Six on Saturday - 31st July 2021

Introduction

Welcome to the ninth #SixOnSaturday series, inspired by The Propagator.  Six things going on in my garden this week. The combination of sun and recent rain has resulted in rampant growth and so much of the garden activity of late has been pruning and tying back along with a lot of dead-heading to prolong the flowering season. For me, "productive" gardening week is sometimes measured by the fullness of the brown bin - stuff that I can't easily compost. So much pruning and weeding has been done this week that it has filled two! In between the showers, lovely things are still happening. Here are a rew of them: 

1) Montbretia

Ok, so for many, this is an old fashioned standard.  As it happens, it is for me too as it brings back memories of our childhood garden. That this gets the top spot this week is because it failed to flower last year and I thought it was a gonner. The thrill, therefore, of seeing the emerging flowers is heightened this year.  

2) Seedheads

Too many of the wonderful alium seedheads suffered following stormy downpours. This, therefore, is anothe survivor and I love its structure.  

3) Platycodon "Baloon Flower"

This innocent plant is exceptionally special to me. I took care of it in 2014 in the last weeks of my mum's life and it, along with her blueberry and her hydrangea are now in my garden and continue to thrive.   

4) Teasel

One of the volunteers at our local community garden, Common Growth, offered teasel seedlings to the community last autumn. I took a few, knowing that they attract goldfinches which, until now we'd not seen in the garden. They are vigorous and the bees absolutely love the flowers. I'm looking forward to offering the dried seedheads for the now resident clutch of seed-loving finches. 

5) Bronze fennel

Another attractive seedhead. 

 

6) A sense of more 

Here is the platycodon and montbretia beside the garden path. Our garden is long and straight but we've provided a "sense of more" through curved paving and rich planting.  

That's all for this week. Check out the participant guide if you want to join in.

Six on Saturday - 24th July 2021

Introduction

Welcome to the eighth  #SixOnSaturday series, inspired by The Propagator.  Six things going on in my garden recently. There's a bit of a focus on produce this week. 

1) Courgette "Black Beauty"

Courgettes can be frustrating to get going. First of all, the seeds need some warmth to germinate and I've frequently ended up planting two lots of seeds before anything has come up. Second, once they've reahed the point where they are ready to start being productive, you need both a male flower and a female flower to be out at the same time. The female fruiting stem can be identified as it has a small swelling just below the flowerhead. I typically plant three plants in the hope of encouraging  male and female flowers out simultaneously. It hasn't yet quite worked out like that this year and I'd already had five female flowers come and go - five nascent courgettes that weren't to be -  before the first male appeared. Even though the garden is awash with polinators, I nonetheless try to give fertilisation a little hand using a bird's feather to transfer pollen from male to the fruiting plant. All is not totally lost with the unfertilised fruits as generally I'm able to pick them before they start rotting and either chop and add to cooking, or thinly slice, pickle and use in salads. 

2) Summer fruits: strawberries and blueberries

There is something deeply satisfying about being able to pick your own breakfast. The blueberry was one of three potted plants that I rescued from mum's garden after she died in 2014. The strawberries are now in their second year. Both are producing beautifully intensely sweet fruits which go wonderfully with a bit of cruncy museli, some greek yoghurt and a good strong black coffee, all consumed sitting on the patio in the sun whilst listening to the birds chuntling in the backround. 

3) Lemon

It is nothing short of a miracle that the lemon tree, acquired last summer, survived the winter.  My "greenhouse" is  a small plastic affair that I use for seedlings in spring, and for over-wintering a potted Canna. Instead I decided that I'd bring the lemon inside, placing it beside a sunny door. At first it loved it, throwing up new shoots and flowers. Then, despite retular watering with rainwater, it started dropping leaves. Eventually it stabilised. It is happy now that it is back out on the patio getting a regular water and citrus feed. 

4) Crocosmia "Lucifer"

Lucifer is out and looking stunning with its deep red flowers dancing atop tall stems. I added supports this year which are working well which is good because the main clump had previously been rather unruly, flopping in the slightest wind or rain. . 

5) Clematis Princess Diana

This clematis is now in its second year and I have it growing up an obelisk in a part of the garden that faces east and is deeply shaded by towering sycamore trees just the other side of the fence. It is putting on a great show this year and appears not to have been as affected by greenfly as it was last year. 

 

6) Spirea Japonica Goldflame 

This was another impulse buy, this time at our local market. I was actually attracted by the golden/red young leaves which have now turned a lovely lime green and are topped with fluffy pink flowerheads. More to add to the "plants with year round interest" brigade. 

That's all for this week. Check out the participant guide if you want to join in.

