Six on Saturday – 11/11/2023

Categories six on saturday48 Comments on Six on Saturday – 11/11/2023

Looking at the garden from an upstairs window, especially when the sun is shining, it really doesn’t look bad at all. Get down amongst it and things are less rosy; it’s soggy and mouldering and if we get the dry day the forecast is promising for tomorrow I’m going to chop a lot down, shred it and spread it.

It hasn’t rained continually, which contributes to the frustration, you get an hour of dry, get coaxed out to see what’s what and the next torrential shower arrives. It doesn’t ever have time to dry out between the showers. It has provided me with an alibi for working on the Mount Edgcumbe camellia collection records, so my time has been put to horticultural use.

Six things happening in the garden, the core requirement of this six on Saturday meme, becomes more of a challenge as autumn slithers into winter. As the one person unable to take a week out, I feel an obligation to come up with something, and there’s always something when I look hard enough. Join in, help me out. Post six of your own and put a link to them in the comments below. Guide notes are here.

One.
Fuchsia boliviana is not a plant you’re going to see growing in many gardens and for good reason. It is quite tender and the top growth will get trashed by the first frost we get. The metre tall stems then get cut to the ground and next spring it will come up again. In a colder garden it would get killed completely; here it has been in the ground for many years. It is just now starting to produce flower buds. The chances of them coming to anything are close to zero and admittedly, they are later this year than in some others. One year we overwintered young plants in the tunnel; we didn’t lose the top growth and they flowered the following year for many months.

Two.
There is always Sue’s glasshouse to fall back on. Plenty of looking good stuff in there at any time of year. We visited Surreal Succulents shop at Tremenheere last year and splashed out on a couple of very expensive things, rationalising it with the usual nonsense about it growing into its price and thinking about all the young plants we’ll be able to propagate from it. In the case of Semponium ‘Destiny’, there is some truth in the first but none in the second. It is 31cm across but has produced no offsets at all. Semponium is a hybrid between Sempervivum and Aeonium so in theory similar looking to Aeonium but hardier. I don’t think we’ll be putting that to too severe a test.

Three.
Hydrangea cv. It doesn’t have a label and has been hanging about for a couple of seasons in the same three litre pot. It must be a cutting from one in the garden but none of them ever colour up like this. Nothing in the garden colours up like this.

Four.
I took out more than half of this Skimmia earlier this year because it was bright yellow and obviously dying. The bit I left looked reasonably healthy back then. Not now, it seemingly has honey fungus or some such gnawing at its roots. Another planting opportunity is about to make itself available, something that is resistant or immune to honey fungus. Or I could just let the Fuchsia behind it fill the space.

Five.
It’ll have been last spring that Fred sent me some seed from his pink Abutilon. Lots germinated and I grew on ten or so to flowering size, which didn’t take long. I then picked out five distinct colour forms, kept them in pots in the greenhouse until this spring and planted four of them out. They have grown to about a metre and flowered continuously. But what now? I have no room to put them inside, I doubt they’d like being lifted anyway. I don’t know how hardy they are or how hard a winter we’re going to get. I have taken cuttings but there’s no sign of them rooting. I don’t think they’ve set any viable seed. I plan on leaving them in situ, piling leaves around them stems in hopes that if the top is killed they’ll shoot from the ground.

Six.
As I said at the top, the further away you are when you look at the garden, the better it looks. This is the view from upstairs in the house in the half hour slot between the sun coming round the side of the house mid morning and then being blocked by trees.

A bit of sunshine makes so much difference at this time of year. It can be cloudy in summer without being gloomy. I’ll take a dry day as a second rate substitute though; desperation is creeping in. I wish you all a sunny day.

Published by Jim Stephens

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

48 thoughts on “Six on Saturday – 11/11/2023”

  1. What is this mythical dry spell you speak of? I can barely remember what the sun looks like anymore…

    I am very impressed by the autumn leaves on that hydrangea. As if the flowers don’t provide enough of a show, that one’s a real overachiever! Also, the golden grass fountaining in the sun is a showstopper, so pretty.

