Six on Saturday – 12/9/2026

The busier a week is, the quicker Saturday comes around. This Saturday came round as quickly as any I can recall. Not that I’m about to share much with you, most of it being unrelated to gardening.
Early in the week I spotted a small hedgehog out in the garden in mid afternoon, never a good sign. I rang our local hedgehog rescue place who told me to take it to the local vet who would treat it free of charge and get it to the rescue centre if necessary. I don’t know what the outcome was but hopefully I found it before things had gone too far. Beaver, our resident rescue hedgehog, has been eating heartily of the food I’ve put out for him and has been active in my trail camera footage every night since I started feeding him. A neighbour’s cat, and one of our own, have tried to get into the box where the food is but have been thwarted. It’s been interesting to see how unconcerned Beaver is about the cats, he doesn’t even bother to roll into a ball, just freezes until the cat loses interest.

My big ongoing project is to increase my water storage but I will do a post about that when it’s further along. The garden in the meantime has gone back to looking how it should at this time of year, simply autumnal. It’s a seductive thought that we are back to something close to normal but I cannot convince myself that we are, or even be sure what normal means any more. I will be surprised; pleased but surprised, if next year is not another very hot year with records for heat falling again. I intend to be as well prepared as I can be.

For now though, let me focus on what is performing in the garden today. Six performers, or six scenes, six of something happening now; that being the gist of the Six on Saturday meme. Describe your sextet in words and pictures, post it as a blog and put a link in my comments below. Simple enough but should you want more info there’s a participant’s guide here. Right, what do I kick off with?

One.
How about I start with Amaryllis belladonna, my second and later flowering form. In my opinion, much the better form. As well as flowering nearly a month later it is shorter, more free flowering, lasts longer and is prettier. I took pictures of it early this morning in shade and late in the afternoon sun; the same but quite different.

Two.
Because Hakonechloa macra ‘All Gold’ spent all its time when wet lying flat on the ground, and in Cornwall that usually means all the time after the beginning of September, I thought it might fare better in a pot. It was looking pretty good this morning weighed down by overnight drizzle with its flower heads bejewelled with water droplets. Brush against it and it’s impressive how much water gets transferred to your trouser leg.

Three.
Liriope muscari has long been a source of frustration to me. I have planted two or three named forms over the years, always purchased looking fabulous in full flower. For the most part they have never flowered again or if they have the buds have been feasted upon by slugs well before opening. I was given a clump by a gardening friend, no name but from the amount she has spread around the garden over many years, an old cultivar. I am including it this week even though the flowers are not fully out because I can’t quite believe they’re going to be there tomorrow. As well as molluscs I think vine weevil have hit them hard but I get the impression that the pests have mostly had as tough a time this summer as the plants they feed on.

Four.
One of the consequences of cutting down the Magnolia that was in front of Sue’s greenhouse was that it exposed the glory hole that was her potting bench and working area. I now have two overly conspicuous water butts which I am planning to render more discrete. There are four, linked by an underground pipe and filling as one from the greenhouse roof gutters. It means they all need to be at the same level, which they currently are not, and it would help if they were all the same size. Looking at the picture, I see a very unattractive hose reel, a seat that needs moving, Podochaenium (with big leaves) that needs propagating and more besides.

Five.
Just behind the bench in the shot above is a bed of Salvias that I planted out in spring to replace the Geranium palmatum that had all sprung up after I cut down the Magnolia. They were planted in early July and in spite of generous watering have sat there without growing or flowering very much at all. Now that the last of our visitors are gone and the rains have arrived, they have woken from their slumbers and are putting on a show. Most of these are a variety I bought labelled ‘Purple and Bloom’, which is all but identical to ‘Amistad’. It has breeders rights on it of course, so I’m not permitted to propagate it for sale but can grow as many as I like for my own use. I’ve done some cuttings this week but almost every shoot is a flower spike, so it’s tricky.

Six.
Another big pink summer/autumn flowering bulb, Crinum powellii, and less showy than Amaryllis belladonna so perhaps I should have put the two of them the other way round, but this was a total surprise. It certainly wasn’t flowering a week ago and I didn’t even notice a bud coming up. It’s always been my aim to have the sort of garden where I can go out on any day of the year and find something I had not seen the day before. I admit that not looking the day before has helped.

And there you have it. Another week down. It’ll soon be Christmas.