Six on Saturday – 21/6/2025

Categories six on saturday66 Comments on Six on Saturday – 21/6/2025

One more hot day and then it cools down. I’m not a heat lover, 21°C is about my ideal; today’s 27°C was something of a slog. Gardening as an active pursuit goes on, we’ve three more openings, two days each time, the next on 3/4th July. Changes need to be made soon after an opening so they don’t look just done for the next occasion, so I have been pulling out Foxgloves and Aquilegia, then trying to fill the resultant gaps. The sun is harsh for photographs so I have tried to get out early or late in the day. I’ve found six things but don’t have any in reserve because the pictures, now I upload them to the computer, are rubbish.

At the risk of repeating myself, join us in posting about half a dozen highlights of your garden this Saturday. The participants guide is still where I left it. And don’t forget to put a link to your post in my comments section below.

One.
Agapanthus ‘Silver Moon’ is a variegated form of African Lily and doesn’t remotely try to disguise the fact. I know variegation is not everyone’s cup of tea but I am of the opinion that this is a plant that pulls it off particularly well. The unvariegated bits of its leaves are a light glaucous green so the contrast between green and white is relatively subtle and the overall effect very pleasing to my eye. Three flower buds are emerging but the flowers are an undistinguished light blue and add very little to the effect.

Two.
At the other end of the garden, another South African monocot has lost its leaves altogether for the summer. Nerine bowdenii has been occupying a prominent strip along the front of a bed of Dahlias for several years and not flowering remotely well enough to justify such a big piece of bare ground in mid summer. Our one big tree has been throwing ever more shadow and we have planted annuals around the edges to create some level of interest but the more shade they get, the less bloom they produce. Today I bit the bullet and dug them out. I have planted them in a south facing, unshaded bed on my allotment and will probably treat them as cut flower. I graded the bulbs as I went along, getting rid of the smaller, non-flowering size ones so was only left with about 400 to plant. There is now the small matter of what we put in the space.

Three.
Hydrangea serrata ‘Shojo’ was becoming a nuisance last year, spilling out over the path on both sides of the narrow bed it occupies. At the beginning of the year I cut it back hard, nearly to the ground. Predictably it responded by putting up 5ft shoots, getting me back to where I’d started. On 15th August I reduced it by about half, thinking that by so doing I would almost certainly get no flower this year. Wrong.

Four.
Several of my Begonias come into a greenhouse or indoors for the winter, then get stood out in my shady area for the summer. They tend to come into growth quite late so don’t get put outside until June. One such is the very handsome Begonia ‘Gryphon’ is one such. I just noticed today that the flower panicles are either all female or all male. What really doesn’t come across is that this is a very substantial plant in a 10L pot.

Five.
Plant combinations are in my garden more likely to be happy accidents than artfully planned. The silvery foliage of Plectranthus argentatus makes a perfect backdrop for Geranium palmatum. In early morning shade or full sun later on, it just works. The Geranium will soon finish flowering but get left to set seed. The Plectranthus will stay until it gets frosted in November or December.

Six.
‘Fern of the week’ was a concept that surfaced for two weeks in late April. I had such good intentions and have probably taken pictures of ferns almost every week since only to leave them out when it came to choose just six for the post. I’ve probably taken pictures of Dryopteris erythrosora before today, the point being that it was the fact that it still looked so good and so colourful in the middle of June that caught my eye.

Another week down. There’s a little rain in the forecast for down here in the coming week and while it will probably come to nothing much, it will lower the stress level on both garden and gardener. Not that the stress level from three days in the mid twenties ranks as even worth mentioning alongside the bigger issues in the world. Whatever the weather sends your way, have a good week.

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Published by Jim Stephens

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

66 thoughts on “Six on Saturday – 21/6/2025”

  1. Pingback: Six on Saturday: The End of June – Our Forest Garden
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    1. I wanted to comment on your post but couldn’t find a comment button. Just to say I am very admiring of the work you must put in to grow all those hydrangeas in pots and keep them all watered. They get pretty big and are about the only shrubby thing I sometimes have to water when they’re growing in the ground.

