Six on Saturday – 30/12/2023

Categories six on saturday47 Comments on Six on Saturday – 30/12/2023

Not a lot left of 2023. This gardening year is drawing to a close with a minimal amount of gardening going on. The sun came out for a while this morning (Friday) and I went out to chop a few things down. We’ve warnings for wind both tomorrow and Sunday, as well as lots more rain. The last couple of weeks have been pretty mild though and there are a few signs of life out there. I went out to look and found those few things. If you are able to do so, please join in; you just need to find six things in your garden, or a garden, post pictures in a blog or post of some stripe, then put a link in the comments below. Onwards.

One.
It goes without saying that one of the things I found performing was Camellias. This one is ‘Minato-no-akebono’, another fragrant flowered lutchuensis hybrid that flowers from December through to February or March. The flowers can get frosted but there are usually lots more buds to come. I moved this bush when it was about six feet tall, a few years ago now but they take a while to fully recover from that sort of shock and this is the first year it’s looked like the trauma is behind it.

Two.
Camellia ‘Fairy Blush’ was an open pollinated lutchuensis seedling raised in New Zealand by Mark Jury. For them it flowers from May to October, the equivalent of November to April in the UK. Mine hasn’t quite spanned that but isn’t far short, and it’s still a young plant growing in a pot. The great thing is I can bring it into the conservatory out of the worst of the weather and enjoy it without getting wet. It’s also fragrant but less so than ‘Minato-no-akebono’.

Three.
Just as much a feature of the winter months are Cyclamen. My Cyclamen coum are beginning to flower and I managed to get one reasonably sharp shot out of several, taking its picture in this morning’s stiff breeze. It’s a terrible picture, one of the worst I’ve ever posted on SoS, but it’s dark now and I have no alternate item so it’s going in. I’ll round the corners, that’ll make it much better.😁

Four.
I got seed from the Cyclamen Society seed distribution both this year and last. This year I sowed them when they arrived. Last year I held back, intending to sow them in spring of this year, then spoke to a man who knows about these things who told me to sow them, so I did, on 26th January. They have mostly germinated, mostly months ago, though I was inordinately pleased to see that a single seedling of C. repandum album has recently appeared. The first to come up was Cyclamen persicum f. albidum, which is a wild form with pure white flowers. They grew well and I put the pot on the greenhouse bench, leaving the rest under the bench to carry on germinating. In autumn I noticed it was wilting, realised I’d missed it when I was treating for vine weevils with nematodes, turned out the pot to find a dozen or so tiny grubs and no roots left on the corms. I cleaned them up, pushed them into fresh compost and put them in my propagator. It seems to have done the trick, they are back on the shelf, no longer wilting, and I have a couple of flowers. Not bad for seedlings only 11 months old. They are clearly more robust than they look. They are not pure white but have the more typical magenta nose, and they smell divine!, which is pretty much why I wanted them in the first place.

Five.
You have to hand it to Fuchsia microphylla, or x bacillaris or whatever it is. We have a few of these about and those in the open garden got pretty well toasted by the frost a few weeks back. This one is growing under my big Phyllostachys bamboo and was sufficiently protected to escape much damage. I reckon it would have made it onto at least 9 out of 10 flowering on New Years day lists if I’d ever troubled to keep such things.

Six.
As I said at the top, I did a very short tidy up session this morning, essentially so that I could tell you I had in this six. I spotted a Crocus showing colour and just waiting for a sunny day to open. It could have a long wait. It would be good to be able to say that seeing the crocus had spurred me to chop down the stuff they share the bed with before the crocuses were up and making it difficult. Truth is, I did it for the camera, which was on a tripod beside me so that I could get a before and after shot. It’s one of my favourite WordPress features, though I’m painfully aware that admitting to even having favourite WordPress features is a bit dubious. Minutes after shot two was taken it started raining again so I grabbed the camera and ran.

That’s it. I wish you all a very happy and healthy new year. See you on the other side.

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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 – 30/12/2023”

  2. No Six from me today, as I have been busy with garden jobs despite the inclement weather. Your camellias are a joy to see, and how lovely that there ae fragrant varieties. I am impressed with cyclamen flowering from seed in less than a year – well done! What is the WordPress feature that you refer to? I couldn’t work out what you meant…

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    1. It’s the two photos on the bottom of this entry. There`s a white vertical line in it, you can move. Did you notice that?
      (I didn’t know this feature either. Is it for free?)

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      3. So it could be any side by side images, and not the same view on a time delay? I do just use the classic editor, but might go and have a look at the block version to see if I am missing out on anything particularly useful…

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      6. It’s one of the “blocks” in the wordpress editor and is called image compare. It’s great for before/after shots, with the camera on a tripod. I don’t know whether it is in the free wordpress themes but I think it probably is.

