Six on Saturday - 22 July 2023

Yesterday I pulled out all stops and got the rest of my bulk order of mulch spread around the garden, the bulk bag folded up to contain bark chippings when we get some branches on the holm oak cut back, and the drive hosed down.  I certainly deserved a well done from Mr S when that was done. In between I got on with a few activities in the garden including taking some pictures for today's Six on Saturday

1. A few weeks ago I fancied a few more yellows in the gravel garden and added this Delosperma 'Suntropics Cream' I sense this was named cream as some people wouldn't want yellow, the yellow centre is what attracted me. 

2. The daisy type flowers as well as the Oreganums and Eryngiums  have been magnets for a large number of bees and butterflies.  During this week a variety of different white tailed bumblebees, and so many butterflies including Comma, Peacock, Red Admiral, Small Tortoiseshell and Blue, and many other flying insects have been visiting the garden.  At one time when we were sat outside having our lunch we witnessed many ants flying off in a cloud, form various spots around the garden. Mr S has had 'fun' saving butterflies and bees from the conservatory with the butterfly net.

3. The biennial Eryngium Giganteum Silver Ghost has probably the maximum number of plants I would want on the edge of the gravel area. It lights up that part of the garden and looks wonderful in the late evening.

As far as the bumble bees are concerned the more of these flowers the better.

4. On the small veggie area the Dwarf French Bean Purple Queen really looks as if she want to climb. After taking this picture I decided to add a few sticks with black mesh suspended on Mr S's arrows that served a similar purpose around the Mangetout crop which has now been cleared. I hadn't wanted to use long bean sticks and phase them out, but I have a few in reserve just in case.

5. The beetroot have continued to provide some lovely roots, and I have planted the last of the Courgette 'Sure Thing' plants, just two plants!  I bought two plants of indeterminate varieties of courgette earlier , one has started to fruit, and the second plant looked more like some other sort of very trialing cucurbit, but I removed that and started some of my own courgette seed. More about the courgette Sure Thing when they have grown a little and are starting to fruit.

6.  Often I am impatient and impulsive in the garden I can also be patient and intolerant when it comes to plants in the garden.  I can wait two years for a seed to germinate, or suddenly decide to remove a reasonably good plant from the garden, or I can see some interesting plant do all the research, but still buy on impulse from a nursery.  We were on our way back from Taunton and called into Greenshutters Nursery.  They didn't have the type of Ginko I was looking for and instead bought Echinacea purpurea Magnus. It is already planted up in the space vacated by a 'removed' plant.

Maybe because this little plant just looks wonderful when it is in flower, this unknown sedum may have arrived in the garden with something else, or maybe was just lurking in the garden when we arrived, it has somehow escaped the 'delete' 'remove' 'dig up' action that I am often prone to, so I am a mixed up gardener tolerant as well!

 Not all of us strictly keep to the six rule, and sometimes can stretch into six, whatever we do we are mildly treated by our chief gardener Jim who is the current leader of this weekly get together.  No doubt there will many nuggets of interesting knowledge, beautiful plants or other things in gardens scattered mainly around the UK but also further afield.