Six on Saturday – 30/9/2023

Categories six on saturday, 49 Comments on Six on Saturday – 30/9/2023

Last day of the month and I’m on my hols. We’re on the Scillies for a short break, made shorter by both boat and planes being cancelled on Wednesday when we were due to travel. It was a breezy force 11 here in gusts, we were told today, so it was probably better to lose a day.

Today we went to Tresco where it was calm and sunny all day long. Pictures were taken of a great many things and whittling it down to six wasn’t easy. It’s not a garden that has an exotic feel to it from growing a lot of a limited range of exotics, rather it has an extraordinary diversity of species, which involves taking risks, which don’t always come off. Or they get away with things for many years then get a winter that does a lot of damage.

So here are my six offerings.

One.
As great as the plant life in the garden is, it is always going to have a hard time competing with the red squirrels that have feeding stations positioned either side of the path into the garden. Whole hazelnuts have been laid out for them and they duly performed for the amusement of the customers; the squirrels, not the nuts. They are presumably not the nuisance in the garden that their grey cousins so often are.

Two.
The last time I saw a good sized Rhopalostylis sapida it was growing in the wild in New Zealand. I’ve tried to grow it, and failed miserably. They seem very happy at Tresco.

Three.
Haemanthus sanguineus is not something I’ve ever seen outside of bulb catalogues, but I grow Haemanthus albiflos and have seen enough pictures of its red flower relation to know what it was in spite of the lack of a label.

Four.
The Proteaceae family could almost be described as a Tresco speciality. They are everywhere. This Banksia was one of the showier representatives of its genus, but I caught myself photographing a four foot bush of another species then realised that the twenty foot tree it was growing under was in fact the same thing. Banksia ericifolia var. ericifolia ‘Firespite’ is the name this one is burdened with.

Five.
We ambled our way along the top path and I photographed a King Protea, the botanical name of which eludes me. Ten minutes later we headed back the other way, to meet a lady coming towards us with the very same flower among a bunch in her arms. She obviously felt obliged to explain herself and told us they were for a wedding tomorrow.

Six.
A third Protea family member to finish with and the best specimens of this were just outside the garden beside the road. Leucadendron argenteum is hardy enough to be occasionally seen on the mainland but is a tricky plant to grow so often doesn’t last long. Nothing wrong with this group of three, even flower buds developing on one of them.

That’s it for this week and next week we’re back to the mainland and our own garden, which is going to seem a bit dull after today’s treat. See you then.

Unknown's avatar

Published by Jim Stephens

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

49 thoughts on “Six on Saturday – 30/9/2023”

  1. Pingback: Six on Saturday- Functional Ferns – Our Forest Garden

  2. Hello again Jim, Cornucopia just dropped on the mat today, and by coincidence there was an article by Clive Lloyd on the inspiration he gained from Tresco to plant out his next garden in Devon……and then ‘Tales of the Unexpected’ by yourself. Great article Jim and great Dahlias.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  5. What lovely and unusual photos this week! So happy you have a holiday and the opportunity to enjoy someone else’s garden, elsewhere. I hope it has inspired both of you with fresh ideas and also been a bit of a rest after a long season. Here are my six for the week. We’ve had a break, courtesy of the weather, but not exactly a holiday: https://woodlandgnome.wordpress.com/2023/09/30/six-on-saturday-in-the-balance/
    Safe travels!
    -WG

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  6. Pingback: Six on Saturday: In the Balance – Our Forest Garden
  7. Pingback: September 30,2023 Six on Saturday – Gardening in the Prairie

  8. Absolutely gorgeous red squirrel! I’m fairly sure that the squirrels I used to see around Camberley and Farnborough when I was a small child were reds, but I’m sure they have all been replaced by the invasive greys by now. The greys are native here, of course, but are still highly annoying and damaging in the garden.

    Here are my six. All photos from the garden, but no plants this week!

    Marbled salamanders! (Six on Saturday #77, September 30, 2023)

    Like

    Reply
  9. Pingback: Marbled salamanders! (Six on Saturday #77, September 30, 2023) – Sweetgum and Pines

  11. I rather wish they had cancelled our boat journey when we went as I was SO unwell – the only saving grace was knowing we were returning on the plane!! You clearly had an easy job finding six things to share with us and the red squirrel was definitely the best! The ‘Firespite’ has such a curious flower, which almost looks as if it could have been knitted or crotched! My six are here: https://ramblinginthegarden.wordpress.com/2023/09/30/six-on-saturday-flitting-about/

    Like

    Reply
  12. Pingback: Six on Saturday: Flitting About | Rambling in the Garden

  13. I was staring at that squirrel for a while trying to figure out what was so odd about it and just realized — he has no ear tufts! Ours never seem to shed theirs, though Google says it’s more of a winter thing. What a beautiful location that I’ve never heard of until now!

