I have about 6000 litres of water storage in various tanks around the garden and have used probably around 75% of it. The days are getting shorter, maybe we’ll get a little bit of respite from the heat, maybe there’ll be enough rainfall to add a few days supply, or maybe not. I’ve not used tap water to water anything so far and don’t intend to if it can be helped but there are a lot of plants that are really suffering now. Opening the garden creates a dilemma, do I have a lush garden because I’ve been profligate with drinking water or do I hope that visitors will forgive the frazzled look. To judge from our visitor numbers last week, a lot of them simply stay away, perhaps assuming it will either be too frazzled to be worth seeing or so lush as to enrage them with my irresponsible use of water.
Things have deteriorated markedly in the last week, it seems that whatever last reserves of water were in the soil are now largely exhausted. I have watered a few things just to keep them from dying. It’s wearisome.
Six on Saturday is a weekend snapshot of the garden which can focus on the good or the bad, or even go down the deeply unfashionable road of conveying a measure of balance. Six things from your garden, illustrated and annotated, posted online and linked in my comments below. That’s the brief, lets get to it.
One.
Some things don’t care. Allium senescens is exactly the same whatever the weather. That’s beginning to seem a highly desirable quality and maybe I should be looking at spreading it around and perhaps looking for similar things with the same qualities.
Two.
I thought I was on to another out and out winner with Eryngium ‘Tetra Petra’, grow from seed sent me by Noelle some years back. Until this year they had been going from strength to strength but this season has seen a few not reappearing and I didn’t have much luck with the seed I collected last year either. That said, I will definitely persevere with it, having snapped its picture with 9, perhaps 10, gatekeeper butterflies in the shot.
Three.
The Dahlias up in the top corner are miserable. They made good growth early on but are crying out for water now and the flowers are half the size they should be and lasting half as long, all of which makes the performance of the Canna just behind them the more extraordinary. Bought from Desert to Jungle at one of the Tregrehan plant fairs, it was labelled Henlade seedling, Henlade being the location of the nursery. The flower stems are 1.8m tall. Fittingly, the cider I was drinking while seated on the bench from where I took the Canna picture also came from Zummerzet.
Four.
Most of my lilies have finished flowering and I shall take those in pots back up to the allotment where I can water them more easily. Lilium auratum ‘Gold Band’ is still going, pot grown and plunged into the garden it is only half the height it should be but still beautiful and strongly perfumed. It is my intention to plant more of them into the ground next year and see if I can keep the slugs at bay. Hopefully they will then need far less watering.
Five.
The bed where Chrysanthemum maximum and Crocosmia ‘Carmin Brilliant’ are currently in full flower will be at its best between last week’s opening and the next in two weeks time. The way things are going, not much will be at its best for the next one. Crocosmia ‘Paul’s Best Yellow’ has burned to orange in the background.
Six.
Maurandya barklayana was something I grew from Plant World seed a few years back. I didn’t sow any this year but there are still one or two about. It self sows and very occasionally an odd plant will survive the winter. Once it gets going it grows extremely quickly and is pretty in flower if not especially prolific.
Just underneath the Maurandya was a Cyclamen hederifolium with two flowers open, it was what led me to discover the Maurandya above it. I’m probably guilty of seeing them around this time every year for at least the last decade and saying they seem very early. August to October is what my Cyclamen book says. I’m getting wildly excited by the forecast of perhaps as much as a millimetre of rain on Sunday morning. Might lay the dust. They had started to tease us with the possibility of rain in a weeks time but have since gone back on it.
garden ruminations 
It’s sort of wild to hear about the heatwave affecting everybody else, given the mild weather we’ve been having this year. Hope that you get that much-needed rain soon, it’s a problem I’m very familiar with from when I lived in California, but the idea of xeriscaping in England boggles the mind.
https://littleblueandwhitehouse.com/2026/07/25/six-on-saturday-25th-july-2026/
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I love your butterflies. We are seeing very few this year. My 6 are veggies this week. https://mybeautfulthings.com/2026/07/25/six-on-saturday-food-and-a-poem/
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How often do you have open garden days? I wonder if attendance is down because folks don’t want to go out in the heat. Meanwhile in the Pacific Northwest we seem to be having rain every week which is saving me a lot of watering of the far flung garden beds that require long hose drags. I also have 13 35 gallon ans slightly bigger rain barrels that I haven’t had to dip into much this year. Wish I could share!
No six from me this week because I am in the midst of a series of 8 daily blog posts about a garden tour and I am compulsive about not interrupting the narrative flow. I thought of doing six favorite photos from the gardens but even that seemed like too much of an interruption plus would be spoilers for the five gardens still to be shown. I’ll be back with a six next week.
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Haha, our weather monitor teased us today, flashing up change and the prospect of rain…sadly, I knew better….! 🙄 It is good to see you have some things defying the heat. I too wondered if something changed this week, because some things, like the hydrangea I showed, were looking OK just a week ago. My rather boring post is here: https://ramblinginthegarden.wordpress.com/2026/07/25/six-on-saturday-survival-of-the-fittest/
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Number 5 is a lovely snapshot. And all those Gatekeepers! I never had any bees or butterflies on my eryngium, only flies as it was a very smelly plant (the blue pollen I understand) so I dug it up. The Gatekeepers here seem to favour the Marjoram. I like your alliums too, I have the common chives making a come back and garlic chives look about to flower.
