Six on Saturday – 8/8/2026

The drought goes on with no real sign of easing. This week saw a couple of days when there were a few showers about but none lasted long and most were no more than drizzle, the accumulated total was 3mm. 3mm of rain over the 500m² of our garden is 1500 litres, which sounds and is quite a lot. It would be, applied selectively; spread thin it barely penetrates at all and evaporates very quickly. It seems likely that I will lose some plants, but since this seems highly likely to get worse not better, I may as well let the really vulnerable things go and start thinking about replacements. There will be things that I choose to put up a fight for, but it won’t, can’t, be many.

A week ago I was celebrating new shoots on my cut down Magnolia. How quickly things can change; they have withered, whether due to drought or disease I don’t know. My older plant of Indigofera pendula has finally given up and there are several dead shoots on Eucryphia milliganii. It’s depressing and I’m certain they wont be the last of this years casualties.

This being Six on Saturday, I shall make an item out of one death. A death constitutes something happening in the garden; the SoS mandate calls for six things happening, to be posted on a blog or some such, with a link left in my comments below so that the world can easily find them. We did a participants guide back along, it’s a terrific read.

One.
The aforementioned Indigofera pendula. Dead as a dodo. I can’t blame the drought for this, it’s been going down for at least a couple of years with branches dying from the base. I’m not convinced it’s entirely hardy, it’s emerged from winters with black areas blotching the stems; too severe and the shoot dies. I have another, grown from Special Plants seed, which is probably has better coloured flowers, so I am not without it, but I was hoping to get viable seed by having the two plants together and now that wont happen. Maybe it will set seed without any help.

Two.
At the other extreme are plants that utterly refuse to die no matter what abuse they receive. Chlorophytum comosum, the spider plant, is described on the RHS website as having been popular in the 1970’s so now adding retro style. I don’t need any help with retro style, it’s the only style I possess. We have C. comosum ‘Variegatum’, with a broad white stripe up the middle of the leaf, and one with a white margin to the leaves. The latter was planted in the garden and has now come through three winters outdoors. It dies down completely and re-emerges quite late but seems happy enough. The RHS mention one called C. saundersiae ‘Starlight’ as being hardy but that has a central white stripe. Sue used to propagate them and take them to her craft fairs, an outlet no longer available. These are in 3L pots and demand daily watering.

Three.
Three weeks ago I devoted a whole six to insects in the garden. A new camera and telephoto lens gave me the best technology I’ve ever had to get good close ups which I can use for identification. I have a few books on insects but these days everyone uses an app. I’ve played with plant ID apps in the past and come away unimpressed though admittedly they’ve no doubt improved since then. I put an app called ID UK insects onto my iPad and pointed it at various pictures on my computer screen. Various bumble bees, flies and butterflies were swiftly identified but it insists that the one I think is a gatekeeper being a meadow brown, with small heath and Scotch argus as possible alternatives. No, I am shouting at the computer screen, it has a single ocellus with two pupils, it must be a gatekeeper. I’ve had meadow browns as well, their ocellus has a single pupil. Who’s right, you decide!

Four.
It has to be said that the various plants around the garden that are in pots are mostly looking better than those in the ground, for the simple reason that they get watered or they die, so they get watered. Here are two just outside the back door, getting two or three hours of sun in the middle of the day. Both are Begonias, on the left the cut leaf form of B. sutherlandii which I already had under the name B. sutherlandii ‘Saunder’s Legacy’, but bought this plant because it was producing bulbils which mine wasn’t. The other one is Begonia ‘Gryphon’, a thick stemmed variety which is particularly handsome. Both will be on the borderline of hardiness here and when I have spares I will put them to the test of being left in the ground.

Five.
When Eucomis ‘Sparkling Burgundy’ is just rosettes of leaves their colour is a rich reddish purple but by the time the flower spikes have come up and start opening, the leaves have lost their sparkle and are more of a brownish green. I’m not averse to the transition, I like a progression rather than it staying the same all season and it means the leaves don’t vie for attention with the flowers. I have a good pot full of small plants of this that I propagated from leaf cuttings a couple of years back, the leaf cut into pieces 30-40 long and planted into a pot of perlite.

Six.
It’s a good few years since I was given some seed of white Cleome hassleriana. They set generous amounts of seed which I collect to sow the following spring. The slugs and snails have a go and large cabbage white caterpillars have joined in once or twice but I always get a show and I love the height and airiness they bring. The pink and violet forms have come and gone, failing to produce good seed but the white is made of sterner stuff. I have bought seed and it has germinated very poorly if at all, no such problems with my own. I grow them in 6 inch deep cells and plant them when they are about the same height. The deep root system helps stability and hopefully reaches moister soil.

That’s it for another week. We have a hose pipe ban starting tonight, which will make no difference to me as I never water with a hose. That’s why I’ve got tennis elbow in my right arm, humping thousands of cans of water around. So far I’ve not used tap water for the garden, other than second hand, but my stored water is running desperately low and there’s little sign of the weather improving by getting worse. It’s very obvious to our garden visitors that we have not had a sprinkler running half the night but overall the whole place doesn’t look too bad. Knowing what it could and should look like, I cast a more jaded eye over it than most of our visitors do. Open again Saturday, then a Sunday/Monday opening in three weeks time before we draw stumps for the season. Then I start to prepare for next year, the first decision being whether I carry on opening at all.