Six on Saturday – 10/10/26

The temperature dropped to 6.6°C on Thursday morning so it’s gradually getting more autumnal, having said which, the growth spurt that took off when the drought broke is showing no sign of abating. Funny old year, like every year.
Not much has happened in my garden since last weekend so I’ll just dive into my six choices for the week.

One.
Several of my ferns died down in the summer heat and are shooting anew. Lastreopsis microsora was given to me as a potted plant over a year ago and was planted out just as this summer’s drought started to bite. It struggled somewhat and I watered it occasionally. It didn’t die back at all and is now growing enthusiastically. It comes from Australia and New Zealand where it grows in rainforest or Eucalyptus forest so is probably better suited to hot dry conditions than many of the ferns I have. It’s quite small, about a foot high.

Two.
A few weeks back I went into B&M for cat food and made the mistake of strolling around their garden centre section. There I spotted this Fatsia for sale and fell over myself to grab it. My expectations of the sheds as plant suppliers are modest indeed but you just never know. Fatsia japonica is well known and widely grown. Fatsia polycarpa is much less well known or grown but is held in high regard by enthusiasts for worthy green plants. Edward Needham was, i believe, a Truro librarian who went plant collecting in his holidays, to places like Taiwan and Vietnam. He created a garden, Tregye, which is packed with choice exotic plants but which has never been open to the public. I was therefore astonished to see that a plant that presumably originated there has been picked up by a Dutch nursery, mass produced and supplied back to B&M. Needham died in 2008 but I may well see the current owner next week and will ask him what he knows.

Three.
Miscanthus sinensis ‘Septemberrot’ outgrew its spot on a corner by the greenhouse, was moved back a foot or so but was still encroaching on the path alongside it. I dug it up, replaced it with a canna and moved it to where I’d taken out a massive, even more wide spreading Molinia caerulea. At least Miscanthus is fairly reliably upright, at least I’m hoping it is. It’s settled in very well and in its second season flowering about 1.5m tall. I’m not sure which bit of it was supposed to be red in September.

Four.
It will forever be Sue’s greenhouse but I was poking around in there earlier today and realised that it is inevitably moving on from where she left it. I have potted up cuttings she’d taken, taken more myself and potted them up. I’ve bought some new plants, thrown away some of the old ones. She’d have done the same but it has been me doing it. These are all plants or plantings she didn’t get to see.

Five.
Our speaker at the Hardy Plant Society meeting on Wednesday evening was Caroline Stone, talking about Nerines. I put Amarine ‘Emanuelle’ (in my six last week) into my three stems vase and took a pot of Amarine ‘Tomoko’ along for the display table. Turns out she doesn’t much like Amarines, big graceless hybrids between Nerines and Amaryllis, my three stems took third behind a wrongly labelled Camellia and three fine Dahlia blooms. This is Nerine bowdenii ‘Stephanie’, which I didn’t take because it was a little weather battered.

Six.
Amarine ‘Tomoko’ is another of the Belladiva range of hybrids but seems less readily available than the others, perhaps because it is considerably less vigorous. This year is the first it has flowered for me and it only produced one stem from three bulbs; it’s a fabulous colour and I think I will try to get more of it. At least being in a pot meant I could put it in Sue’s greenhouse out of the wind to take a picture.

The garden changes less week to week as the weather cools and the plants that are winding down don’t get superseded by up and coming stars. There’s always something going on though, unless you’re somewhere that gets a lot of snow or prolonged freezes. There’s as much creativity in finding something to write about as in the writing itself so if you like a challenge, join in at the sharp end of the year, post a picture and some words about six things in your garden and leave a link in my comments below. There’s a guide here, should you need more info. Have a good week.