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  5. I don’t envy you the planting of all those nerine – but I suppose there is an advantage to having space at your allotment to shove them into in case they do flower. I ditched mine because they were so unreliable, but at least I didn’t have 400 of them! That begonia is a lovely foliage plant, and although I am not usually a fan of foliage like your agapanthus there is something subtle about the contrast that makes it more appealing than it might otherwise be. My six are here at https://ramblinginthegarden.wordpress.com/2025/06/21/six-on-saturday-score-so-far-11/

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    1. The nerine planting was a bit industrial, take out a shallow trench with a spade, push bulbs into the bottom, shovel the soil back over them. I’m interested that you say yours were unreliable, mine were pretty good when I first planted them but other stuff around has grown bigger and they were probably only getting 4-5 hours direct sun each day, to which I attributed their fall off, to almost nothing, in flowering. Where they are on the allotment they will get sun all day unless someone moves onto the plot next to mine and puts a row of runner beans along that side.

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    1. I don’t have experience with dragon wing begonias but if they’re as vigorous as some of the boliviensis hybrids I have, I could see they might be over-enthusiastic. I have plenty of others I’d be happy to see show more aggression than they do.

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      1. That is interesting. Dragonwings are common here, I would guess they appeared in the 90s as a summer annual. Many varieties now. I am not familiar with boliviensis – just looked them up, now I want some!

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  7. Pingback: Six on Saturday: Score So Far, 1:1 | Rambling in the Garden
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  9. Your hot and sunny garden looks a bit like ours this week- rather harsh and uncomfortable in the mid-day sun. Happy Summer Solstice, by the way. I love the tenacity of your Hydrangea, and the geranium with the Plectranthus is my favorite of your photos today. The second one is particularly lovely. The Dryopteris you featured is one of my favorite ferns to photograph, too. I am featuring some ferns today, but also have B. ‘Gryphon’ in one of my shots, along with some colorful Caladiums. My theme this week is ‘Tale of Dragons’ : https://woodlandgnome.wordpress.com/2025/06/21/six-on-saturday-tales-of-dragons/

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  10. Pingback: Six on Saturday: Tales of Dragons – Our Forest Garden

    1. I count myself lucky to have soil that produces clear blue flowers on many pf the hydrangeas. The same varieties flower pink in pots; we propagate a few each year, so I’ve seen them in both colours and prefer blue.

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  13. Pingback: Garden Diary: June – Piglet in Portugal

  14. I have that same agapanthus, I actually bought it because of the delightful foliage when I lived in Ludlow and had it in a container. When I moved here I planted it in the garden, thinking it would be happier. Every year it produces the beautiful foliage, but rarely the pale blue flowers. How often does yours flower? And do you feed it?

    Six on Saturday | Pretty Pinks

    I know what you mean about the heat – I too favour the low 20s. Today is much fresher and the rain we had overnight was a relief.

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  15. The Hydrangea may be a little too enthusiastic, but I love the lacecap flowers–so much nicer than the big pom-poms of mophead Hydrangea macrophylla cultivars. The begonias are both lovely.

    Here are my Six. 38 C predicted for Monday and Tuesday. Hopefully the surrounding trees will keep my garden a few degrees cooler than the forecast.

    Six on Saturday #93; June 21, 2025

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  16. Pingback: Six on Saturday #93; June 21, 2025 – Sweetgum and Pines

  17. I love ferns and don’t love excessive heat. Glad it cooled for you. Maintaining a garden that you show to the public is a lot of work! We are expecting temps in the mid 30s C for the next few days with humidity in excess of 70%. It will be miserable, but at least we had fast turnaround on our A/C issues and it did not cost anything. I have decided to pull the pink spirea out front and let my ostrich ferns have that space (They are taking over anyway and are much prettier than spirea, which a groundskeeper at the university told me was ideally suited to parking lots and gas stations. I tend to think she is right on this. Here are my six. I will look at the rest later when I can’t stand to be outside anymore!

    https://wisconsingarden.wordpress.com/2025/06/21/june-212025-six-on-saturday/

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  18. Pingback: June 21,2025 Six on Saturday – Gardening in the Prairie

    1. The number was part of why I’d been putting off doing something with the Nerines for so long. As is so often the case, it wasn’t as bad as I’d feared when I finally took the plunge. Half a day and all done.

