Six things to note from my garden - Six on Saturday 14 June 2025

Mid June, and thankfully we have had some rain, but also plenty of sunshine.  Since it is Saturday, now is the time to post six things from my garden, which is being linked into Jim's post.  So for even more garden musings do go over and enjoy.

1. Following on our visit to Great Dixter, I decided to pay homage to Christopher Llyod, or at least that is my excuse for picking a bunch of plants I had been fancying growing for a number of years. Great Dixter is well known for the collection of plants individually grown in pots amassed by the front door.

Gazania Frosty Kiss

This plant is what my dearly beloved describes as a clown's or magician's prop, which opens up when they pull it out of their sleeve, it is totally over the top and only opens when the sun is bright. The other two plants which I picked up quickly from the same market stall were ( was Lantana Bandolero Orange and Coleus Flamethrower Serrano.  My parents used to grow these types of plants, and I remember the smell of the Lantana hedge along the board boundary to their house.

2. Up on the shed shelf, even the succulents etc have been appreciating the showers we have enjoyed this week.

3. Once I have a plant that I love and does well in the garden, I am drawn to spotting them, and if in the right place, ie I can ask or buy another different cultivar, then I do.  In this way I now have several different Rodohypoxis.  They are currently on the garden tables in pots.

Rodohypoxis on garden table

After being kept dry overwinter in the shed as recommended, I gave them a water, and when they started to shoot divided them up.  Over the few years I have done this, and I must have forgotten than I had put some into the gravel garden and that I ought to have lifted them if following the advice of keeping them dry during the winter.  This little plant proves that for my garden, even with all the rain we had earlier in the winter, the Rodohypoxis can be left out all winter. 

Rodohypoxis growing in the gravel garden

4. Another plant in full flight in the gravel garden is Saxifrage Southside Seedling.

5. Photobombing as it were the above two photography is Hypericum polyphyllum grandiflorum, which is ready early morning for the visiting bumblebees.

6. Another poppy which I had been lurking in my seed box for a few years has come up, it is almost black.  I've lost the seed packet, so no name. Again early in the morning full of pollen and ready for the bumblebees.

Last week I showed a poppy casting its sepals, and people asked what it was like fully open....

In a Vase on Monday

When I posted my Six things from the garden on Saturday, someone mentioned how early the Fuchsia was.  We have a sheltered garden and this Fuchsia is not cut down to ground level, with the growth from just the top of thickening four foot stems cut back in March,  with new growth since then. I am perhaps trying to grow thick trunks over the coming years. 

Phalaris arundinacea, and the strickling white Zantedeschia aethiopica or Arum Lily, which all grow close together.  In the middle of the vase and also under the foot of the old elephant are some foliage from a new 'unnamed' Gingko which I picked up at 'Rocky Mountain'.

The vase was prepared yesterday ready for ladies from the WI coming over for Knit and Natter.  When I first suggested such a group, there was such a response that several groups were set up to accommodate the numbers as there was not one home who could hold so many.  I think there are five groups altogether.  The groups are very inclusive and for some it is just an opportunity to have coffee or tea, and companionship.  This morning first thing, I made a really lovely Victoria Sponge with the best of strawberry jams home made on Friday from delicious Cheddar strawberries, and some ginger and spelt biscuits, made yesterday. 

The creator of this weekly sharing of flowers from the garden is Cathy, and when I post on Monday I link into her blog.

In the garden: Six on Saturday at the start of June 2025

What a change in the weather and light conditions from just a few weeks ago.  We were away house sitting for a son of a friend.  Wow their garden was huge, but I hope I left it in good condition. As well as being cooler with rain, we have had some unusual winds here. For insights into what several gardeners and plant enthusiasts are writing about this week, the place to go is is 'Garden Ruminations', where Jim is the custodian of our weekly musings.

1. Early morning is the time to catch the poppies about to cast off the outer sepals and then unfold their creased chiffon like petals, the pale early morning light enhancing the ethereal look, and their grey green glaucous foliage. 

They are coming up all over the garden, but are easily removed.  I will keep a few plants up until I can harvest the seed heads, which I enjoy arranging and also save the seed to use in my bread making.

2. Over in the gravel garden this small low growing Teucrium pyrenaicum, I acquired last year, is one the bees just love.

Teucrium pyrenaicum 

However it was too early to catch the bees visiting, they are rather later rises!

3. Over towards Gooseberry Corner, the gooseberries are doing their thing, and we have already had a good picking from Gooseberry Invicta, but this picture is from  Gooseberry Hinnonmaki Red. Its berries are much smaller than last year, probably due to the very warm and dry months, but we are now into a much cooler and damp period, so maybe the more immature berries will swell a little.  So far the squirrels have been completely content with eating all the apples on D'Arcy Spice, but there are only two or three left and I may be in for a shock one morning to find the berries stripped!

Gooseberry Hinnonmaki Red

4. I'm not going to mention scent from roses as the ones in the garden here pale into insignificance compared to the ones at Sissinghurst, which we visited last week.  However there is perfume coming from the Valeriana officinalis, which has self seeded itself towards Gooseberry Corner.

5. The clump forming Phalaris arundinacea probably needs to be reduced this year, but for now it makes a lovely addition setting off several plants, such as the white arum and darker plants behind.

6. I kept the thickening long stems in a pollarding fashion and all the green is this year's growth.  This is a hardy Fuchsia, name unknown, and it has now been in flower since first weeks of May, but is now forming a colourful pop up against the garden/cemetery stone wall. 

