I’ve collected seed so far, thinking germinating it in a pot would be safer but have only had a couple come up. I’ll just spread them around the parent plant from now on.

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      1. Do you ever dig up the bulbs, as the leaves die back, to see whether you have a clump that can be separated? The bed I tended was in bulbs over winter and spring, then replanted with Salvia and Lantana for summer and fall. I would often bring up bulbs- without intending to- when planting the Lantana. That offered the opportunity to move them around a bit. I didn’t let any of the seeds ripen most years because I was constantly ‘tidying up’ and keeping the display as neat as possible through the seasonal transitions. I’ve had pretty good luck germinating Lycoris seed in a pot. But it also takes 3-5 years from seed to flower for many bulbs, so patience and attentiveness are required to make a success of it.

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  15. Pingback: #Six on Saturday… (sorry there are no flowers…) | Anita Dawes and Jaye Marie
  17. Pingback: Six on Saturday: Taking the Cue – Our Forest Garden

  18. I have never known the weeds to grow so fast before, it is a never ending job.Thank you for showing where your tulip is, couldn’t see it originally, lovely in close up though, like the corydalis too. Sue’s aeonium is amazing, the only flowering ones I have seen were outdoors on the Scillies in a public garden.
    My six are here…………https://www.leadupthegardenpath.com

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  20. Pingback: Six On Saturday: It’s all happening here | n20gardener
  21. Pingback: Six on Saturday: 27 May 2023 – My Tiny Welsh Garden

  23. Hey there Jim! Really liking that Cordyalis – somehow I’ve gotten the notion of it being short-lived. It borders the zone 5-7 which is ‘iffish’ in our weird and crazy Finnish weather. It would look lovely in our woodland garden. Interesting foliage – which makes me think there might be some pieces of it growing willy-nilly around here. All the rest of your six, good choices! Here’s what is happening today in our neck of the world: https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/57470039/posts/4728492796

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  25. Six on Saturday: Hollywood

    Gee, I stopped worrying about limiting my six to the previous week quite a while ago. It is more difficult to do so while so much blooms at this time of year, and as I mentioned in my six, it is difficult to do so while I am travelling and unable to process six pictures within a few days after taking them. My six were taken prior to last Saturday. Since then, I have gone almost to Phoenix, and am now back near where I took these six pictures in the Los Angeles region, and will be on my way home tomorrow. Incidentally, while near Phoenix, I noticed that the Saguaro are beginning to bloom. Those huge cacti look silly with their haloes of fat floral buds mixed with blooms. They are not as colorful as your #6 though. Is Aeonium bloom desirable? Mine bloom because the neighbor prefers them to do so. Otherwise, I might cut the bloom off before they develop, in order to conserve resources for vegetative growth. They still look silly for a while after their bloom gets cut off, but the do not die back as far as they do after full bloom.

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    1. Because we can’t just plant Aeoniums in the ground and let them get on with (they can on the Isles of Scilly, just off the coast here) there is something of novelty value about them flowering, and if they look terrible afterwards, even to the point of chucking them out, it does free up a decent sized space and there are always loads of young ones coming up behind. What an iconic plant Saguaro is, I can’t think of them as looking silly.

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      1. My father lived for a while in the Arizona high desert around Wickenberg. I found the saguaro startling. All around the house, as far as the eye could see, it seemed an army closing in on us. Never saw them in bloom, but then it would feel like an army of brides with floral wreaths on their heads.Vaguely sinister as daylight begins to fade, but very cool!

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      2. With their floral haloes, the grand saguaros look like they are wearing old fashioned bathing caps. It is unbecoming of their boldness. I certainly would not want to argue with one about it though.

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  26. Pingback: Six on Saturday | (Chelsea) Garden Views – Cornwall in Colours
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