Six on Saturday – 14/3/2026

Two Friday the thirteenths in succession. Good thing I’m not superstitious. The gardening season continues to pick up slowly and in the case of this week it perhaps went back a bit. I’m up at Rosemoor tomorrow (Saturday) for their Spring Flower Showcase, including the RHS Early Camellia Competition. We’ve had a couple of days of windy weather with a few hail showers thrown in, challenging stuff for competitors trying to produce perfect blooms for showtime. It will be stunning, it always is.

My immediate challenge is to come up with six things for six on Saturday and I have to admit it was harder this week than last. More things have gone over than have stepped up to replace them. You are as ever, invited to join us in laying out a weekend snapshot of your garden. Years ago, the creator of this meme, not me, wrote a participants guide, which I modified slightly; and it’s here.

OK, onwards.

One.
A week ago I put up a short run of willow panels up which I intend to grow a clematis which has for years sprawled over Magnolia ‘Anne’ but can no longer, she having been cut off at about knee height. While its construction was not a feature of this Saturday, the fact it is still standing certainly is. The clematis is at the right hand end. At the opposite end I have planted Bomarea caldasii, which I’m hoping can be protected from the ravages of slugs. I bought three pots of sweet peas to fill in between and provide flower in the earlier half of the summer.

Two.
Camellia reticulata ‘Mystique’ is tucked in between a glasshouse and the neighbour’s fence so the best angle to see it from is an upstairs window. Last year when it had finished flowering I thinned it out by a considerable amount but the flower display is not much diminished. I seem to recall that it was looking pretty similar when the BBC came to film Camellias in my garden last year, and if you are in the UK you will be able to see it next Friday on Gardener’s World.

Three.
It’s the time of year when Skimmia japonica ‘Bowles Dwarf Female’ is flowering, with most of last season’s berries still in good condition on the bush. Not just two strings to its bow, but at the same time. In 2020 many of the persistent fruits sprouted viviparous seedlings, some of which I potted up. One of those seedlings is now flowering and is also female, so hopefully I will have another of this top performer on the other side of the garden.

Four.
In theory, Epimedium perraldianum colchicum would get its attractive glossy evergreen foliage chopped off just before the emerging flower spikes get in the way. As usual, that didn’t happen, so the bright yellow flowers are either nicely displayed against a background of dark green foliage or, in most cases, hidden beneath it. Ho hum.

Five.
Acer ‘Orange Dream’ is breaking bud, an event that somehow seems more significant than the Weigela that did so a couple of weeks back or the hydrangeas that hardly seem to rest at all. I’d be very grateful for the absence of a cold northerly for the next few weeks, just to give the delicate new leaves a chance to firm up a little. Fat chance.

Six.
It’s quite a few years since I was first given some small corms of Cyclamen repandum and they have been very slow to flower freely enough to make much of an impact. They have seeded about remarkably freely from the relatively small number of flowers they have produced, so it may attain nuisance proportions given enough time. The concept of exponential growth would no doubt apply. Bring it on I say, that’s a nuisance I can live with.

That’s it for another week. I’d better nip out and check for slugs around my Bomarea. The life of a killer.