    Like

    Reply
  16. Pingback: Six on Saturday | 30th September 2023 – Little Blue and White House

  19. Is the ‘c’ silent when you talk about The Scillies? When I looked it up I was surprised to see it’s a group of islands off the Cornwall coast – by the plant life I assumed somewhere in the Mediterranean. Beautiful plants and flowers there, and now I better understand the alarm over the potential demise of the gulf stream.

    Here’s Six from Canada today:

    Six on Saturday – 30SEP2023 – Bloomers and Rebloomers

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. It is a silent ‘c’. Tresco garden is the product of a long history of pushing the boundaries of what will grow in the conditions they have and is not representative of the islands as a whole, though there are interesting plants dotted about in peoples gardens here and there. I suspect the loss of the gulf stream would be felt more in the west of Scotland where it passes north of Ireland. Logon Botanic garden isn’t as impressively exotic as Tresco but feels at least as improbable when you’re there, given what it’s like just a few miles inland.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply
  22. Pingback: Six On Saturday: Late flowerers | n20gardener
  23. Pingback: Six on Saturday: 30 September 2023 – My Tiny Welsh Garden

  24. Since we spent a long time on Tresco earlier this year with so many Proteas in flower then, it surprised me to see them still in flower. Of course you would start with that fabulous picture of the red squirrel, they are having however an impact on the garden as Alasdair Moore explained…they break off the Protea flowers to suck the nectar from the flowers, the tell tale is the pile of broken flowers underneath, which they have to remove along the paths. Other good nectar sources are also vulnerable. They had not anticipated this when they introduced these squirrels a few years ago. Here are my Six: https://noellemace.blogspot.com/2023/09/six-on-saturday-at-end-of-september-2023.html

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

    1. For some reason I can’t post a comment on your site so here it is via Jim! N20: I love your slate plant labels. I too like to bring back a souvenir but I have to guard against just wasting my money! Those look fabulous. And glorious flowers too.

      Like

      Reply

    3. That’s interesting about the squirrels going for nectar rich flowers. We saw a few flowers on the ground in pieces and just thought they’d disintegrated naturally. Bit like parrots on grevillea in Australia, or bees here on Fuchsias and Salvias. Nectar is too good a food source to be put off by a lack of appropriate evolution to get at it neatly. It would be awful if it reached the point they had to control their numbers to avoid the garden getting trashed.

      Like

      Reply

      1. Nothing !! they only catch and bury the nuts. They are decreasing a lot because they are killed by cars and by cats but I have a regular family in my garden and I see them especially in the autumn (hazelnut time ).

        Liked by 1 person

  31. Leucadendron argenteum, as you mention, does not last long. However, two that were installed into a garden near a colleague’s home in Los Osos in the mid 1990s were still performing quite nicely only a few years ago. I am not certain if they are still there, but they certainly lasted longer than expected. Leucodendron, Protea and Banksia are ‘somewhat’ popular here because the climates suit them quite nicely. However, because they are awkward to prune, they are challenging to accommodate within compact suburban gardens. Rhopalostylis sapida can supposedly survive here, but I question its tolerance of the aridity. I have not seen one here that I can remember. I see them in Southern California on rare occasion, and they have crispy tips. Haemanthus albiflos performs quite nicely here. Several live right outside. I thought that Haemanthus sanguineus had the same cultural requirements, but I have never grown even one before. The squirrel is amusing because red squirrel was imported here from the East merely because Leland Stanford thought that the species is prettier than the native gray squirrel. As it turns out, they are the same species, but the gray squirrel is better camouflaged against the gray bark of Western oaks. Since they are the same species, they hybridize freely. Nowadays the gray and red squirrels are difficult to distinguish, since most are hybrids of both. Of course, they are different species from those in Europe.
    Goodness, I did not mean to get carried away. These are my six:

    Six on Saturday: Autumn in the Redwoods

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

    1. Rhopalostylis was a thing we saw growing on the west coast of south island, New Zealand, where the rainfall dwarfs ours, seriously wet. We saw another Leucadendron argenteum today that was around 25 feet, easily the biggest we’ve seen, and in rude health. As you will have seen from the comments, there’s lots of love here for red squirrels, even though many people have never seen one. They are native though, unlike the grey, which is the American species. The red has been pushed to the margins here, in what is not really much time. I am unaware of any interbreeding.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  33. Love the little red squirrel at the start of the post. No post from me this week as 1) we were out for a long lunch in town 2) there has been yet more rain and I couldn’t get out for any photos or to do any deadheading or weeding. Hope to join you all next week.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

Leave a comment