I’m doing a review this week, so it is a longer post. I really don’t know how you manage to look after your gorgeous garden, the greenhouses and an allotment! You must have super powers!
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Those crysanths and crocos look wonderful together. That kaleidoscope of gatekeepers is a delight. And well done on keeping things going in these tough conditions.
This week, we have been saying ‘ello ello ello’ to small copper butterflies, kite watching, enjoying pansies and pinks, and chipping into a community fund to buy up and redevelop a brownfield site in the town centre of Frome. The site in question, Saxonvale, is now a level on the bird call guessing game I made. And we await the decision from the council to see if money is the only consideration or if community counts for something too…
https://doingtheplan.com/2026/07/25/small-copper-kite-marigold-pansy-pinks-scorchio-lawn-and-frome-community-regeneration-bid/
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As WisconsinGarden mentions, similar conditions are happening here. We’ve had a brief respite from the extreme heat, but it’s coming back and with very little rain. Some areas of the garden are very sad, but as you shared, some plants simply laugh and keep on going, like the Alliums. Hoping for relief soon. Thanks, again, for hosting.
https://plantpostings.blogspot.com/2026/07/gardener-delights-and-desires.html
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We are in the same boat as far as rain goes. Some parts of the US are having flooding, some parts are dry. I have almost nothing in my modest 400L water storage. I have definitely been using the hose to water the vegetables fairly often, and the native plants less so. Luckily they grow their roots deep and that gives some resilience, though the other day I gave the entire garden a good soak Some rain might come on Monday, but I won’t hold my breath. I feel like Jean de Florette watching the rain pass him over to fall in the distance. It seems to always go south or way north of us lately. I love your Eryngium and am considering our native one. Jealous of the butterflies. I have not had many this year. Here are my six:
https://wisconsingarden.wordpress.com/2026/07/25/july-25-2026-six-on-saturday/
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The butterflies seemed to suddenly appear in good numbers two or three weeks ago, I’d seen almost none earlier. A good soaking would be what, 25mm? Over the 500 square meters of the garden that’s 12,500 litres and I only started with 6000. It just takes so much. Yet we get over 100,000 from the various roofs I collect from over an average year so if the theoretically possible could be made reality…..
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It is a difficult year for gardening in your part of the world. Thank you for sharing the beautiful picture of the Gatekeeper butterflies. They are benefitting from your efforts and we are the indirect recipients.
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Those Gatekeepers are amazing. We have bees on our Eryngium but i’ve yet to see any butterflies on it. https://potsandplots.blog/2026/07/25/sixonsaturday-25-07-2026/
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It’s a challenging summer bu your stay away visitors are missing out! I’m out of stored water and have a hosepipe ban so it’s hard work here. The alliums are selling themselves to me. Anything that can cope with the weather goes on the wishlist. The gatekeeper butterflies are a joy to see, worth adding in some eryngium for them alone. Here’s my six for the week, goodness knows what will be standing by next week https://n20gardener.com/2026/07/25/six-on-saturday-drying-out-2/
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What a wonderful sight – all those Gatekeepers. And the Chrysanthemum-Crocosmia combo. Serious rain dances needed though.
https://tishfarrell.com/2026/07/25/six-on-saturday-pluses-and-minuses/
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Goodness, so much water, I wish I had more water storage now. Your garden is fabulous as usual despite the drought. I am going to try the Maurandya, it is so pretty.
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If I did a six consisting of the plants that had fared worst in the drought you’d not be calling it fabulous. I have to make choices about what gets water and what doesn’t and some of the latter are dormant at best.
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That’s an impressive amount of water! We have two water butts so far, a little under 500 litres. It’s a start, but of course, they’ve been empty for a while now even though I try to water sparingly. We’ll definitely install more on every level of the garden for next season.
I really like that allium – I think we saw the same at Regent’s Park and commented on it as it’s quite late-flowering and seemed to attract loads of pollinators. Definitely one to go on my wishlist.
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I’m seriously considering adding to my water storage, too much seems unlikely ever to be an issue.
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Agreed! You can never have too much.
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I’m having a similar experience with dahlias (it’s sod’s law this is the first year I’ve tried growing them) although the dark leaved varieties seem to be faring better than the others.
If you don’t want to read another long moan about the lack of rain, best not click on my link https://wp.me/p88ZiK-dyK
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Nothing in these six looks too frazzled, not even the Canna, and Canna like lots of water. Here are my six.
https://tonytomeo.com/2026/07/25/six-on-saturday-last-wednesday-again/
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It has been a testing time, and I shall be sure to keep seed from the Eryngium for you. Your garden looks fabulous and people in your region are so lucky to be able to visit. My plants with dark leaves such as the cannas are being bleached by the sun. Here are my six:
https://noellemace.blogspot.com/2026/07/a-small-somerset-garden-six-on-saturday.html
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I swapped out some dark leaved Begonias for that reason but the Cannas seem OK. I’ve a lot of Tetra Petra seed from last year, I’ll sow some now, might give me young plants for going out in the spring.
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I have about the same amount of stored water and roughly the same amount left. However, for the past few days, I’ve unfortunately been using tap water—saving the rainwater for plants sensitive to chlorosis—because the tap water is very hard.
Regarding your post this week, I didn’t know the Maurandya barclayana, and its lovely flowers. Is it a quick and tall climbing plant ?
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The Maurandya has grown at least 3m from seed in one year in the past, the dry has slowedit down some this year.
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