Six on Saturday – 13/4/2024

Categories six on saturday45 Comments on Six on Saturday – 13/4/2024

Today felt like spring; sunny, warm and pleasant. I took pictures in sunshine, which hasn’t happened much of late. I even felt confident enough to leave taking pictures until Friday, instead of getting a few in earlier in the week.

Hopefully your garden is really getting into its stride and there are things you’d be happy to share. If you’d care to join the Six on Saturday gang you’d be very welcome. Just check out the participants guide and come aboard.

One.
Tulips. I put off buying tulips until they were going cheap in December, then split 100 Tulipa clusiana ‘Cynthia’ between two 20L pots, intending to put them in the two holes in the front garden that were occupied by Alstroemeria last summer. In they went, then straight back out again because they are nowhere near tall enough. They were almost invisible. So now they’re just pot fulls out the front.


Two.
Magnolia ‘Ann’ is probably about at its best now. It was supposed to be an upright grower but had other ideas, so it gets bits chopped off every year to keep it in check.


Three.
Camellia season is coming to it’s end but I have a couple that flower relatively late. This one is the variety ‘Spring Festival’, a chance seedling of C. cuspidata, which has small, nondescript white flowers. I wonder where the pollen came from. It’s a lovely variety with lots of small double pink flowers on a narrow, upright bush. The new growth is strongly red flushed too. Mine is now over 13 feet tall.


Four.
Acer ‘Orange Dream’ has leafed out a lot since last week; it’s looking lovely but I’m wondering whether I should have pruned off some of the lower branches to get more growth from the upright stems. I want it to form a canopy over the shady area, not fill the middle of it. It can’t be done now until late summer, or the plant is liable to bleed heavily. I might have to do a bit earlier, if it is interfering with other plants.


Five.
Disporum sessile macrophyllum manages to hold its own against the onslaught of Dicentra, but only just. When I first bought it and had it growing in a pot in a polytunnel, it was probably nearly three feet tall. In the ground, in competition with other plants, it’s about a foot tall.


Six.
Lunaria ‘Corfu Blue’ has kept itself going by self seeding for several years now, unlike the standard honesty which I haven’t even managed to keep going from collected seed. It’s a bit of a thug, with big coarse leaves that can smother less robust plants if not kept in check. Worth it though.

It’s good to be getting back to proper gardening, not just doing the absolutely necessary before retiring into the dry again. The downside is that I’m not the only one to have noted the improvement in the weather, I’m starting to find adult vine weevils on my evening slug patrols and I squashed 20 odd lily beetles today. And don’t get me started on snails, it’s like a biblical plague. Have a good weekend.

Published by Jim Stephens

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

45 thoughts on “Six on Saturday – 13/4/2024”

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  3. The acer and the magnolia are both fabulous. Jetpack is giving me the runaround today. This is about my ninth attempt to share my post for today, and still I can’t get it to look right, sorry: Six on Saturday – 13th April 2024 At last there are some gaps in the rain and the temperatures are rising a bit. The garden is responding enthusiastically and so are the gardeners. … https://notesfromtheundergardener.wordpress.com/2024/04/13/six-on-saturday-13th-april-2024/

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  5. I find the species tulips can be rather small – and each year get smaller! Tulip sylvestris are taller ones, but in our windy conditions they tend to flop onto the ground. I like the cultivated ones, but nothing too fancy. Triumphs have sturdy stems and I like the lily shaped ones too. Your magnolia is a beauty. We visited Trelissick yesterday – to take advantage of the sun – and was rewarded with lots of azaleas and rhodies and a few magnolias. Unfortunately the mist has come back this afternoon…

    Six on Saturday | The Anniversary Edition

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  9. Wow! The Magnolia ‘Ann’ is simply gorgeous. I tried growing one a few years ago, but unfortunately, it did not work out. I do have a Southern Magnolia, but it’s not the same. The size of the Camellia has left me stunned. I must get my hands on a Camellia. I’m on a mission, haha! The Acer looks fantastic with that pop of yellow color. My Acer, (I don’t know the name), has been in the ground for a year and a half, and it’s still just a twig. Thank you for sharing. It’s just lovely.

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  11. Your large camellia makes me homesick for Seattle. The UW arboretum has a grove of camelias, all much taller than I realized they could grow. I spent many great hours in the arboretum. They also had a grove of every holly they could get their hands on. A foreign researcher once observed that Seattle weather was good for flowers, but not for people! We are to be above 20 C this weekend, so I will get started in the garden for sure. Birds are singing, bees are buzzing, and life is stirring in all corners!

    https://wisconsingarden.wordpress.com/2024/04/13/april-13-2024-six-on-saturday/

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    1. I have a hunch that the Pacific North West is probably as close to our climate as anywhere in the US and there would be a lot of people here would agree with that researcher’s observation. Not me, if it’s good for flowers it’s good for me.

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    1. ‘Spring Festival’ keeps a good narrow shape on its own for perhaps 10-15 years, then starts to open out. Its main stems are very upright, so don’t lend themselves to being pruned for shape (bit like my fastigiate yew), so when mine starts to lose its shape it will get chopped of at 3-4 feet and run up again.

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    1. Crûg list 44 Disporums, so more to investigate might be an understatement. I have a few. I have a repellent spray for lily beetle, yet to be deployed. I’ll keep you posted on whether it works.

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  21. That acer is a charmer, and thanks for the tip about not pruning till late summer. I like that Magnolia that does not quite manage to grow upright. Are Magnolias also best pruned later in the year?

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    2. Our Magnolia has had smallish bits chopped off at every season of the year, seemingly without ill effect. They don’t bleed like maples do but the book does say that large scale pruning is best done in midsummer to avoid bleeding.

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    1. I would say it’s a very mixed picture with camellias, some seem to have had a really long season, others shorter than usual. I don’t know that the flowers have been bigger, if anything I would have said that at the shows I’ve been to, the blooms have been smaller than they sometimes are. That may be because the weather has been so bad that the blooms that have been out a few days to get to full size have been marked by rain or wind.

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