Six on Saturday – 7/3/2026 – garden ruminations

We’ve had two dry days in a row and tomorrow is set to make three. We really do seem to be moving into spring. I’m itching to get stuck in to gardening tasks but it must be too early to contemplate no more frost and start putting things outside. I need to be patient and it doesn’t come naturally to me.
Six on Saturday, where a bunch of us post about six things happening in our gardens each Saturday, is a comparative breeze from now until about October; if you don’t have six things in your garden now then you’re either somewhere with a climate I don’t like to contemplate or you don’t have a garden. Join us, tell us what’s coming up on your patch, send us searching for our already long wanted lists. There’s a guide to the hows, wheres and whys here.

One.
Magnolia ‘Vulcan’ starts flowering around this time each year and for the first few days has these rich maroon red flowers that are very often destroyed by frost or wind. As more flowers open they get progressively more purple and a somewhat flat greyish purple at that. Not horrible, but not great. Here are some of this year’s first round.

Two
Camellia ‘Annette Carol’ is in full flower now. From a distance it is lovely but move in a bit closer and it’s very obvious that all is not well, with many of the flowers speckled with or totally brown and falling to the ground. Turn a fallen flower upside down and there is a ring of white fungus where the bloom was attached to the plant. This is Camellia flower blight, Ciborinia camelliae. Sadly this is increasingly common and as yet untreatable. Growing resistant varieties is probably the best course to take, but ‘Annette Carol’ is such a lovely variety I am loathe to replace it.

Three.
Back in October 2025 I ordered 100 Crocus tomasinianaus ‘Ruby Giant’ from Peter Nyssen. They arrived, I planted them around the garden. They were slow to emerge and are flowering well after every other Crocus tomasinianus has finished and they are clearly not ‘Ruby Giant’. Looking at their catalogue I’m inclined to think they are Crocus tomasinianus ‘Hummingbird’, which they describe as a new introduction but whether that means it’s a new variety or just new to them is not clear. They’re a lovely colour and if they regularly flowered after other forms would extend the season usefully. They haven’t opened fully even in full sun but maybe when properly established they would behave differently.

Four.
I have a couple of things under glass that are looking good, or at least interesting. Tropaeolum tricolor is very definitely looking good. This appears above ground around November and in another month or two will disappear again. It grows very rapidly and flowers profusely, always outstripping my attempts to keep it tied in to its frame. My only attempt to grow it outdoors was a complete failure, it never came up. Whether that was due to cold, wet, slugs or something else I have no idea.

Five.
The greenhouse plant that I’m thinking of as interesting is Pterostylis curta, an Australian hooded orchid known as the blunt greenhood orchid. Like the Tropaeolum it is somewhat ephemeral but it must be remarkably tolerant of abuse to have survived the treatment meted out to it by me. Both it and the Tropaeolum are kept dry all the time they are dormant then watered generously when new growth appears in winter.

Six.
It was quite a nice day yesterday so having tortured myself with an M&S shop, I thought I’d nip in to Treseders at Lockengate on the way home, a plant nursery that always make me a little guilty and regretful for not doing something similar myself. Most things were either unsuitable for any space I had available or not into growth yet but I settled on this for a purchase. It’s Luzuriaga radicans, which I’d never heard of but the description (there was no picture label) intrigued me. I’ve only just now got round to looking it up and I am very pleased with my purchase. I hope that in time I shall be able to show you pictures of it growing lush and flowering freely.