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      2. Conifer forest here is almost always synonymous with forestry plantations but the few remnants of wild coniferous forest we have, the Caledonian pine forest in Scotland, is utterly different and beautiful in its own right. Each tree becomes a distinct individual when they have space to develop naturally and I’ve seen pictures of Cryptomeria grown with space around and they are every bit as characterful as the Scots Pines in the Scottish forest.

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  4. Always a delight to see your camellias. My Fuchsia ‘Cornish Pixie’ is still flowering her heart out, I don’t think there has actually been a single day when it has not been in flower. The wind has picked up and it is lashing down at the moment so my gardening is reduced to planning changes for next year. HYN Jim and Sue. May all our plants find their happy place.

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  5. It must be a joy to go into your garden at this time of the year Jim, and see so many lovely camellias, fuchsia & cyclamen in bloom. The C. ‘Minato-no-akebono’ is gorgeous.
    Best Wishes for 2024!

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    1. I wouldn’t want you to get the impression that the garden is full of flowers, six pictures from a garden full of flowers and six pictures of the only six things flowering can look very alike. ‘Minato-no-akebono’ really is a star though, flowers for ages when there’s hardly anything else, with fragrance on a par with Mahonia or shrubby honeysuckle. It should be massively popular but you never see it for sale.

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  6. So lovely to see the flowers brightening up your life. My world is mostly grey for now. We are also getting rain (Okay, rain/snow mix) which is welcome, though at this time of year, I prefer the white stuff. It brightens up the grey. All the same, there is a subtle beauty in a field with just enough snow to fill in the furrows, giving the field a striped effect. Time to plan for Spring. It may be winter, but the days are getting longer! Here are my final six of 2023, what they lack in color, they make up for in promise. Happy New Year!

    December 30, 2023 Six on Saturday

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  7. I have enjoyed your camellia photos this year. My sasanquas are done and my japonicas will bloom soon. I am a viewer only this week. Thank you so much for leading us this year. Happy New Year!

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    1. The Cyclamen Society quite recently published a book on Cyclamen, called Cyclamen, a concise guide, By Martyn Denney. You can buy it on their website and it only costs £5, which for 104 information packed pages is very good value to my mind. And no, I don’t get commission.

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  10. Pingback: Six On Saturday: Looking forward | n20gardener

    1. I did a blog about moving a sizeable camellia a while back. https://wp.me/p7pIt7-2az Timing isn’t all that critical but you do need enough moisture in the soil to hold the rootball together. (I can hear you laughing from here!) In a dry autumn that can mean delaying until very late in the year. February-March is ideal.

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      1. I’m not surprised you can hear me laughing, everywhere is so wet at the moment, should dry up a bit next week hopefully. I have looked at your post about moving camellias, many thanks for that, will refer to that when we actually do it, my gardener has a long spade like yours so should be able to cope!

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    1. Flowers, even on winter flowering things, seem mainly not to be frost hardy, even if the plant is. Snowdrops, cyclamen, primroses will take a bit, most others are trashed. It’s interesting to see how many insects there are, seemingly resident, in Camellia blooms in winter. It’s still too cold for pollination to happen much in the UK.

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  15. I’m definitely going to be adding camellias to my gardening wish list after seeing such beautiful pictures of yours in recent weeks, Jim. And thanks for hosting each week, at this time of year it’s especially difficult.
    I hope all the SoS crowd had a lovely Christmas, and wish everyone well for 2024.
    I’ve managed to scrape a six together this week, albeit a rather mundane one: https://mysanctuarygarden.wordpress.com/2023/12/30/six-on-saturday-30-12-23/

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    1. I just had a look at your post and there’s definitely a space for a good camellia, right where the laurel is now. Nobody needs laurel in a garden the size of yours! (IMHO) Happy new year.

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  18. When I was just getting acquainted with common Cyclamen persicum while in junior high school, I was so pleased to find one that resembled yours, although I doubt that it was a natural variety. I do not know though. It could have been. That was before florists’ cyclamen became an expensively cheap cool season annual. I grew them as perennials, as if they were tuberous begonias of some sort. Fuchsia microphylla was formerly one of those annoying species that had been marketed as a native. People would get indignant if I mentioned that it is not native.
    Here are my Six:

    Six on Saturday: Bad Botany

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    1. My previous acquaintance with unimproved Cyclamen persicum dates back to I think college days, a very long time ago at any rate. It’s the incredible perfume and elegance that I remember. I’ve been wanting to grow it ever since but have never seen it for sale and have never had much faith in commercial seed of cyclamen species. At least my memory seems to have been accurate – increasingly rare these days.

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      2. Very cheap and usually on special offers to shift them quick because they have a very short shelf life in most garden centres, either outside in the cold, wind and rain or indoors in the heat, having come from a nice cool well ventilated glasshouse.

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