Six on Saturday - 17th July 2021

My seventh in the #SixOnSaturday series, inspired by The Propagator.  Six things going on in my garden over the last seven days. One discovery this week was that I'm rather allergic to our Juniper bush. When working from home, and if I don't have to gobble lunch in between meetings, I'll not infrequently do five minutes of deadheading or weeding or something before going back to my desk and screen. I'd spotted weeds popping up through the Juniper. Five minutes later and my arms were red, stinging and itching. Happily a good wash and a slather of Antisan calmed it and an internet search confirmed it was quite common. No more gloveless weeding for me.

Sitting out on the patio this morning contemplating which six things to include today, I was struck, not for the first time this week, by the intense buzzing in the virginia creeper which surrounds the patio doors. At this time of year it bears loads of very unremarkable flowers but what they lack in visual appeal, they clearly make up for big time in attracting polinators, in our case many varieties of bees. Later on in the autumn the flowers will be replaced by deep black berries and, as the leaves give their autumnal show of red, the birds will have their fill of the berries. But first, here are this week's six:

1) Day lily

My first attempt at growing Day lilies. I acquired several from one of the garden club members who I think was thinning her clump at the end of the last season. I started them off in pots until I thought they were substantial enough to survive the ground and the local slugs and snails. I'm very happy with the result so far.

2) Cerinthe

Another garden club find - this time from a seed swap session. No photograph of mine really does justice to this plant with its leaves tinged with blue, almost irridescently so, and the delicate purple flowers which are suspended from the under side of the plant. Most of the seeds came up and most of the plants have survived and there are practically no sign of nibblings. One clump has Geranium Rozeanne "Gerwat" - featured back in June - scrambling through it and they make a nice pair together. I'll be harvesting seeds and sowing them again next year, probably planting them slightly further apart than I did this year. 

3) Bidens

This trailing bidens was an impulse buy at the very strategically placed Nunhead Gardener. Their first nursery sits under the arches of the former station entrance and after a hard day at the office, those of us exiting the newer entrance are treated to gentle jazz and gorgeous enticing scents and it is always worth popping in to see what is new. This trailing annual is just great for pots and baskets.  

4) Crocosmia "Lucifer"

Lucifer is out and looking stunning with its deep red flowers dancing atop tall stems. I added supports this year which are working well which is good because the main clump had previously been rather unruly. 

5) Clematis Princess Diana

This clematis is now in its second year and I have it growing up an obelisk in a part of the garden that faces east and is deeply shaded by towering sycamore trees just the other side of the fence. It is putting on a great show this year and appears not to have been as affected by greenfly as it was last year. 

 

6) Spirea Japonica Goldflame 

This was another impulse buy, this time at our local market. I was actually attracted by the golden/red young leaves which have now turned a lovely lime green and are topped with fluffy pink flowerheads. More to add to the "plants with year round interest" brigade. 

That's all for this week. Check out the participant guide if you want to join in.

Six On Saturday - 10th July 2021

My sixth in the #SixOnSaturday series, inspired by The Propagator.  The excitement in my garden this week was the first sighting of a Stag Beetle this year. We've seen them in the garden for as many years as I can remember and they are one reason why I keep a small logpile going. I'm thinking of doing a wildlife special at some future date, but meanwhile, here are this week's six:

1) Morning Glory

Occasionally our local gardening club members swap seeds and this morning glory is the second generation of one such swap. I grew it for the first time last year and it was hugely successful and so seeds were harvested and are now producing their stuff again this year.  Given how delicate the plants are I was astonished just how high it climbed. One thing I'm planning to do this year is to succession sow in order to ensure that there are flowers low down as the older plant concentrates on producing those higher up. 

2) Sorbaria sorbifolia

What a difference a week makes. Last week this Sorbaria was poised to flower and here, less than a week later are the deligfully fluffy delicate white  flowerheads which are a hit with the bees. The plant has grown vigorously this year so I may re-think its location. 

3) Apples

This tree is quite simply astonishing. Both boughs collapsed in 2014 as can be seen in an earlier post. It is now almost completely hollow and the decaying trunk is host to an amazing variety of insects. Yet, somehow, and from somewhere in the sliver of remaining bark, it is still absolutely intent on providing us a harvest again this year. We thought last year was its last as we had only two apples. This year, if the squirrels don't gorge themselves too much, and if the weight of the apples isn't too much for the remaining tree, we are in for an absolutely bumper harvest. 

