Six on Saturday – 13/6/2026

Where did that week go? I blinked and missed it. The garden seems to have slowed down, it’s been relatively cool with very little sun and I went out today wondering what I could find to include in my six. Sue’s cacti are building up for another show so I have a cactus header. I have a garden club group coming on a visit on Wednesday and it looks like the main flowering could happen Monday or Tuesday, which is typical.

I’m trying to sort out which are which with the cacti, with the long term aim of propagating the under represented ones and perhaps getting rid of a few where there are multiples. It did at least give me something to do while the rain came down. Today was just a bit mizzly sometimes, an almost dry day.

Six on Saturday then. If you’re new here this is a meme started in May 2017 by a blogger calling himself The Propagator. He came up with the notion of a post about six things happening in your garden on a Saturday and handed over hosting duties to me about five years later. All that means is that its in my comments below that you leave a link to your post. He wrote a participants guide too, which you may find helpful.

One.
The aforementioned cacti. Two plants flowered Thursday and Friday, one still being open today. The pink one matches a plant elsewhere which actually has a name label, making it Echinopsis ‘Pink Diamond’. Sue collected a lot of Echinopsis, mostly raised by Southfields Nursery under the name New Dawn hybrids. I don’t know how many were given individual names, a lot of Sue’s labels have faded to illegibility. I don’t have a name for the peachy coloured variety but it seems to be the same as one that flowered a few weeks back and got tagged number 1, but I’d need to see them flowering at the same time to be sure.

Two.
I went to a National Garden Scheme get together last year where they had a plant swap. I was relieved of my three contributions before they made it to the swap table, exchanged for three plants borne by the reliever. One of my acquisitions was Watsonia borbonica subsp. ardernei, which I’d seen growing in the bearers garden and had high on my wanted list. It’s tall, 1.3m., pure white and now has three flowering stems, so it’s bulking up nicely. There are side branches on the flower stems, promising a decent flowering period. I also have a couple of seedlings from wild collected South African seed, so I could end up with a lot of it. It seems to do its leaf production in winter and was slightly damaged by one cold spell but seems to have recovered.

Three.
I’m not quite sure what is going on here. The large flowered clematis to the left is ‘Ernest Markham’ which I put in a fortnight ago. The maroon clematis on top of the arch is ‘Etoile Violette’, which usually gets in a six between late July and September. Maybe I simply didn’t cut it back and it’s flowering early. I’m sure it’s not usually so red either. Fuchsia ‘Delta’s Sarah’ is well ahead of her usual flowering time too.

Four.
This orchid is Dactylorhiza x grandis ‘Blackthorn’, a vigorous hybrid between two of our native marsh orchids and a very fine and accommodating plant. Even at f/8 my camera would only focus on one flower spike so I used the onboard focus bracketing and in spite of it being windy, it produced the goods.

Five.
My poor Geranium ‘Nimbus’ has been largely hidden from view in recent years and it is nearly six years since it went in a six. Chopping down the plum tree and pruning the Weigela have exposed it, and sundry accompanying weeds, to view.

Six.
I looked at this Hemerocallis when I took its picture and scratched my head. Has it always been this dull; undecided whether to be brown or purple or reddish? Has it always been so popular with slugs and snails? Why am I growing it? Needless to say, in a group of four or five day lilies it is by far the most robust. That probably wont be enough to save it. I couldn’t even be bothered to look for a label.

There you have it, my offering for the week. I should probably go out slugging but I’m not sure I can be bothered. Bed seems a better idea. Happy gardening.