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    1. I’d be more impressed by the hydrangea if it would do that in the ground and not just when hungry in a pot. The grass is lovely but spreads over paths on two sides; I’ve planted a different variety in hopes of it staying more upright; too early to say yet. A dryer, sunnier spot might have kept it shorter and stiffer.

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  2. Your picture of Semponium ‚Destiny‘ reminded me of a succulent I bought too expensive, too. To save it from freezing I have to put it into the house.

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  3. Haha – I wish we had an upstairs window we could look out at the garden from, Jim!! We have had some good gardening days this week, albeit damp ones until the latter part of the week – dry AND sunny today though – hurrah! Having splashed out on decent-sized witch hazels more than once I empathise with you on the semponium… (not that I will be propagating the witch hazels in a hurry…) Thanks for hosting.

    Six on Saturday: the Temperature is Dropping

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      3. I long gave up linking my EOMV posts, Jim, as there was never any feedback or response from the host – but I continue with it for my own records, and regular readers seem to find it interesting too

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      4. Hi again – at some point in the night Icwoke up and realised I had had a mental aberration about EOMV! It was the Garden Bloggers’ Blooms Day I gave up on because it was very impersonal. EOMV was run by Helen, the Patient Gardener, and over the years her work commitments changed and the meme fizzled out. Her blog was my very first introduction to the blogging community, and I came upon it by accident when Googling a plant – up to then I had bern blogging in a vacuum for a few months, and I wouldn’t be where I am now if it wasn’t for her blog

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  4. Pingback: Six on Saturday: the Temperature is Dropping | Rambling in the Garden

    1. Leonhart Fuchs is not well known and is long dead but knowing Fuchsias were named in his honour helps in that it’s hard to think of them being named after someone called Fush or Fusch, isn’t it? Or is it just me?

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  7. Lovely fall foliage on the hydrangea! In my mind my weeping cherry will look like that, but the reality is not (yet anyway). In fact, the leaves pretty much went straight to muddy brown. No pictures from me this week, but I will enjoy everyone else’s!

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  8. Here in the American South it has been very dry for the last 7 or 8 weeks. It began raining yesterday and it looks like we will have rain daily for the next 10 days according to the forecast. We certainly need the rain here. It is a matter of geography.
    I sincerely appreciate your hosting the group each Saturday morning. It has become my routine each Saturday morning to join in.
    Here are my efforts for this week. It is becoming more of an effort to find the six but it is worthwhile.

    More Fall Colors 10 Nov 2023

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  9. You are expressing my sentiments exactly and I suspect many others feel the same – just a few more dry days please. Good luck with the abutilon. I dug out a skimmia this year, looking just like yours (well, perhaps a little worse) a fatsia japonica has gone is as a replacement. I hope the hosting isn’t becoming too onerous, it is much appreciated and the garden does glorious from a distance and at this time of the year I appreciate those garden views! Here’s my link https://n20gardener.com/2023/11/11/six-on-saturday-autumn-colours/

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    1. The hosting is a pleasure and a privilege but life sometimes gets hectic and I don’t cope well with pressure, if any right minded person would call it that. The weather does seem increasingly to get stuck in very long ruts and neither wet or dry ruts are good for a garden.

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  10. Pingback: Six On Saturday: Autumn colours | n20gardener
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  13. This time of the year vistas and long views are the way to view the garden. I wonder whether taking leaves of the Semponium ‘Destiny’ and laying them on sandy gritty soil as one can do with some succulents would work? The trouble with expensive plants which are wonderful to have, we don’t really want to experiment in case one kills it, such as cutting off the whole of the stem setting that to root, and seeing if there are multiple side shoots which can make several plants. I read on Surreal Succulents site that all you have to do is be patient and side shoots may appear. Here are my six: https://noellemace.blogspot.com/2023/11/six-on-saturday-november-11-2023.html

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    2. It’s massively in Surreal Succulents interests to breed varieties that are hard to propagate. Sue churns out plants of the free branching Aeoniums she has and sells them at a fraction of SS’s prices. I know she does Echeverias and closely related things from leaves, not sure about Aeoniums or Semponiums.

