Six on Saturday 28/2/2026

Another month down, March tomorrow. I’m slowly getting back to gardening, tidying up mostly, but some seed sowing too. I started the long deferred task of cleaning out my propagator, with a view to getting cuttings of a few things under way; Fuchsias for one, not sure what else yet. Taking photos for this week’s six was again a case of dodging showers, waiting for a glimpse of sun, looking for the rare unblemished bloom.
If that sounds your kind of thing, you’re probably already a Six on Saturday contributor and if you’re not you maybe should be. It’s very simple, post a short piece about six things in your garden today and put a link in my comments section below so we can all find your post. There’s a guide here, should you need it.

One.
Narcissus ‘Jetfire’ is not a daffodil variety I have grown before this year but Sue was given a few bowls of them last month and very good they have proved to be. I’ll group them all together in one pot when they die down, there’s little point planting them in the ground where they’d almost certainly fail.

Two.
A couple of weeks back I put in a picture of a double flowered Hellebore and had a whinge about how they didn’t really thrive in our garden. That is true, and most of them get diseased and die out after a few years. However, they do set seed and I get carpets of seedlings, a great many of which get weeded out. Where they’re not competing with other plants I will leave them and this group are all self sown seedlings from a long forgotten parent. I think I may prefer the naturalised look to most of the snazzy hybrids I see in the garden centres and there’s no disputing that they are excellent value for money.

Three.
I’ve been catching prodigious numbers of slugs in my slug traps but a night time walk around made me realise how many were not getting caught. It’s funny though how I will spot things at night with a torch that I’ve completely missed by day. Like this Corydalis, which may be Beth Evans or may be an unnamed seedling. I made a fair hash of getting a picture of it.

Four.
For a plant that most of the time is just green leaves, then when it does flower has very unshowy brown flowers, Euphorbia mellifera manages to be very ornamental. Such a rich green, enhanced by a white midrib and the finest red margin. Look how water droplets bead on the leaf surface and reflect the light. And the flowers have a strong honey smell, though I don’t recall seeing many, if any, bees on them. It’s growing in the poorest of soil and as much input as it gets from me is to hacked to the ground every second year when I get bored with its flowers. That’s usually around May but could be earlier this year, I don’t think it usually flowers this early.

Five.
Camellia x williamsii ‘Charles Colbert’ is the largest camellia in the garden. I have cleared the lower branches so it has a tree habit and I prune it to keep it at around 12 feet in height. I also thin it fairly heavily every couple of years so that it is not too dense a dark blob against the sky. It gets a little bigger every year and I get a year older very year, so there will come a time when I prune it drastically, not least to allow its near neighbour Camellia transnokoensis, room to thrive. Will it be this year? Maybe.

Six.
I have put Camellia lutchuensis into two previous sixes this year but this week it hit peak flowering so I’m putting it in again. Pass within a few metres down wind of it and there is a wonderful perfume in the air. It has a graceful, twiggy habit that makes it hard to photograph; you see through it and there’s almost always some part of it moving. I hope and expect it to eventually make a small multi-stemmed tree.

That’s it for February then. The risk of serious cold is receding, the days are getting longer and the light brighter. I need a few dry days to get on top of my allotment weeds, then hopefully its full speed ahead into the growing season.