Six on Saturday – 16/5/2025

It s to have been blowing a gale almost all week, and none too warm either. It’s been a fairly productive week garden wise though, coming along. I’ve been playing with a new camera, it’s going to take a lot of getting used to but I’m seeing potential. All it takes is six pictures and you’re half way to a Six on Saturday, provided they’re of your garden, or a garden. Join in, a warm welcome awaits. There’s a guide here, should you need it.

One.
Sue took a few cuttings of this Weigela several years back. It’s taken a long time but has finally come good, fulfilling its function of screening two water butts. I just need to keep it pruned down or it will head for the sky. I’m not sure of the variety, Weigela ‘Kosteriana Variegata’ rings a bell, but is it the right one?

Two.
Araiostegia parvipinnata is a fern of the most delicate appearance which is actually remarkably tough and tolerant. I have this one growing in a pot, the better to appreciate its bristly rhizomes, and it is left out all year, desperately needs repotting, gets left for long periods without water, and thrives on it. I also have it growing in the ground where it is just as happy but you don’t see much of the rhizomes. It’s fully deciduous but can produce good yellow autumn colour.

Three.
Bastard balm, or Melittis melissophyllum is a fairly uncommon wild flower in these parts so when I saw a variety called ‘Royal Velvet Distinction’ on offer in a nursery I had to have it. It’s a slightly better colour than even the best of the wild ones I’ve seen but it is now beginning to self sow here and there, including bang in the middle of a big patch of Hakonechloa. The seedlings retain the colour of the selected form seemingly. It’s our largest flowered Labiate, according to my wildflower book, though Labiatae is now Lamiaceae so perhaps it’s our largest flowered Lamiace.

Four.
Osmanthus heterophyllus ‘Goshiki’ is one of those shrubs that just does its thing quietly and largely unnoticed until you spot that it’s spread half way across the path. Last year this got a brutal haircut and this year I have reddish new growth contrasting with heavily white mottled new growth from last year. If it’s ever looked this good before I have to confess I didn’t notice it.

Five.
Polygonatum x hybridum ‘Striatum’ only manages to get an outing every few years, the rest of the time being so sparse or so slug chewed as to be in danger of eviction. Then it does this and all is forgiven, and shortly afterwards forgotten, for a few more years.

Six.
I’ve been growing Corydalis ochroleuca for at least 25 years and it is a short lived perennial that lasts a couple of seasons but gets replaced, usually somewhere well away from the parent, by a seedling or two, such that I’ve never been without it nor have I had more than a maximum of three at one time. Something has changed, I’m now getting carpets of seedlings, hundreds of them, and they’re surviving. I’m keeping a close eye on it, some of its relatives are somewhat thuggish.

I’m going to ride my luck once again and put another of Sue’s cacti in as the header picture, I mean, it’s not technically one of the six. I only wish she was here to see it.