I have mixed views regarding the various gardens we visited, but gradually thoughts about my own garden are readjusting in light of what I saw. Hopefully during the week, I shall get to upload a few of the pictures I took along with some thoughts in a few posts.

Flowers and Books

 Although I have been somewhat lax in joining the rendezvous for In a Vase on Monday, that is not to mean that flowers have not been cut and arranged.  They have however been just simple affairs, and could not be called 'arrangements' in any sense of the word.  The vases  just hold a few flowers which have either caught my attention, or needed to be cut as part of the management of the garden or plant.

In the first instance below, this vase has been sitting on the mantlepiece for a number of months.  This is a rather special vase to me and the twigs picked up from under a road side growing tree after the storms earlier this year.  They are from The Alder Tree and although bearing both male and female catkins on the same tree, these little cone like fruits are the remains of the female fruit. I am often pulled towards monochrome arrangements and this has to be a favourtie at the moment.

I'm a little behind in linking in my reading and the best book that I have read for a very long time, and a good pairing for this arrangement of the Alder, is How to Read a Tree by Tristan Gooley, of which this is an excellent review.

How to Read a Tree by Tristan Gooley

For my next arrangement only picked earlier today it is roses, stems from a couple of the Rose Home Florist Timeless Collection. No greenery seemed to match the rich green of the healthy leaves, so none was chosen. 

To go with this arrangement 

This was one of the two books we discussed at our last WI Book Club lunch meeting.  I quite liked this book, and felt the style and perhaps simplicity implied to me that it would be the second book the main character Marianne Clifford would write especially as it is written in the first person.  I would give it a four out of five, but would quite surprised that few others in the group liked it at all. 

With having to clear a bed of old growth partly to mulch and to allow new growth to emerge for another wave of flowering, I just popped a few saved stems into a little vase.  Blue and white make for a nice combination and up close the structure is exquisite. White  Centaurea Montana Alba and the Scabiosa 'Butterfly Blue.

The second book we discussed was There are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak.  What a beautiful book, and a great story linking people across different eras, backgrounds, and continents.  Our group apart from two who gave up about a third of the way in, really liked it, and with their encouragement, those two were encouraged to persevere and it will be interesting to hear how they got on at our next meeting. 

There are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak

Some time ago I enjoyed meeting Elif Shafak, and also hearing her at a book presentation at Kenilworth library, and have read at least two of her books.  I really would like to read more of hers.  

A dry and dusty Six things in the garden this Saturday

Record sunshine and virtually no rain, only a few drops over the last six to seven weeks is hitting the garden really hard.  Plants which should be flowering now are over and setting seed, plants that should be growing well are now  withering before my eyes begging for a bucket full of water.  Every drop to spare is being used selectively, and there will be no more purchasing or planting of new plants until the ground is in far better condition, and we have had rain. It is probably different in many of the gardens whose owners link in to Jim who gardens down in a much damper Cornwall.  Go over to his post to find out what is happening in a nice range of gardens both in the UK and overseas.

1. Even the Mediterranean style planting in the front garden is suffering.  A few plants however are putting on a show.  Not surprisingly, native to Aegean Islands to South West Turkey, Phlomis fruticosa Bourgaei even though it has a hard cut back last year is doing well to fill out and now flower in the dry hard soil.

2. Last year I thought I had dug up all the bulbs of Tulip sprengeri, to move to the back garden.  Those are settling in and I have had a few flowers there but to my surprise I had as many flower in the original position and perhaps more.  They are in the lee of the upper two of the Phlomis and in the shade. 

3. Also in the front garden is this little succulent.  It is just starting to flower. Delosperma Fire Spinner is such a hardy little plant, and well worth growing as ground cover in a hot dry area.

4. The Clematis Olympia although nicely repotted during the autumn, is flowering on low growth.  I think it is suffering from an excess of sunshine!  It is non the less a lovely blue and full of blooms.

5. Filling the back garden with scent is the lovely little Dianthus superbus which I grew from some seed collection by Jean. This is the original plant and this season is really bushy, and has shorter stems compared with the other Dianthus superbus in the garden.  Last year I took some cuttings to share with Jean, and I have another plant just getting established as a back up a few feet away, but that has yet to flower.

Dianthus superbus

6.Omphalodes linifolia , Argentinian Forget-me- not, or Venus's Navelwort with its attractive grey green leaves and spires of small petalled white flowers was one of the plants that caught my eye on a visit to Batcombe Park back in 2021. Can you imagine my delight when my friend Alison who has a flower farm, brought me a little plant when she came over for coffee a few weeks ago?  It has really delighted me, and is especially attractive in early morning light and later in the evening.  I understand it will gently self seed, so I shall be careful to grow the flowers on to have my own seed, and seedlings for next year. 

The evergreen oaks on the other side of the wall continue to shred their leaves, and have started to shed their spent male catkins.  It is a daily activity to remove these at least from the seating area and the furniture, as well as on the gravel garden.  It is a real bind, but then the trees do add to the beauty of the garden, so I have to just keep on at this. On another note, I have started to feed a visiting female blackbird soaked raisins, mealy worms, and a suet/bug pellet.  After only a few days she is getting quite accustomed to me.  Just hope we don't get the stork who has arrived on the levels, as I would not know what to feed it.