Six on Saturday – 6/6/2026

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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.

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Published by Jim Stephens

Gardener, no-dig allotmenteer, camellia enthusiast. I love colour, it cheers me up. Retired nurseryman.

54 thoughts on “Six on Saturday – 6/6/2026”

    1. All the pruning they need is to remove perhaps a fifth or quarter of the oldest branches each year, which doesn’t affect their size. Some recent varieties flower on current season’s growth so can be cut back and still flower that season on new growth. I imagine they’d flower comparatively late but don’t have first hand experience.

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  2. Pingback: Six on Saturday | 6th June 2026 – Little Blue and White House

    1. I love having the Geranium palmatum but it leaves some big holes when it all goes over, which is not what you want for an open garden and takes a bit of filling in.

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  4. Pingback: Six on Saturday. Wet and Windy. | The Blooming Garden

  5. Hello! I just found your blog this week. Was looking for some gardening bloggers to connect with, glad to have found you all here in the comments too. 😀 Your garden is absolutely stunning!

    That blue Hydrangea is so beautiful as are the Sweet Peas. Your garden looks like a labour of love that must have taken years to establish.

    I’ve only just started a brand new garden this spring, so mine is still very green with not much blooming yet. But I am of course ever hopeful and excited to see how it grows.

    I look forward to following your garden’s evolution. And I might join in next Saturday. Sounds fun!

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    1. Our garden is about 30 years in the making, with only one plant left that predates our arrival. Hope to hear from you next week. Amazingly, even this blog meme has passed its ninth birthday.

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  7. Pingback: Six on Saturday: the Generous Garden | Rambling in the Garden

  8. Beautiful photos. I love number three and won’t try to learn to yet spell it because am rushing to get on the road to a garden tour a couple of hours away (Chickadee Gardens in St Helens Oregon). Your intro was extra droll today, love it. I am adopting the word preening instead of the one I use, fluffing. My garden will be open tomorrow and here I am making a last minute visit to someone else’s so all the preening I meant to do today won’t happen. I don’t expect many people because it’s right after another garden open day I had two weeks ago so I may preen during the visits of whoever might come. :-). Here is my six. https://tanglycottage.wordpress.com/2026/06/06/six-on-saturday-gold-again/

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    1. Nothing like opening your garden to the paying public to make you a complete slave to it. Do you open your garden under a scheme like our National Garden Scheme or independently. The NGS do the publicity, insurance and so on for us, then the money goes to various charities.

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  9. Such lovely selections for this week’s ‘Six.’

    My mother-in-law posted us some everlasting sweetpea seeds, and they have begun to germinate after a seemingly slow start. And the seeds I saved from last year, sowed in autumn and grew in the green house have now begun to bloom. It’s a sweetly scented six from me with honeysuckle, sweetpea, and some smashing little critters like the thick legged flower beetle.

    https://doingtheplan.com/2026/06/06/honeysuckle-phlomis-russeliana-thick-legged-flower-beetle-micro-moth-sweetpea-and-foxglove/

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  12. Pingback: Honeysuckle, Phlomis russeliana, thick legged flower beetle, micro moth, sweetpea and foxglove - Doing The Plan

  14. I love the drifts of color you have going on now. my color is still mostly green, but I have tomatoes and peppers in, still looking for eggplants and will be sorely disappointed if the lady at the farmers market does not give me satisfaction today! It had been very hot and dry – I emptied a 55 gallon rain barrel and relied on the hose eventually to water everything deeply since I normally do not water the natives, but they look better if they don’t get too dry. Here are my six:

    https://wisconsingarden.wordpress.com/2026/06/06/june-6-2026-six-on-saturday/

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  15. Pingback: June 6, 2026 Six on Saturday – Gardening in the Prairie

  16. Ceanothus are so lovely, I wish I had room for one. You seem to grow a lot of NZ / Australian plants, I like the Melaleuca squarrosa – is it scented? My problem is being so exposed to those south-westerly winds which have been a menace all week (except Friday) and back in a vengeance today (50mph)

    Six on Saturday | The Three Ws

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    1. The Melaleuca has a mild aroma of honey, not really a scent. We had Ceanothus ‘Trewithen Blue’ trained as a small tree, many years ago. They’re not usually very long lived and it wasn’t replaced when it died. Our neighbour’s bush gets chopped back so it doesn’t encroach too far. The wind has been very tiresome hasn’t it.

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  17. My goodness that’s a huge calla lily – I had no idea that, in your warmer climate, they would get so huge. Here’s they’re all tropical indoor plants grown in small pots… I love how you let the pea run rampant like that…I had a neighbour who would dig them up mercilessly. He gave me a clump one year but I planted it under trees – too much shade and leaf litter really. It still comes up but very few flowers.

    6 on Saturday – 06JUN2026

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    1. Incessant dog barking is, or largely was, another neighbour. I got so sick of it barking, while they were there, I yelled ‘will you shut the ***k up’ at the top of my lungs so half the estate heard me. It’s been a bit better since, proving that they could have controlled it before. We don’t speak much.

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    1. I visited the garden that we usually do a group opening with yesterday as they were open without us. One of their visitors, standing right behind me, asked the owner if the other garden was also open and was told it was not, but I said she could come and see it anyway if she wanted to. She will probably be the only visitor to see the Melaleuca in flower as it will surely be finished by the 19th. That’s gardens.

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      1. How lucky for your visitor to have been able to have a ‘private’ visit, and we all feel priviledged to see yours each week Jim.

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    1. The Geranium palmatum is making a huge colour contribution right now but will soon go over. It will get whipped out the day after our first opening, leaving one or two for seed, and replaced with something else.

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  28. Jim, I do love the colour of your Hydrangea. No matter what I add to the soil I grow it is always pink. Even if I buy a blue hydrangea it reverts to pink after one year. The colourful display offered by the Ceanothus and Lavatera is beautiful.

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    1. It would be churlish of me not to be grateful for my neighbour’s contribution, but he did smash a window in Sue’s greenhouse, throwing a stone at probably one of our cats, and has never owned up to it, or indeed spoken to me since. I shall be churlish.

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  29. Pingback: Six on Saturday: {6/6/26} – Cath's Camera
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    1. One head gardener I worked under would identify anything he didn’t know as Californian Lilac; he figured if they didn’t know and were asking, they wouldn’t know he was lying. ‘Puget Blue’ was one we grew on the nursery and seemed a reasonable educated guess, or BS if you prefer. Hydrangea serrata manages to have a refinement that H. macrophylla lacks, even though they’re quite similar. I suspect ‘Cap Sizun’ might be a hybrid between the two.

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  34. The sweet peas are really lovely – it’s my first year growing them and I think it will definitely be something I repeat again and again.

    It’s always nice when the neighbours provide a floral display. Our neighbour on the left-hand side is a great rose enthusiast, and some of her beautiful old roses have been waving their heads in our garden these past two weeks.

    Settling Into Normality

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  35. Pingback: Settling Into Normality – Highgate Garden Chronicles

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