Six on Saturday – 10/5/2025

Categories six on saturday52 Comments on Six on Saturday – 10/5/2025

We have a man painting the house, so scaffolding up and everything near to the house moved away. It’s chaos, and I don’t cope well with chaos not of my making. A week ago we had a fortnight of good weather in prospect; that’s now changed and I’m dreading the painting job getting drawn out any longer. The only positive, apart from a nice clean house, is that the scaffolding affords me a view of the garden I’ve not had before.
Said view can be number one of my six, by which I mean the six garden related items I post each week, along with many other folks near and far. We’d love to have you join in, there’s a participants guide here should you be tempted.

One.
Said view. Preparations for our first garden opening in mid June are coming along in the sense that most of the planting is in place and we just need a month of good growing weather.

Two.
Four years ago, when I had just purchased and planted Deutzia ‘Yuki Cherry Blossom’ I stupidly put in my SoS comment that I’d had the perfect spot for it. I was wrong, it is almost prostrate in habit and didn’t rise above the plants around it as I’d envisaged. Last year I moved it and I’m not going to fall into the trap of saying its new quarters are perfect; but it’s looking happier so far. There’s a thuggy geranium to its left that probably won’t be staying.

Three.
Araiostegia parvipinnata is my favourite fern this week. Somewhat like the hardy maidenhair fern, it has the most delicate appearance which belies an underlying toughness and adaptability. It was collected from Vietnam’s highest mountain where it was growing in very moist shade and those are the conditions under which it will do best, but I have seen it growing tolerably well in dry ground under a Camellia too. Mine is in a 10L pot stood on a pedastal, the better to see its lovely bristly rhizomes. It gets a bit of dappled sunlight through the Pittosporum canopy overhead.

Four.
Omphalodes nitida fills the same niche as forget-me-nots but is a little later, goes on for longer and is marginally more refined. It isn’t as prolific a flowerer but the blue is more intense; sky blue with less haze from contrails. It also isn’t as prolific a self seeder, though plenty prolific enough. The plants can be treated as short lived perennials or just pulled up when they fulfilled their function.

Five.
We have loads of Hostas, almost all in pots, and because of the painting displacement some have ended up in a shady section of path which suits them far better than where they’ve been the last couple of years. Except for a small amount of snail nibbling they are looking about the best they ever have. ‘Spartacus’ and ‘Halcyon’ on left, ‘Raspberry Sundae’ and ‘Thunderbolt’ on the right.

Six.
Our bamboo, Phyllostachys aureosulcata ‘Spectabilis’, took a bit of a battering from cold northerly winds during the winter and still hasn’t flushed out new growth, so is looking a bit ropey on one side. I needed canes for runner beans and took the opportunity to remove some of the ropiest. I could, and probably will,take a few more before I’m finished.

And that’s yer lot for another week. I’m off out to lay some slug traps, emerging Dahlias needing all the help they can get. Have a good week. Oh, by the way, I put a short video on YouTube, mainly aimed at RCMG folks but here’s the link. https://youtu.be/pqsu3OuCAJc

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Published by Jim Stephens

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

52 thoughts on “Six on Saturday – 10/5/2025”

  2. Pingback: May 10, 2025 Six on Saturday – Gardening in the Prairie

  3. Always good to see an overhead view of your garden, JIm. I note you are on the same countdown as us – I still have a bit of planting out to do, but with the dryness here I had been reluctant to do so until I was home to attend to the watering myself. From what you say, I guess you haven’t got the same problem down there in the SW! I have a similar deutzia whose name I will check on my next ramble, and which similarly doesn’t really seem to be in the best place either! Thanks for hosting https://ramblinginthegarden.wordpress.com/2025/05/10/six-on-saturday-what-a-difference-a-week-makes/

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  4. Pingback: Six on Saturday: What a Difference a Week Makes | Rambling in the Garden
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  10. Happy May, Jim, and thank you for another outstanding Six. Your first photo leaves me feeling a bi queasy and dizzy, but good for you for climbing the scaffolding to take such a gorgeous photo of your garden. It does give a better perspective, doesn’t it? Things look quite lovely and I’m sure your tours will be a success again this year. I am partial to your Vietnamese fern. I hadn’t noticed its rhizomes until you mentioned them. What a lovely way to display it! My six are a bit different this week. Most are wild plants growing in the National Colonial Parkway park near Jamestown Island. But I couldn’t leave out our peonies, blooming now, and a lovely native fern: https://woodlandgnome.wordpress.com/2025/05/10/six-on-saturday-mothers-day-2/

    Happy Mothers’ Day, and wishes for a terrific weekend to everyone!

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  11. Pingback: Six on Saturday: Mothers’ Day – Our Forest Garden

  15. What a stunning view over the garden. I think I need more shrubs in mine. I love that fern too, may be tempted into looking for one for my shady courtyard. Is it hardy enough to remain outdoors all year?

     “I don’t cope well with chaos not of my making.”

    Could be my OH saying that! He loathes any kind of disturbance.

    My garden has taken off this week with the sunshine, everything seems to be competing with each other for who has the best flower!

