Six on Saturday – 6/6/2026

They’re forecasting a very windy Saturday for us tomorrow, not really what I want. A fortnight away from a garden opening and all I can see are the things that will be over and the things that wont be out quite yet. I try not to make changes just before an opening, so I regard it as too late to do much other than preening.
Six on Saturday (the meme you’ve fallen into, if you’d not noticed) requires participants to pick just six items from their garden on a Saturday and to do a quick show and tell for the benefit of the global blogosphere. Put a link to your post in my comments below and you will be showered with compliments for your taste and skill and who doesn’t like a compliment. Years ago we wrote a guide for participants which is gathering dust on some internet shelf out there. Right, let’s get the show on the road.

One.
Three weeks ago Weigela florida ‘Kosteriana Variegata’ was featured here in full floral splendour. If next year’s floral splendour is not to take place six feet in the air, I have to chop it back most cruelly so that the new growth, which carries the flowers, starts near the ground. It is chopped, here’s the proof.

Two.
The lowest maintenance floral contribution to the garden is currently being provided by a Ceanothus and Lavatera hanging over the fence from next door. We’re looking at the south side of them, they get the north side. I’m betting we get ten times the flower display they get. Ceanothus ‘Puget Blue’ and Lavatera x clementii ‘Rosea’ will have to suffice as guesses.

Three.
Melaleuca squarrosa came through the winter in its best shape yet, which is to say completely unscathed. It has been flowering for weeks, looking all the while like it might be better later. If it’s better still next week, you will not get to hear about it.

Four.
Lathyrus grandiflorus continues to rampage its way around the garden, getting ever further out from where I originally planted it. I like it, I can let it scramble over other plants with little fear that it will do lasting damage, thinning it out if it gets too dense. Here it is scrambling up my standard Hydrangea paniculata, providing flower a couple of months before the hydrangea will. By the time the hydrangea is flowering I will have chopped down the pea.

Five.
Another plant that I’m going to have to hold my nerve over is Zantedeschia ‘White Giant’. It’s reached 1.6m with its flowers and the leafy bit is becoming quite bulky. Will it start to elbow other plants aside?, and if it does am I going to be bothered? Ask me in a couple of years time.

Six.
Hydrangea serrata ‘Cap Sizun’ is always the earliest of our Hydrangeas to flower. Hydrangeas are not easily kept smaller than the size they want to be naturally. Pruning them hard only results in them making very strong growth back to the size they were but with loss of flower. Our soil is not especially acidic but most of our hydrangeas flower clear blue, pale in this instance and set off against the very dark foliage. I didn’t get around to dead heading it, maybe I should get in there with the snips before we open; don’t want to let the side down. There’s a voice in my head telling me I must, a very familiar voice.

That’s it for this week then. The cacti are having a breather though there are lots of buds swelling up; they’ll be back. A wider shot for the header, mostly Geranium palmatum.