Six on Saturday – 8/6/2024

Categories six on saturday44 Comments on Six on Saturday – 8/6/2024

Another Saturday, another six. There’s loads happening, finding six things should be a breeze, but we have the garden open next Friday and Saturday so everything is seen half as it looks now and half as I hope or fear it will look in a week’s time. I need to geta grip, live in the moment and post six things. You are as ever, invited to join in; it’s pretty simple but there is a participant’s guide here should you need it.

One.
Upstairs view. At this time of year the evening sun shines down the length of the garden, inviting the taking of pictures against the light. Our garden visitors won’t see it like this, they’ll be long gone. They won’t see it with the washing line, the washed pots and the trays of plants blocking paths either.


Two.
Hydrangea serrata ‘Cap Sizun’ is just to the left of the fastigiate yew in the previous picture. It gets some shade from the trees to the left but some direct sun too. It seems to suit it and it flowers well every year, always the first of our several hydramgeas to do so.


Three.
Paeonia ‘Bartzella’. Just about every picture I’ve seen of this peony, and the plant at Wildside that finally persuaded me I had to have it, had a much more pronounced red blotch at the base of the petals than mine. Thus I have myself a stunningly beautiful flower and am nevertheless somewhat disappointed. Should have bought it in flower I suppose.


Four.
Tregrehan rare plant fair last Sunday was better than ever but we already have far more plants than we can sensibly accommodate so restraint was called for and to a degree, exercised. I can’t tell you how many things I would have bought if space and money were not cramping my style. Sue bought a very exotic succulent, I came away with a lovely Saxifrage, a red stemmed form of Impatiens sodenii and Sinningia tubiflora that probably are respectably rare, plus a Colocasia and this Gerbera, which might have been rare once but seem to have become mainstream. I’m not convinced that Gerbera can be grown outside here, the two we bought last year didn’t last long, so I’ll be keeping this one inside and away from the slugs. It’s called Gerbera ‘Sweet Glow’.


Five.
We popped in to Hill House Nursery at Landscove a couple of weeks back and I bought this Passion Flower. Please don’t ask me why, we have nowhere to put it; in fact there’s already one in my greenhouse that I dug up last spring because the slugs wouldn’t let it alone. The new one is Passiflora caerulea ‘Clear Sky’ and according to its label it only grows to 9m!! proving that I have finally lost my mind. At the moment it’s in a different greenhouse, looking like it will achieve most of the 9m in its first year. Pretty though.


Six.
Three flower portraits and in truth none can compete with Sue’s cacti at the moment. It’s tempting to make one of them number six but I’m going for something much more understated instead. Melica uniflora ‘Variegata’ is a brightly variegated grass that grows in my shady area and does nothing to draw attention to itself. I have a couple of clumps of it and should divide it to make a few more. This one has wood anemone growing in the middle of it, a contest the grass will likely lose.

My life horticultural sees me at the Royal Cornwall Show today, with Sue, manning the National Garden Scheme stand for the afternoon. Sue also put entries into the hanging basket, window box and patio planter competition so it will be interesting to see how she did and then there’s the little matter of getting them back home. When we took them in on Wednesday I saw a Begonia on a sale stand that I wanted, but there was no-one to buy it from. I’m hoping that my arrangements to procure it have worked out. It’s going to be a long day.

Published by Jim Stephens

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

44 thoughts on “Six on Saturday – 8/6/2024”

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  8. Always interesting to see a log view, Jim. I hope your openings go well this week – I had to smile at your pots and the washing pole, things that easily can catch you out. It’s ususally a trug of weeds for me! I had to smile at your restraint at the plant fair – I think I am getting close to capacity too, but then it could be a matter of removing the also-rans for something more worthy… Like the look of the Melica, a grass I have not heard of – and OK for shade, you say? 😉 https://ramblinginthegarden.wordpress.com/2024/06/08/six-on-saturday-ballerinas-bells-beautiful-blooms/

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  19. I love passionflowers and when I loved in Seattle I passed a house on my way to work that had a fence covered with it. I don’t think it reliably sets fruit in that area, but the flowers are always covered with bees. I love that late afternoon view of your garden. It is a lovely place. Things are slowly moving along in my garden and if we get two warm days in a row, the flowers will really pop. I see bees investigating the tightly closed daisies and imagine them taking stock and thinking yes, these will be open soon. Of course the fun will begin with the purple prairie clover, which last year seemed addictive to pollinators of all stripe.

    June 6, 2024 Six on Saturday

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  23. Red blotch or not, I’m a sucker for yellow peonies and Bartzella is wonderful. The name though…hearing it, I imagine a giant plant smashing up the rest of the garden, fists of steel-sharp petals slicing through stems and stalk, a giant unopened bud as head, turning this way and that, looking for lesser plants to destroy as it creates its own perfect, uncrowded spot in the sun.

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  24. Lovely view of your garden from upstairs, Jim. Very romantic with the golden sunshine on your Yew and the geometry of your Hostas, decking, and washed pots. I can see a feature story about your garden ripe for the editors of Gardens Illustrated to pluck and publish. There is somehow always room for another plant, even a Passiflora vine! They will grow on tree trunks, fences, wires and trellises of course. I don’t remember slugs on the one I had a few years back, but eventually it was shaded out. Fun though! Plants seem to find their own spots, even if they need remain in the pot longer than we had expected. Voles have been helpful in opening up new space here lately… Here are mine for the week, not so colorful as yours, but then I skipped my Hydrangea photos to show some areas I’ve been working on these past few weeks: https://woodlandgnome.wordpress.com/2024/06/08/six-on-saturday-sun-and-shadow/

    I certainly hope you came home with that coveted Begonia, and look forward to seeing photos in the coming weeks.

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    1. I did come home with the Begonia, which is labelled B. palmata but I suspect is not. It will be interesting to see how it develops. The passion flower could be trained up one of our trees but I’d have to make sure it didn’t pick a fight with my Holboellia, which it would surely lose.

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      1. So happy to hear that you got the Begonia and am looking forward to seeing it one week soon. I hope you had a terrific time today and maybe found a few more treasures to adopt😎

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    1. I didn’t see any TV people while I was there though there was a small radio posse hovering while I was on a gardener’s question time panel, which made me a bit nervous.

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    1. The Begonia hadn’t been secured but neither had it been sold, further evidence were it needed that very few people have the same obsessions I do. I had a good chat with the grower though and it’s clear that he’s developing an interest.

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  33. It is gratifying to see that someone else appreciates Passion flower. I know that they can be annoyingly rampant. We got five cultivars here, and two were intentionally purchased! I did not purchase them of course, but someone else did, and I merely got cuttings from them, as if I did not know any better. The red flowering sort has the tidiest foliage, but is fruitless. The flower, although more colorful than the others, is not as weird.

    These are my six, with only two species:

    https://tonytomeo.com/2024/06/08/six-on-saturday-2/

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      1. It is overrated. I like it in other people’s garden, but am already getting annoyed with its weediness here, and it is fruitless. The foliage is greener and ‘neater’ than that of the others, but still gets around.

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