Six on Saturday – 13/1/2024

Categories six on saturday42 Comments on Six on Saturday – 13/1/2024

Arrrgh! This is getting difficult. There really isn’t a lot happening out there right now. I wandered around this morning looking for inspiration and finding none. Could I scrape together six flowers, of absolutely anything at all, the real diehards? What about low life, mosses, lichens, a fern or two? Maybe I could take half a dozen arty shots, it wouldn’t matter what they were of? How about those things that never make it into a six, there must be six of them, and six reasons why they’d never made it into a six?

Somehow, now that I come to look at the pictures I took, I find that I have around 20 to choose from. It’s probably not a good idea to shut my eyes and stick a pin in the computer screen but I’m going for a random theme this week.

One.
Starting with Teucrium fruticans. The epitome of Mediterranean summer plants, silvery leaves and all. But it’s got a couple of flowers on it and that’s good enough for now. The parent plant is in a garden I visited this morning and there, it has quite a bit of flower. It was one of those s–t or bust pruning jobs, it had been on the wall unpruned for probably ten years or more and I gave it a brutal haircut from which I didn’t really expect it to recover. I took a few pieces away to take cuttings, thinking to replace the old plant with a young one when it died. It didn’t die and I was left with a couple of vigorous young plants for which I felt obliged to find a home. I’m pleased that I did, they’ve done well.

Two.
The winter sun worked its magic on Miscanthus ‘Septemberot’, creating a bit of ‘Januarsilber’. It’s for these fleeting moments that you put up with these messy disintegrating things deep into the winter.

Three.
Astelia ‘Westland’ is a perfect example of a plant that never changes and tends to escape notice. I went out the front to take a picture of some moss and this seemed to be much more interesting, which is damning with faint praise if ever there was. I don’t recall it ever being as good a colour as it is just now.

Four.
Camellia ‘Minato-no-akebono’ has suffered some damage to its flowers from lows of around -2°C but if you don’t look too closely it still looks pretty good. You can see some browning in the flower on the right. At Mount Edgcumbe yesterday I took pictures of three plants of the same variety; completely unscathed. Being right by the sea must have kept the temperature a degree or two higher.

Five.
I suppose this Phormium has a cultivar name but it is lost. Sue bought this and declared it to be dwarf form. I imagine my reaction was a snort followed by ‘Yeah, right’. It’s been there a good few years now and is still only a couple of feet high. I’m not a big fan of Phormiums; to me they’re dull, but there are, I have to admit, a lot of other plants that I grow that the rest of the world thinks are dull. There’s no accounting for taste, that’s for sure.

Six.
I can’t decide. Pickings from the cutting room floor. Take your pick and bin the rest.

I should no more look at weather forecasts than the news. Both are guaranteed to make me feel worse. I just did though, and it looks like next week is going to be a challenge too. I might wish I’d kept back some of those number six pictures. Something will turn up. Have a good week.

Published by Jim Stephens

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

42 thoughts on “Six on Saturday – 13/1/2024”

      1. I meant to ask – what sort of tree is the last photo from the cutting room floor? Bare trees are nice to see. It is interesting to me how closely form and function are linked. Naked trees resemble our own circulatory and respiratory systems, and make me think of lungs when I admire their winter form.

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      2. Crataegus prunifolia, the plum-leaved thorn. Not as big as the picture suggests, and in next door’s garden, overhanging ours by several feet, which I don’t have a problem with.

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  7. No six from me (again) this week, thanks for your heroic efforts to keep SoS going. I really like the phormium but the star for me this week is the camellia. And you even managed to capture some blue sky!

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  8. Lovely photos this week, Jim. Sorry to be late to the party today. I used the morning out doors and yesterday writing on another project. We are all searching for something interesting to share this time of year, but you have some interesting ones all the same. Good luck this coming week. Here are mind, from the calm before the (next) storm:

    Six on Saturday: Time’s Up

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  9. Pingback: Six on Saturday: Time’s Up – Our Forest Garden

  13. I keep having trouble posting comments on your blog. Fingers crossed for this one … sorry if it’s a repeat.
    Glad that you included your miscanthus moment! I have to say that I like both your astelia and phormium inclusions, but I adore that Camellia ‘Minato-no-akebono’. What a picture it is. Hope it survives next week!
    Here are my six: https://wp.me/pM8Y1-91U

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  19. I would agree that the final six collage would have been worthy of a six on its own. But I’m sure, at this desolate time for most of us, you’ll find a fresh and interesting six for next week. Your Miscanthus ‘Septemberot’ is looking fabulous!
    I have a Dahlia post for this week, but it’s not a six, it’s been one of those weeks of almost no light and a dismal-looking garden.

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  20. Pingback: Six on Saturday: 13 January 2024 – My Tiny Welsh Garden

    1. Looking at a picture of the Phormium from December 2019, it seems to have stayed around the same height but made a bigger clump. One from the SoS archive, a useful reference for me. ‘Platt’s Black’.

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    1. I’m glad I took the pictures in the sun yesterday and not in today’s leaden gray. That hydrangea is due a hard chop back, I’ve been putting it off for a couple of years, so I’m extracting every last bit of pleasure I can from it in the meantime.

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  27. ‘Jack Spratt’? Is that the cultivar of Phormium? We grew a few cultivars, but not that one, although it happens to be quite popular.
    I grew my ‘Black Lace’ elderberries like your Teucrium fruticans, by plugging many cuttings with the expectation that a few might survive, but when all but one survived, I felt obligated to find homes for all of them.
    -2 degrees does not seem so extremely cold when I translate it to Fahrenheit, although it is colder than it gets here. I am impressed that the Camellia ‘Minato-no-Akebono’ blooms as well as it does.
    These are my Six on Saturday:

    Six on Saturday: Old School

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    1. ‘Jack Spratt’ rings a bell, I don’t think it ever had a label. Could be ‘Platt’s Black’, looking back through SoS posts. You have more options for getting rid of excess plants than I do, they tend to just get in my way until I’m sick of them and put them the shredder. Plant sales when the garden is open help a bit.

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      1. ‘Platt’s Black’? Well, there are likely several cultivars that are available there that are not available here. We grew a few New Zealand flax on the farm, but that was as their fad was near the end.

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