4) Hydrangea Macrophylla "Zorro"

I love the majesty of this lacecap hydrangea. It also has stunning near-black stems. Unfortunately, despite giving it its very own enviromnent - a purpose built planter built from pallet wood, filled with ericaceous soil, watered only with rainwater and fed only with food for acid-loving plants - I have failed to persuade it to revert back to its original blue colour.  Nonetheless, it is a stunning specimen which sits in the bottom corner of the garden shown on the left in the image as the early evening sun illuminages the seating area. I'll come back to the olive tree on another occasion. 

5) Lychnis Coronaria

This is another plant acquired via our gardening club. It has silvery foliage and these popping pink flowers which cheer up even the wettest of days. I've managed to propogate more through harvesting seed heads at the end of last year, through division and, noticed recently, through some self-seeded plants which I've been rescuing from in between the pavier bricks. Both halves of the parent plant that I divided are doing spectacularly well this year. It is sitting here framed by a fern and, in the foreground, an acquilegia plant whose flowers are over now but whose seedheads I'm waiting to mature so that I can harvest the seeds.   

6) Hebe 

Finally for this week, a hebe. This one is determined to invade the garden. Its base is actually right back against the fence and it has a "trunk" that could be mistaken for a tree trunk. For years I cut back the wall of flowers alongside the path. This year, having been poked just once too often by the straining branches and, to be honest, also soaked by the rain-covered leaves, I decided to see if it could be pruned. What I've ended up doing is raising its crown so that rather than walking into or round it, we now walk under it as we head down the garden. It has responded very well to the pruning and is now covered in beautiful blue and white blooms. In truth, it has got way out of hand but I haven't yet got the heart to remove it competely. I'm anticipating at some point that the weight of the top will be two much for the slender branches and that they will fail. Meanwhile, I've now cleared the ground in and around the trunk and have underplanted it so there's interest at ground level as well as at head height.

That's all for this week. Check out the participant guide if you want to join in.

Six on Saturday - 3rd July 2021

The end of the week was tinged with sadness - we discovered a juvenile goldfinch dead on the patio on Friday morning. We think that it had flown into the patio windows - something the pigeons do not infrequently. This is the first year that we've had goldfinches in the garden and we've had as many as five adults at once on the feeder. I'm hoping that others from this year's broods are alive and well as I've planted some teasels especially to attract them. Here are this week's #SixOnSaturday.

1) Alstromeria

I've nicknamed this Alstromeria "the survivor". Friends gave it to us as a potted plant when they came to lunch back in June 2019.  I potted it on in a teracotta pot on the patio and it survived into 2020 at which point we and our friends rued the pandemic and looked back on a lovely lunch, hoping it wouldn't be too long before we could reconvene. This year, during the extraordinarily cold weather we had in the spring, I was convinced it was a gonner. It froze, then melted, and then the slimy leaves were washed away in the rain leaving only the slate mulch visible. After a long wait, it has recovered to give us another exotic display. 

2) Sorbaria sorbifolia

I've gone for a lot of leaf variety in the garden. Different sizes, shapes, colours. This is my first year with sorbaria. I acquired it primarily for its leaves which are tinged with pink in the spring. It is shown here poised to flower but even now, the leaves give lots of interest in the lemon through to lime spectrum. 

3) Cana

This Cana has been overwintered in the greenhouse for two winters. Last year it didn't flower and so I've sited the pot in what I hope is the sunniest part of the garden and it now sits close to the sorbaria (above). I'm keeping it well watered and fed and am hoping for a display this year. Even without the flowers, the large chocolate leaves are stunning against paler green surrounding leaves.  

4) Calla lily

I sent a pot of Calla lilies as a present to mark the retirement of a friend and colleague. The next day, at our local garden centre, I found some corms which I potted up. They appeared to do nothing for ages, then, gradually, the leaves emerged and over the last ten days up have popped multiple blooms. It is a stunner and unlike the Cana (above) appears not to be tasty fodder for the slugs and snails. The pot will earn its place in the greenhouse overwinter if it produces this display every year!

5) Campanula

This provides great ground cover and a beautiful display of flowers. I have it dotted along the north-east facing fence where it scrabbles in and around the base of other taller plants giving masses of flowers that are, judging by the intense buzzing, very tasty to bees. Here it is scrabbling through a phormium. The great thing is that after the first flush of flowers are spent, you can remove the flower stalks which will then be replaced by a second flowering later in the summer. It seeds in and around cracks in the paving providing a softening to the hard landscaping. 

6) Artemesia Powis Castle 

Another plant that I have simply for its leaves. In this case they are delicate silver feathery aromatic leaves which look well set against more solid glossy leaves, e.g. vinca. This was one of the earliest plants that I attempted to propogate and there are now many clones dotted around the garden. They are a little prone to blackfly and can, over time, get very leggy. Happily, they seem to grow back well following a hard cutting back, throwing out more delicate leaves from the woody stems.