    Six on Saturday | All Change

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  16. Things are looking good in your garden, despite the chaos. When we had our house painted, I dug up some Calendula and plopped it in the garden. Dug up a bunch of tulip bulbs accidentally and so I have a nice clump or red tulips along the garden path. They are in partial shade, so are just getting ready to bloom. Everything adjacent to the house is well done now. Nothing to do but let the green parts die back. Hostas are very popular in the midwest. My grandmother could not get enough of them and had all her trees ringed with them. She favored the ones with white streaks. I especially love the fern – I only have Ostrich fern and it has not emerged yet, but I should keep my eyes open for the fiddleheads. I mean t harvest the ones that are spreading from where I want them. If you can’t beat it, eat it!

    Here are my six:

    https://wisconsingarden.wordpress.com/2025/05/10/may-10-2025-six-on-saturday/

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    1. The tall evergreen is Taxus baccata ‘Standishii’, so every bit as hardy as Thuja. I’m still unsure what the habit of the Deutzia is supposed to be, it seems possible that now it’s in a sunnier spot the stems could be stiffer and it could get taller. It was a very new variety when I bought it, there may well be more information online about it now.

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  21. Like your fern but love your hostas, they are looking really good. I got Sum and Substance as it’s supposed to be slug resistant, mine has come up full of holes! My Bamboo looks decidedly dead, but maybe its just that new leaves haven’t appeared yet, do you think? If its dead, then its going to be a heck of a job getting it out!

    My six are here………………https://www.leadupthegardenpath.com

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    1. Decidedly dead looking bamboos tend to be dead. They are all, as far as I know, evergreen. They also often die when they flower, with all the individuals of a particular clone dying at more or less the same time, wherever they are. Mine has produced a few flowering shoots in recent years so I’m bracing myself for it to go all out and perish.

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    1. I have a lot of ferns and have posted several times about them, select ‘Ferns’ under categories. The main danger is ending up with a lot of very similar varieties because that is what is most widely available. We are fairly well screened from our neighbours, there are eight adjoining properties so we have strived to win ourselves some privacy.

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  23. A pretty deutzia, I haven’t come across that one and I love the fern.Slugs and snails are the bane of my life here in France. They have even turned my irises to lace.

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  25. Ohh, that’s a long way down – but what a good view of your garden. I’ve noted your Deutzia comments as I bought one yesterday. I hadn’t paid much attention to the spread of ‘Pink Pom Pom’ but I’ve now checked and it will grow as wide as it is high. Glad you featured yours today before I planted – slight adjustment needed. Beautiful fern! I have a fern on order and I hope it turns out as lovely as your Araiostegia parvipinnata – though mine is a different variety that I can’t remember right now. Here is my offering for this week:

    https://notesfrommygarden.co.uk/2025/05/10/still-sunny/

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    1. I think Pink Pom Pom is a much taller grower than my Deutzia. The stems on mine are very thin and arch over rather than go up. Mail order ferns are very tempting; garden centres tend to all have the same quite narrow range, but what with Treseders Nursery and the Tregrehan Plant Fair, I get enough temptation from things I can see before I buy and it does impose a much needed measure of constraint.

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  29. Pingback: Garden Diary: May – Growing Vegetables in Containers – Piglet in Portugal

    1. If we have envious neighbours I’m afraid it has passed me by. None of them could be described as gardeners and none of them take any interest in our garden. None have visited on our NGS open days. My parents had a long garden onto which backed all the gardens of a road at right angles to it; they were properly friendly with all of them. Call me curmudgeonly but I’m not minded to be especially friendly with most of ours.

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  31. Oh, that’s funny! You’re also taking advantage of the scaffolding to take photos of your garden, like I did last winter when I had my roofing work done.
    That fern is so pretty. It does look fragile, even though you say it’s hardy.
    I also have dark-leaved hostas like Halcyon, and they’re said to be more resistant to snails, which is true. The light and variegated varieties get nibbled on…
    Last thing , when you cut bamboo canes , do you cut them at ground level or do you try to dig it up? It’s almost mission impossible here. As for me, I cut them down.

    Six on Saturday 10-05-25

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    1. I just cut the bamboo stems off with a pruning saw, as low as I can get. I find slug and snail damage to hostas has much more to do with where they’re put than the variety. A dry month in March has helped except for a few in a shady corner with lots of hiding places for snails.

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  32. Pingback: Six on Saturday | All Change – Cornwall in Colours

    1. Shining navelwort is apparently the “common” name of the Omphalodes. I suspect if I’d called it that, someone would have asked what its “real” name was. I’m struggling to work out why anything would get called ‘navelwort’; it sounds like a dermatological complaint.

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  36. I need to have a word with you, young man! Every week it is the same. The plant I most want to comment upon has a crazy name and I have to whizz back up the post to find it again, cut, whizz back down to my comment and paste. Then the next plant ….. etc. I adore that fern and am a big fan of the bamboo. The hostas are gorgeous, that is more like it. Hope the weather holds on for you, you might get lucky. Here are my six https://offtheedgegardening.com/2025/05/10/six-on-saturday-home-again/

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  37. Pingback: Six On Saturday – 10 May 2025 – The Garrett Garden

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