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    1. I put the Agapanthus in my tunnel for the first couple of years, more to protect it from excessive wet than cold, but it has been out in all weathers for the last three or four.

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  22. Pingback: Six on Sat for Midsummer: Sweetpeas, damselflies, water, weeding, cinnabar, compost – Doing The Plan
  24. Pingback: Six on Saturday. 21.06.2025 | Lead up the Garden Path

    1. It’s not really very shady, just too shady for Nerines. It could be worth considering along the fence that I fixed last week though, that is very shady and needs something to hold the soil from falling down against the fence.

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  26. Pingback: Six on Saturday: 21 June 2025 – My Tiny Welsh Garden

    1. I feel I’ve slightly let the side down regarding my planting opportunity. Sue came back from Morrisons with three yellow Antirrhinums and they’ve been joined by a couple of bedding Dahlias that I only really bought to make up the Plants Galore 8 for £20 offer. Then I planted out a dozen or so Cosmos sulphurea and some seedling Eucomis pole-evansii. Bit of a stop gap for this year really. I might add one or two more Eucomis, there are a couple of gaps.

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  29. I really must add agapanthus to my list – I love a variegated leaf! My hydrangeas are needing constant attention right now because of the heat – I’m watering them every evening along with the ever flouncy lupins who seem to faint like Victorian ladies at the first hint of a bit of heat! I’ll be glad if we get the promised rain and thunderstorms this afternoon!

    Here’s my six – https://thegarrett.garden/2025/06/21/six-on-saturday-21-june-2025/

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      1. They’re sooo temperamental. More than a couple of days of warm weather in a row and they need watering every day. They collapse really quickly.

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    1. G. palmatum usually comes through winters here unscathed though I believe it might succumb in colder areas. I haven’t tried to grow G. maderense, believing it to be less hardy, but have a dozen young plants in the greenhouse which will put that assumption to the test. I’ll probably keep a couple in my polytunnel, see how that works out, then plant them next spring if they survive and the others have died. I suspect finding the right spot will be crucial.

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  31. Pingback: Six On Saturday – 21 June 2025 – The Garrett Garden
  33. Pingback: Six on Saturday. Summer Solstice. | The Blooming Garden

    1. I’m sure you’re right about the hydrangea telling me it wants more room and if I had a suitable space available it would be high on the list to get it. I’m trying to perfect the art of fitting quarts into pint pots while looking like they were pints all along.

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    1. The Nerines came from my sister who lives north of Aberdeen in the north of Scotland, latitude 57.5°. I think she lost them eventually in a cold winter but it is very seldom warm up there. What it does get is very long days in summer, which is when the bulbs are dormant and not at all what they’d get in S. Africa. I’m not sure what Nerines want other than it’s not what they’ve been getting. I’ll let you know if they take to their new home.

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  36. Pingback: Six on Saturday | Pretty Pinks – Cornwall in Colours

    1. I bought the variegated Agapanthus by mail order, sight unseen and without having seen it growing anywhere. Often it doesn’t work out well but on this occasion I got a winner. Plectranthus argentatus has no scent to speak of so is good for nothing other than looking pretty. I think we have P. neochilus already but my pain relief of choice is ethanol.

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    1. The hydrangea would be phased by the hot weather very quickly if it were not in shade most of the day. I have struggled with serrata varieties in too much sun, they don’t like it and no amount of watering will keep them happy.

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