Six on Saturday – 29/8/2026

Our garden opening season comes to an end on Monday and to be honest, I’m glad it’s over for the year. It has been a slog keeping it from getting no worse than it already is and it’s disheartening to put in a lot of extra work and still have it looking as battered as it does. I look at it now and think that if I’d had the water and had irrigated all summer, it would be looking much better but at least half of the water applied would not have been needed since the plants look OK without it. Nor would I have known which had been watered unnecessarily. I’m going to get through with only a handful of outright losses but it very much remains to be seen which things succumb to winter wet having suffered root damage from drought and how many are alive next year but failing to thrive.

One.
I’ve had a very brightly variegated Yucca in a pot for many a year; I got in when I was still working so at least twelve years. I’ve always thought it was Yucca recurvifolia ‘Banana Split’ but now I’m not so sure. It is producing a flower spike, which obviously means it warrants a Six on Saturday mention but since it has never had a label I thought I should do a quick check online. I wish I hadn’t, now I really don’t know what it is. Most likely seems to be Yucca ‘Bright Star’, once categorized as a form of recurvifolia, now seemingly Y. gloriosa ‘Bright Star’, or Yucca gloriosa [Bright Star] (Walbristar’) if you want the full weight of taxonomic stupidity. It’s in the row of spiky things I put out front this year with the aim of reducing the amount of watering I needed to do out there. Could be the only thing I got right this year.

Two.
Fuchsia hatschbachii got a mention back in January when I was sorting out the mess I’d made for myself by cutting down Magnolia ‘Ann’ , removing the support it had been providing to the Fuchsia and a Clematis viticella. The Fuchsia gets cut back hard each year and produces slender shoots of six feet or more which are not self supporting. It’s a very elegant species with slender red flowers and narrow glossy leaves. So far (touch wood) it has never had gall mite and is putting up with drought very well.

Three.
Putting up with drought is sadly not the story elsewhere. Last week I reported that Eucryphia milliganii had a lot of dead appearing; change that to has a few live bits left, and that after a week that has been much cooler with some rain. In addition and only just noticed is my other Eucryphia, E. lucida ‘Gilt Edge’. It’s much the same, just a few shoots still alive. I’ve been wondering if its worth trying to root some cuttings but I doubt they’d succeed and Eucryphia is not seeming like a plant well suited to our probable future climate. It’s sandwiched in between other plants and seems to have lost out in the fight for water. I’m a bit concerned about the camellia bottom right too, it should look the same as the bit top right.

Four.
I have four Hedychium varieties in the garden and three have been absolutely useless in the drought. Hedychium ‘Tara’ on the other hand is the best it’s ever been, at least in growth. The flower spikes are starting to open up and should be looking good on Sunday and Monday when the garden is open, if possibly a couple of days short of their peak. I measured one stem at just shy of 2m.

Five.
I was given a cutting of Abelia chinensis in November 2024 and now have quite a good young plant that I will try to find a place for this winter. The thing I’m liking most about it is that every time I walk past it I get a waft of really good scent. I had a sniff at a different Abelia variety recently and detected nothing. For late flowering and scent I’m going to give it an eight.

Six.
Our most recent rescue hedgehog abandoned his custom hedgehog house and stopped appearing on trail camera footage many months ago. A couple of weeks ago I found a pile of leaves which looked like a nest and not wanting to disturb it, set the camera up and put down a bowl of water. The good news is that Beaver the hedgehog is still about. I refreshed the water, put some food out and moved the camera to get a better angle. In successive video clips I saw one of the neighbourhood cats stalking him, then exiting stage right, then the first 9 seconds of the next 10 second clip showing nothing followed by the cat passing right to left at high speed. I’m assuming the hedgehog won that round.

Another week down. Apart from the ground being desperately dry as deep as I’ve gone, not far admittedly, the weather seems to have returned to near normal autumnal fare and the plants look a bit less stressed. My two Eucryphias tell a different story and I want some serious rain. A cautionary voice in my head is saying “be careful what you wish for”. The sensible voice in my head is saying “water storage” and it’s saying it loudly and insistently.