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  20. Another very nice choice of autumnal colours this weekend, Jim! I really liked the colours of this hydrangea. Concerning the abutilon, mine is still outside but I’m going to bring it into the greenhouse. If you have space in a corner of your house/garage you can also overwinter it a little warmer because I tried around 15 to 18° and it worked. You just have to cut back all the stems a little so that there are not too many leaves, and it will start again in spring. Bravo for keeping fuchsia boliviana alive ! https://fredgardenerblog2.wordpress.com/2023/11/11/six-on-saturday-11-11-23/

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    1. I’ll maybe lift one of the Abutilons, I have one that never got planted out. It’d be a shame to lose them all. I did everything I could to kill Fuchsia boliviana but it always comes back up again. Tougher than it looks.

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  21. Abutilon is not all that resilient. It seeds a bit too much. I let some of the seedlings grow long enough to see what they bloom like. Then, I cut those that I am not impressed by to the ground. Not many regenerate. If they do, I merely cut them again. They do not come back twice. That would concern me where desirable specimens get pruned back to the ground or damaged by frost to the ground. I suspect that mature specimens are much more resilient than young seedlings, but they take more than one year to mature. During that time, they may not survive getting frosted to the ground.
    Fuchsia boliviana gets tall and wiry if not sometimes pruned, and those who grow it do not like to prune it. Consequently, they are typically prettier after getting pruned down low after frost damage. However, I would not trust frost in a frostier climate.
    Anyway, these are my Six:

    Six on Saturday: Los Angeles to Los Gatos II

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    1. There’s no sign of seed pods on any of my Abutilons, not warm enough presumably. Interesting that Fuchsia boliviana isn’t a very satisfactory garden plant in either your climate or ours. Sometimes the grass is brown on both sides of the fence.

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      1. Oh, I never heard it like that before! but, yes. Those who grow Fuchsia boliviana and other odd sorts enjoy them, and do not seem to notice that they are not visually appealing or practical for landscape application. I suppose that enjoyment is as important.
        I do not notice seed pods on the Abutilons. I just notice the seedlings. Gee, now I am wondering what I am missing.

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      2. I think the seedling Abutilons had seed pods in the greenhouse last autumn, but there are none now they’re out in the garden. I could see Fuchsia boliviana growing amongst other plants so its stems are hidden and just the smaller flowering shoots stick out. What I want is a permanently two year old plant, old enough to flower all summer but still quite short and compact.

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      3. Could the Abutilons have made seed and dropped them and their pods before you noticed, or are you too attentive for that? I notice no pods, but some were obviously there at one time. I sort of wonder what the Fuchsias like Fuchsia boliviana would look like if they were grown more for aesthetic appeal than bragging rights. Some of the Begonias get the same treatment. Those who grow them let them assume natural form, but then bind up their weirdly lanky stems instead of pruning them down to enhance foliar density. Those who prefer aesthetic appeal grow more of the fancy hybrids.

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      4. I found one seedpod when I searched the Abutilons carefully, unripe so I don’t know if there are seeds inside. I remember a friend of mine telling me that he’d pruned back Strongylodon macrobotrys in the Palm House at Kew, where he was working. He had no idea how rare it was and pruning was a nettle they’d shied away from for fear of killing it. To his immense satisfaction, and relief, it grew away better than ever.

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      5. Heck, the PRIMARY problem that I encounter with roses, which should perform very well in the Santa Clara Valley, is that they do not get pruned aggressively enough while dormant through winter. The same applies to the stone fruits, which is culturally embarrassing. Stone fruits were the primary crops of the orchards of the Santa Clara Valley decades ago. No one wants to prune anymore!

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      7. Actually though, it is a bit more unpleasant in coastal climates of Southern California, where roses may not ever be completely dormant. They defoliate, but not completely. When I pruned Brent’s roses in the middle of January, some were still blooming. I could not help but feel as if I was hurting them.

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